Wells Under Siege

ELT 37:3 1994 Thus, though her research is fresh and supplies information about documentary sources that Furbank's biography lacks, Beauman's study certainly does not supplant that earlier reading of Forster's life. Tony Brown _______________ University of Wales, Bangor Wells Under Siege Michael Coren. The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H. G. Wells. New York: Atheneum, 1993. 240 pp. $22.50 AS A GENRE, biography has never had a stable identity. In its earliest stages, it tended to be hagiographie, with sketchy personal details obscured by a prescriptive general outline, or to be didactic, with actual or invented personal details presented as heuristic behavior. Biographies more attentive to the sheer plenitude of human experience followed in which their authors often seemed merely to report facts when, at the very least, they were editing the subject's life in one or another kind. Although biographers sometimes seek the illusion of such comprehensiveness today, on the whole they seem to be more self-conscious than ever before about the nature of their undertaking. And some authors, together with students of the genre, have pointed out the subtle agendas and defined the various theories of different biographical methods. Very recently the biography that discredits its subject has become fashionable and has proven to be as marketable as tabloid journalism. Coren's Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H. G. Wells falls into this category. In his introductory remarks, Coren candidly states: "It is my belief that Wells's influence on his own age, and his legacy to those ages to come, were, taken as a whole, pernicious and destructive" (11). It is this invisible influence of Wells, the result of previous biographers being "far too selective," that Coren "intend[s] to restore to authentic visibility" (11-12). That any biographer, particularly one whose book is only slightly over two hundred pages in large print, alleges the authenticity of his or her work might raise an eyebrow or two among readers. But, in my opinion, the crucial focus of suspicion must finally be motive. Just what can be the motive of a person who claims to have spent three years writing about a person he or she detests? Some might surmise "cashing in" on a book-trade trend as an incentive, while others might surmise self-aggrandizement by means of "bashing" the status of a cultural figure. In 360 BOOK REVIEWS Coren's case, the implication that he is impelled to counter Wells's "pernicious and destructive" influence on our own time—we are among "those ages to come"—seems disingenuous. It is not as a novelist that Wells concerns Coren, who believes Wells is "a writer touched by genius and capable of work that will forever delight those who read it" (226). It is as a thinker that Wells upsets Coren. Yet nowhere in his book does Coren indicate where Wells's thought exhibits such potent efficacy in our time. Precisely what influence ? Coren does not fill in this blank because he cannot. Today Wells is simply an author of the past, his generalist ideas hardly discussed as such and his fiction hardly prominent in our current estimation. The issue of Wells's influence is a straw issue, and Coren's motive, whatever it is, evidently lies elsewhere. As his favorable observation concerning Wells's literary achievement suggests, Coren tries now and then to lend some balance to the negativity of his undertaking. This is to his credit, as is the fact that his book includes new anecdotal material. He has found a few overlooked manuscript remarks by Wells, and he has interviewed a few people who remember several episodes in Wells's life. Coren's failure to hesitate over the reliability of these late memories notwithstanding, it is useful to have these recollections on the record. But are a dozen or so such anecdotes, primarily negative in cast, enough for another biography of Wells? The informed reader of Coren's book, in fact, will find nothing that is new beyond these anecdotes, which collectively do not change the established configuration of Wells's life. Wells's relationship with women, which is rehearsed at length in his...