Fiction
FOUR workmanlike works, all of them intelligent and readable, the first three giving the impression of drawing upon pretty well the whole of the writer's resources, the Other suggesting something in hand at the end. None to be described as required reading. Let me try, in judicious vein, to give marks for five separate properties or aspects—the higher criticism, I fear, always-runs to pedantry77-of the novel (a) weight of substance; (b), unity of.plot (c) -truth to experience ; (d) personal style ; (e) harmony, vision; art, what you will. Maxinium in each case: 10. The examiner's standards, of course, are boUrid to seem a little capricious.
The Sky is • a- Lonely Place, a seini4ocumentary novel about Anierican air-squadrons in Italy during the last, year or so Of the war and-the fortunes of a particular Liberator crew. (a): 8. The best thing about this novel is its documentary concentration. Mr. Falstein makes full and conscientious use of good material, all of it of intrinsic significance. Withigi the framework, as it were, of each airman's prospect of completing fifty bombing missions hefinds room for most of the verities—the A-metican verities; perhaps one shOuld say—of war experience: comradeship, fear, a frenzy of boredom, nervous strain, death; drunkenness, erotic dreams, obscenity, the dis- covery of peasant Italy. It is the cumulative force of descriptive detail that tells. (b): 3. There is all too little to give shape and pattern to the narrative. The narrator, who is a tail-gunner and Jewish, completes his fiftieth mission, one of only two survivors. of the'original crew of ten, and with his exclamation of joy as the Aid recede, the picture fades out." (c): 8 or even 9. The book is very honest and, I think, very truthful in its unheroic tone and tempers The characters, mostly drawn from life, one suspects, are real enough. Except, perhaps, in the narrator's more self-consciciuS -moments, their talk in the air and on the ground appears to have been caught carefully and accurately. (d): 6. The style is as American as that of a good American war film, at times a little embarrassing in its want of restraint and yet somehow appropriate to the American occasion. Not very individual, but sharpened by sincere feeling. (e):' 5. A serious, candid, forceful book, wanting only in the highest qualities of prose fiction.
No Music for Generals, another war novel of a sort, the work of an Australian writer, is just as evidently based in some degree upcia personal experience, but is curiously compounded of what at first appear to be incongruous elements. The Far Eastern scene is almost studiously vague, though the Tobrapore jungle may not be very distant from New Guinea, and no doubt there were several generals in the war like the American General Bannery, a quiet spell; binder, who employed drama as a military resource. As for marks: (a): 4. This, in spite of the war, is essentially a story of love and intrigue, of politics and journalism, all of it just a little too highly. COloured and with no great weight or depth of experience anywhere. (b): 8. Mr. Howard has gone to work like a professional novelist and has fabricated an orderly structure for his novel, thus lending it a coherent and developing interest. Technically, No Music for Generals is very- sound. (c): 5, possibly 6. The author's profes- siOnalism is, after all, a mixed blessing ; he carries least conviction.„ all things considered, when he is being most elaborate. Take the characterisation, which is distinctly uneven. Neither the fascinating female correspondent nor the furtive and insinuating failure Stallo- way, over whom Mr. Howard seems to have taken most trouble, ever comes to life. On the other hand, the British colonial governor and his-wife, both seemingly taken in the author's stride, are hit off with - lively sympathy and really brilliant humour. They were, for me, the making of the book. (d): 5. Mr. Howard's flashes of dry wit are fetching, but otherwise his manner of writing lacks distinction.
The Clown introduces Tommy at- the age of seven at his first pantomime, and proceedi to show 'haw, after he had got over want- ing to be a serious actor, he became another Dan Leno. Pleasant, interesting, thoughtful, but a little too amateurish. (a): 4, though the weight increases slightly almost in successive chapters. (b): 7. Mr. Oliver's storytelling ends are modest and are served by modest means. (c): 6. Almost everything that happens in the story is credible, but not for the briefest and fleetingest moment does Mr. Oliver make us believe in Tommy's greatness as a clown., (d): 4. Mr. Oliver's virtues of style are as yet negative virtues—an absence of extravagance, pretentiousness, excess of colour or illumination.
Living on Yesterday, a 'second novel about the remnants of. Imperial glory and newer modes of wealth and fashion in Prague between the wars, is by Miss Edith Templeton, whose Summer in the Country I greatly enjoyed. It is not so good as the earlier book,, the wit -now possessing liveliness rather than depth and sometimes descending to triviality, though in compensation there are delicious little passages of nonsense. For the record : (a): 6. Miss Tem0e- ton's lightness, in this story of an ambitious and domineering mamma, a marriageable daughter and, a hugely and impeccably aristocratic Hungarian Count, who .was, in fact, a stable-boy, still covers a substantial knowledge of life. (b): 7. , I should have awarded 9 but for the evasiveness and psychological confusion of the ending. Was it merely cash that the Count sought ? Had he indeed no use for love? Was Hedwig, after all, the weak vessel ? Did she cut off her nose to spite mamma ? There is, I fear, no knowing. (c): 7—no, 8. The conclusion won't do, but the rest has, most of the time, a sparkling verisimilitude. (d) :- 7 or 8 again ; the indi- vidual imprint is less 'marked than before. (e): Still 7 or 8. The book is entertaining and gay, but was written, `I suspect, in altogether
Previous page
