Spark Plug

BRYNHILD OR THE SHOW OF THINGS-- H., G. Wells--Scribner ($2.50).

H. G. Wells is a spark plug. That he has had only a loose connection with the rest of the machine that makes the world's wheels go round is perhaps a pity, perhaps a good thing. If he had fitted perfectly into his social socket the sparks he has emitted for 40 years might well have been neither so noticeable nor so illuminating. On the other hand, Britain's cylinder might have sputtered a little less had Author Wells been firmly pressed into the national service. Pity or not, at 70* H. G. Wells remains what he has always been--a cheerful chider of human shortcomings, with one exuberant eye cocked on his fellow Englishmen. Last week he made headlines with his latest proposals to reform education (see p. 44). And last week he published his 76th book.

Optimistic, like nearly all of H. G. Wells's books, Brynhild or The Show of Things also encouraged Wellsians by its age-belying vigor. The story of a clever man's disintegration and an honest woman's fulfillment, it is also a Wellsian fable, told without his usual blackboard charts and magic-lantern slides, of the human search for reality.

Rowland Palace was an author who had polish and irony--and a young wife with an eye that pierced pretense. An unflattering news picture of himself set Palace pondering nervously on what people really thought about him. His considered conclusion: that every public figure should create or control the effigy of himself he showed to the world. Because he felt that Brynhild, his wife, might take a less than sympathetic view, he planned his ensuing publicity campaign in secret, with such conscience-bolstering sentiments as: "No human beings have ever really seen themselves. . . . They pose and act. They tell stories about themselves to other people. Life is a battle of make-believe, a universal bluff." Quietly, cleverly Palace set about getting a publicity man. Before long he realized that he had whistled up the devil, but by that time everything was too late. By that time Brynhild in her quiet way had fallen in love with another man, had a child by him, resigned herself to living the rest of her life with her slightly despicable, quite likable and altogether transparent husband.

Wellsians have frequently exclaimed that the world lost a satirist when Author Wells turned popular pamphleteer. In Brynhild he gives them further matter for exclamation, in such thumbnail flicks as these: "His normal expression was one of patient self-confidence, varied by lapses into great mobility when he was exercised by a business suggestion or anxious to be effective. Then he gesticulated, brought his face nearer to his interlocutor and spat slightly as he became emphatic. Finally he would wipe himself up so to speak and become suddenly immobile again, with his face interrogative and a little askew." . . . "No one could be so learned and wise and clever as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler is certified to be by practically all the universities in the world. It's too much." And he can still clap down the nutshell on the elusive generality--this one is Life: "Dusty grayish events with a lot of rather forced laughter and streaks of downright painful and disagreeable experiences. Uncalled for inflictions. And a perpetual menace."

*He will be 71 next week.

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