Customer Reviews

Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I looked up this book initially to sell the copy I have, then upon seeing how many for sale there were coupled with the sales rank, I wondered what would the book be like? H.G. Wells is known to be a great storyteller, although I am not personally fond of his works. And an autobiography? I am not fond of these either; but I felt drawn to open the book.

Once there, I was sucked in, compelled to read the next paragraph, and then the next page, flowing into the next chapter. When I cought a breath of air I was through the introduction, and two more chapters in. Wells draws the reader in with his smooth use of the language, and through the ability to relate to everyone around him. Page 7 "We all compromise. We all fall short. The life story to be told of any creative worker is therefore by its very nature, by its diversions of purpose and its qualified success, by its grotesque transitions from sublimation to base necessity and its pervasive stress towards flight, a comedy."

While telling his life story, he questions and laughs at his mistakes. He includes sketches, photos, letters, & illustrations throughout to show you himself. His use of the language though is so smooth that you forget to notice when you turn the page. Beautiful in its simplicity, talking to you as if it was yesterday, H. G. Wells has managed to turn his life into an entertaining story, rather than a serious withdrawn recolection of life.

A really painfully slow book, overloaded with detail. It takes about 500 pages before H.G. Wells reaches the 20th century. Quite offensive in parts. He states at one point, "I saw the approaching decivilization of Ireland". Elsewhere he drones on about his idea of a one-world government. The pro-Soviet propaganda is a bit much to take. Of Joseph Stalin, he enthuses, "I have never met a man more candid, fair and honest. No-one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him." The reader is also informed that "the new Soviet Russia was the best moral and political investment that had ever been offered to Britain". In Stalin's Russia "there remained a growing effect of a successful enterprise." Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley are also venerated as being "very great men" and "mighty intellectual liberators". If Wells's vision of centralized world government occurs it seems it may well resemble Stalin's Russia, as Wells ponders at one point that Stalin "must be seeing many things much as I am seeing them".

Instead of wading through this book I would recommend chapters 6 and 7 of The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939, titled H.G. Wells Getting Rid of People and H.G. Wells Against H.G. Wells.