Christopher Wixson

This is a good entry in the series, offering an accessible overview of a writer whose output was so prodigious that it can be hard to get a handle on his oeuvre. Wixson does a good job. After a brief biographical chapter entitled 'GBS', we get six thematic chapters that are also broadly chronological ('Unpleasant', 'Pleasant', 'Puritan', 'Political', 'Extravagant' and 'Farfetched'). Each chapter looks at several plays in depth and outlines its plots and themes, as well as highlighting the key events in Shaw's literary life at that moment. While the scope of the book and its design is good, the writing is sometimes torturous. Long, long sentences laden with multiple clauses collapse under their own semantic weight. It is often becomes difficult to discern exactly what the writer is saying without re-reading and the over-all effect is to make Shaw's ideas unclear and muddy. For me, it actively detracted from what was otherwise a fine introduction to this playwright.… (altro)