The Patient Observer and His Friends — Reading Notes

The Art of Refutation

In the excerpt on proving the moon is made of green cheese, Strunsky contrasts two argumentative methods: offering sixteen reasons for a claim, or assuming the claim and answering objections. He prefers the second because 'it throws the burden of proof on your opponent.' The sample refutation—that the moon and cheese are both round—is met with counterexamples: doughnuts, women's arguments, and trolley wheels. This playful logic appears elsewhere, as when he notes that a scientist can 'reconstruct an elephant from a half-inch fragment of the bone of his hind leg.' Strunsky extends the idea to social constructions: a statesman from 'a bit of buncombe and a frock coat,' a genius from 'two sonnets and half a dozen cocktails.' The method is less about truth than about rhetorical advantage.

Martians and the Cheapness of Theory

Strunsky's essay on Martians treats the canals as 'the most cheaply built system of public works on record.' He observes that a professor in Italy or Arizona finds 'a few dim lines on the plate of his camera' and instantly Mars has a canal network. The tone is affectionate but skeptical: 'I have always admired the way in which their existence was demonstrated.' He lists other cheap constructions—a multitude from 'three men and a band,' a crusade from 'one man and a press agent'—and notes that Martians are depicted as unattractive ('pot-bellied and hairless, with goggle eyes'), which makes them seem virtuous. The passage undercuts scientific certainty while enjoying the imaginative payoff.

The Patient Observer's Company

The book's structure is unusual: the Patient Observer's first-person essays are supplemented by those of his friends, drawn from other publications. The table of contents shows a mix of topics: 'Cowards,' 'The Church Universal,' 'The Doctors,' 'On Living in Brooklyn,' 'The Commuter,' 'Headlines.' Strunsky's voice is consistently ironic and conversational, as when he says of Martians: 'A race so unattractive could not but be virtuous.' The essays do not form a narrative but a series of observations, often beginning with a specific claim or anecdote. Readers should expect digression and wit rather than argumentative rigor; the pleasure lies in the turn of phrase and the unexpected analogy.

Strunsky's essays reward attention to their rhetorical moves: he often sets up a position only to invert it, and his examples range from classical logic to contemporary journalism. The friends Harrington, Cooper, and Harding are not developed characters but foils for different viewpoints. Readers interested in early twentieth-century American essay style, or in how a writer can be both skeptical and playful, will find this collection a consistent example of that craft.

I remember sitting with this book and thinking how Strunsky’s friends argued less to win than to keep the conversation alive. That same gentle, unhurried quality surfaced later while I lingered over The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 2 — Reading Companion, where letters feel like pauses, not performances. Both books let me overhear minds at ease, and I stayed quiet, listening.