Books: Unaffected Great Man

THE GAY GENIUS [427 pp.) — Lin Yutang—John Day ($3.75).

In China some 900 years ago, there lived a thin-faced little man with a mandarin beard named Su Tungpo. According to Biographer Lin Yutang, Su Tungpo was "an incorrigible optimist, a great humanitarian, a friend of the people, a prose master, an original painter, a great calligraphist, an experimenter in winemaking, an engineer, a hater of puritanism, a yogi, a Buddhist believer, a Confucian statesman, a secretary to the emperor, a confirmed winebibber, a humane judge, a dissenter in politics, a prowler in the...