3 Review(s)

"When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth", Bernard Shaw wrote. Through a long and brilliant career as a playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist, among other roles, his ability to reveal life's truth through humour estabished him as one of the most quoted writers in the English language. "Not Bloody Likely" is a wonderful collection of the best of the playwright's witicisms and other turns-of-phrase, in which Bernard Shaw often unmasks the truth with humour and style. "All genuinely intellectual work is humorous", he wrote in 1892; "The real joke is that I am in earnest", he told an interviewer in 1896. "The truth is sometimes the funniest joke in the world", he noted in 1946, "until it is thoroughly found out". Here are Shaw's remarks on colonialism ("A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else"), morals ("The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them"), government ("A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul"), and vegetariansim ("A mind the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows"). Bernard F.Dukore's introduction surveys Bernard Shaw's passion for politics, the arts, and life in general. No one can turn the pages of this book without appreciating Shaw's love of language and the truth, his unique flair for self-expression.