Allan Massie
Peter Pan Laid Bare
Bernard Shaw II: The Pursuit of Power
By Michael Holroyd
Chatto & Windus 420pp £18.00
Bernard Shaw had a passion for publicity; it was a means of concealing himself from the public. (Where do you hide a leaf? In a tree.) Yet it was also a means of self-affirmation, which enabled him to hide from himself. In this he differed from Wilde, his Dublin contemporary, who used publicity to encourage his true nature to flower. Shaw’s remarkable achievement was to employ his lust for self-promotion and public notice in such a way that he managed to escape the loneliness of the artist bound to his writing-table. Actually he wrote incessantly, but so much of his writing was concerned either to set other people – even the whole world – to rights, or to proclaim his own wisdom, that he can never have felt alone even in his own study; for one thing, his most brilliant and sustained creation, GBS himself, was always there to continue a dialogue.
Michael Holroyd understands that the passion for publicity was the key to Shaw’s success and the evidence of his failure. No writer was ever less the lonely old artist man. Indeed Shaw disliked being thought an artist, because that would have been a recognition of the truth about himself, from which he shrank; he much preferred to be regarded as a propagandist, and, characteristically, trumpeted this view. It took Max Beerbohm – who else? – to see through his pose: ‘in getting away from representation of actual things, you got off your rickety little contemporary platform and ceased your ready improvisings and sat down on the earth and thought out a genuine work of art and achieved something beautiful … You gave to a dramatic work the FORM which you had hitherto felt compatible with your conscience only in direct ratiocinative pleading …’ This was a disconcerting letter for Shaw to receive.
This second volume takes Shaw from his marriage to the end of the First World War. It is a masterly achievement. In his lifetime Shaw took great care to organise his biographers. There was an unfortunate Mr Henderson, ‘an Instructor in Mathematics at the University of North Carolina’, who, early
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm