In the opinion of Jorge Luis Borges, contrasting
with Shaw, we have Coleridge,"a Shakespeare
theologian", together with Victor Hugo who thought that Shakespeare "may be subject to absences in infinity"
with no impairment of his genius. Borges tells that,after he completed his biography of Shaw, Frank Harris asked him for details about his
private life and Shaw answered him
that he had no private life because he, "like Shakespeare,
was all things and every man" before adding: " I have been all things
and all men but at the same time I´m nobody. I´m nothing."
Exchanges like these motivated Frank Muir's "An irreverent companion to
Social History", a collection of annotated assesments that may help
us agree with Tom Rymour's comments on "The Crowning
Privilege": "Being otherwise just for the sake of it can sometimes be
great fun.".
We can be almost sure that no "Auto de Fé" awaits these authors. I also
fear that books, like "Ada, or Ardor" or Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" would
prove rather difficult to memorize ( if we had to rely on a solution
like the one proposed by Ray Bradbury...)
Jansy Mello