“It seems sometimes easier to know a dead man than a living one. For one thing, the living man's life is not completed, and one never knows what he is going to do next when a crisis comes. The drunkard reforms, the saint falls, and the pastor runs away with a choir girl. A living man has always so many ‘possibilities.’ Then, too, the living man has secrets, and some of the best secrets usually come out long after the man is dead.”
Yutang’s sweeping biography about the greatest Chinese poet, scholar, philosopher of all time - Su Tungpo (1037-1101)
New York: The John Day Company, 1947. First Edition, first printing. Hardcover. Octavo. 427 pages. Dust jacket in good condition with chipping and edge wear—In protector. Boards and spine clean and bright with some bumping to corners & edges and crushing at spine ends. Binding tight and square. Pages tanned. Wonderful copy.
