Bernard Shaw - the one volume definitive biography by Michael Holroyd (1997)

Bernard Shaw was often silly, childish and reckless to the point of breaking stuff and causing injuries (especially driving a car) - here he insisted being photographed as Rodin's "Thinker" while being sculpted by that great artist (unfortunately the resultant bust was mediocre). 

For a couple of weeks, several hours per day, I have been reading Michael Holroyd's 1997 single volume condensation of his previously-published four volume biography of Bernard Shaw.  

It took me a long time. Even greatly shortened, this was one of the biggest biographies I have read all-through. Another reason for my slowness is that Shaw's life, or at least his adult life, was so complex, fascinating, and varied. 

Also, I (like most people) find Shaw's character extremely odd, inconsistent - in fact incoherent.

He was sometimes the kindest most considerate and helpful of people - genuinely saint-like in behaviour (including keeping secret the vast scale of his gifts and assistance). He could be almost paralysed with horror by the contemplation of cruelty and suffering, in reality or imagination.  

At other times, especially when wearing his persona of GBS; Shaw was himself, and advocated, a calculated hard-hearted indifference to well-being and life that was a glorification of cruelty and unkindness. 

This can be explained by thinking of Shaw as an extreme version of the Leftist (or Liberal) ethic that regards suffering as the worst thing in life and therefore the elimination of suffering as the primary value; to the point that mass deployment of suicide and humane killing become imperative, and a moral necessity. 

In this sense, as in others; Shaw was in the vanguard; because this perspective is nowadays mainstream and officially endorsed - although very few are honest enough to state it explicitly. 

I have been reading Shaw since my early teens. Back then, I thought that, although he persistently pushed some silly and false notions; Shaw was right about most of the most important things; and I modelled some of my own main ideas and aspirations on his work - at least in some moods, and to some extent.  

Nowadays, by contrast, Shaw seems to be fundamentally wrong about most important things, as well as having multiple very annoying or self-indulgent attributes! 

Yet I continue to regard him as a great genius, and return to his works to relish their distinctive quality of expression - whose good and bad qualities were both very obvious; and therefore probably two sides of the same coin. 

My main criticism of Shaw - as of so many people - is that he never reflected on his fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Therefore, he never really understood that the inadequacies and contradictions of his attitudes, opinions, and actions; originated and were sustained by the incoherence of his deepest assumptions - many of which I believe Shaw would have rejected, had he ever become aware of them.