Portrait of the Artist as a Young Superman: A Study of Shaw's Novels by R. F. Dietrich (review)

1971 BOOK REVIEWS 119 the playwright in his refusal to be identified in a direct way with nostalgic Jimmy Porter, who laments, "there aren't any good, brave causes left." According to this study, Osborne's main theme in Look Back in Anger and in most of the other plays has been the inability of the characters to be lovers or even friends, not the failures Df society at large. But the public and private dimensions Df selfhood are not so, easily separated. In a climate Df Dpinio,n that Dffers little reason to, feel that individual identity is anything more than a haphazard cDnjunction of eCDnomic and PsychDlogical forces, self-assurance is weakened and personal relatiDnships are infected. There is an indictment Df Dur wDrld in the escapism and nDstalgia Df Archie Rice and Jimmy Porter, which in the latter's case is, as Trussler remarks, less "fDr past experience than for denied experience." (p. 43) A sense of spiritual deprivatiDn spawns ideas Df a Golden Age. Trussler's is a no-nDnsense bDDk. One is refreshed by the absence Df twaddle abo,ut ambiguity and paradox, being and becoming. Trussler concerns himself with such matters as whether characters live up to, their introductions, whether they are cDnsistent, and whether expositiDn is obtrusive Dr skillfully hidden in dialo,gue. Although Trussler finds faults in every play (themes are announced in Luther Dnly to, be fDrgotten; the audience is misled for no, gDDd reaSDn in Patriot), and nothing but faults in some, he comes to, the generous cDnclusion that four of the playsLook Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Inadmissible Evidence, and The Hotel in Amsterdam-are "candidates fDr permanent survival." (P. 224) This is rather heady praise, tenuDUS as it is, when one pauses to cDnsider how few playwrights have written fDur plays Df lasting interest. JAMES M. WARE California State PDlytechnic College PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG SUPERMAN: A STUDY OF SHAW'S NOVELS, by R. F. Dietrich. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1969. 197 pp. $7.50. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Superman is attractively printed on fine paper by the University of FlDrida Press and is well bDund, a fine tribute to, Bernard Shaw, who exercised infinite care on the appearance Df his publicatio,ns. It is a pity, ho,wever, that in an otherwise well-made book, an index was omitted. Mr. Dietrich begins his bDDk by arguing that the novels are better than is generally believed. He points out that Shaw himself misled critics into, disparagement of them, despite a secret affectio,n fDr them, and is at some pains to, prove that they are better than average accomplishments. He then moves in the next section of the book to his thesis that the novels are a record of Shaw's own development in the years 1879-83; in Dietrich's words "the nDvels ... reveal the artful shaping Df that very extraordinary being, the young Bernard Shaw." Dietrich traces the auto,bio,graphical development of Shaw through the co,urse Df the five novels, in the persons of his heroes, concentrating not on externals but on the state of his soul. The central figures thus become projections of Shaw's developing states of mind. The "mere propriety" of Robert Srn.ith in Immaturity gives way to the rationalism of Edward Conolly in The Irrational Knot and next to the irrationalism of Owen Jack in Love Among the Artists. The developing Superman (Shaw) moves through three "monstrDus" phasesMDnster of Propriety, Monster of the Mind, and Monster of the Body-before he 120 MODERN DRAMA Afay realizes the need to fuse body and mind, and does so symbolically in the fourth novel, Cashel Byron's Profession. Having achieved an inner harmony, then, the young writer needs only a faith to live by in order to become a force in the world, and he finds it in the gospel of Karl Marx, the patron saint of Sidney Trefusis in An Unsocial Socialist. Dietrich next offers in a short chapter a resume of Shaw's search for what he calls a "Heavenly Father" and concludes that Shaw settled for a new order of...