Bernard Shaw's Book Reviews: Vol. 2: 1884–1950 by Bernard Shaw (review)

270 LETTERS IN CANADA heroine of Woolf's Orlando muses on or her "'............... 1.. ' notes that nature of this idea is clear.' IEliot was clear when he wrote that !-'v...................>L .....0,-.1'''........ '''' ,....,nY·""and more cmnpretl.ensi'V'e m(llrE~ct, in order to to dislocate mE!anlffij2;." He thus concurs with tlel~gsiDn, meant to convey an the delicate SmiU€!S KQ'r"crcnn could be seen as an influence upon it very clear that one of the most modernist texts is the enormous YAyr.... ,..I", duree and clock-time or Bernard Shaw. Bernard Shaw's Book Reviews: Vol. 2: lUUa.-LY-'U Edited Brian State Universi1tv HUMANITIES 271 traduction, reviews in chronological order, index. After eachreview,Tyson supplies publication details along with the date of composition or an estimate thereof, supported by biographical information. Shaw's many allusions are then elucidated in copious notes. These notes are arranged in point form, a solution which has the advantage of being less obtrusive than numbered notes at the same time as it offers more room for what emerges as Tyson's parallel project, namely a detailed cultural backdrop to Shaw's life. The problem with annotating a writer as wide-ranging as Shaw is that one must choose between the risk of over-informing the advanced student and that of under-informing the novice. Having opted for the former, Tyson provides information for which most readers would be grateful- for example, about {Pussyfoot' Johnson, an American prohibition propagandist - as well as less crucial information (one hopes) on the Duke of Wellington, say, or Nietzsche. Such encyclopaedic inclusiveness leaves Tyson vulnerable to the occasional quibble about the importance of this or that detail, but the salient facts are there, and the reader is able to follow every twist and tum of Shaw's rhetoric. Whereas Tyson's first volume contains only reviews published in the Pall Mall Gazette over four years (1885 to 1888), this volume covers the whole duration of Shaw's reviewing career and includes articles that appeared in a variety of publications, from Fabian News to the Times Literary Supplement. Another important difference is that whereas the Pall Mall Gazette, as Shaw's employer, selected the works to be evaluated, many of which were laughably bad, most of the book reviews he published elsewhere were done voluntarily (from a position of relative and then absolute financial security). The freelancing Shaw is an engaged reviewer whose sense of humour can be quite muted, especially when politics are an issue, which is frequently the case in this volume. Though Shaw's prose is always bracingly percussive, his more earnest reviews can be downright dry. It is fascinating, however, as Tyson points out, to observe the shift from a belief in such things as Fabian gradualism and the inherent cornmon sense of the masses to an endorsement of revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the visionary few over the recalcitrant many. But the strongest impression left by this collection is that of the irrepressible Shaw who saw the ridiculous and the sublime of every situation. Even when heaping praise on Sidney and Beatrice Webb, for instance, he cannotresist poking fun at them. As for those authors who lean more to the ridiculous, they are given enough rope to hang themselves, in the shape of judicious quotes. At other times Shaw hardly mentions the book he is reviewing at all; rather, he sets forth his own ideas on its subject or author. A critical study of G.K. Chesterton by Julius West, for example, becomes an excuse for a good-natured and hilarious attack on Chesterton's opinions. The anti-Semite, anti-suffragist, 'anti-Modernist,' etc., is described as a muddle-headed romantic who needs to think things through a little 272 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 more rigorously. He is said to '[indulge] in art for art's sake quite recklessly ' (making Whistler seem /a bigoted missionary' in comparison). He is also accused of affecting ignorance in scientific matters to the point of contending that 'Marconi is a bookmaker with whom certainpoliticians had shady dealings/and that 'Evolution is a silly and blasphemous attempt to discredit the Garden of Eden...