ODD MAN OUT By Douglas Goldring Mr. Goldring's autobiography (Chapman
and Hall, 15$.) familiarizes us with a person of unusual and remarkable character rather than with a particularly gifted writer. 'Reading it indeed is only occasionally a pleasure, because Mr. Goldring, though with the material from which an extremely engrossing book could have been made, appears to have the minimum of talent for autobiographical writing. He is a person of strong, not to say violent, views, to most of which he gives another airing ; a man "incapable of neutrality," he . has been in the advance guard of several political movements, and buoyed up by several aesthetic waves, and has never hesitated to. sacrifice the just repute which sometimes comes to those who are proved to have been in the right when he found that the causes for which he stood were profaned by an empty popularity ; he has had an exceptionally varied career, as editor, publisher, lecturer, novelist, and propagandist ; he has been the friend and associate of a number of interesting
and eminent people. It is curious that, despite these advan- tages, he should have produced so desperately dull a hook. lie is sincere, he is vigorous, he is inconsistent, and however much we may apinOve of his views the lack of charm and the lack of sabtlety in his writing inevitably make us bored with his sineerity ' and his vigour and disproportionately annoyed at the inconsistencies. His pages are littered with portraits of the eminent and the obscure : some are conspicuously good and some are notably feeble ; the majority are just mediocre. Sometimes we get a list of celebrities who. are reported to have been present at some gathering, strung together, in a manner which makes us Wonder whether' we are reading an onto- biography or the gossip columns of a daily paper. Going some way towards balancing these defects, there are, let us gratefully admit, a number of entirely delightful anecdotes. It is a pity that more of them were not permitted to encroach on the space of the politics and the uplift.
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