Word: undershaft
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...cynicism. In Victorian England, the young Shaw found enough to last him a lifetime. As a middle-class individualist of the highest power, who believed that poverty was a crime, who married a rich and intelligent wife and made a fortune which could be compared with that of any Undershaft, Shaw was an ambiguous socialist: his intellect was totally engaged; his whole life (as Trotsky suspected) was not. The device of the Superman, the super-intellect, the Life Force, was his escape from the determinism of Marx and it coincided with his native, 18th Century taste for despots...
...economic view was as rewarding an approach to the anatomy of character itself as the now fashionable psychological approach. His young men have the assertiveness of youth itself, their vanity is perfect. His masterful or stupid middle-aged women are a special excellence, and so are his pompous fathers. Undershaft is convincing as a human being. A very vain man, Shaw was a connoisseur of vanities and his collection is not wounding or disheartening-as it is, say, in smaller writers like Maugham-largely because Shaw is warmed by the fire of a natural affinity. Only a clumsiness of plot...
...advise you to study Greek, Mr. Undershaft. Greek scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable. Other languages are the qualifications of waiters and commercial travellers: Greek is to a man of position what the hallmark is to silver...