“Shaw knows at any moment, on any subject, what he thinks, what you will think, what others have thought, what all this thinking entails; and he takes the most elaborate pains to bring these thoughts to light in a form which is by turns abstract and familiar, conciliatory and aggressive, obvious and inferential, comic and puzzling. In a word, Shaw is perhaps the most consciously conscious mind that has ever thought–certainly the most conscious since Rousseau; which may be why both of them often create the same impression of insincerity amounting to charlatanism.”
Jacques Barzun, “Bernard Shaw in Twilight”
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
An ArtsJournal Blog