Bill Platypus's
Paperbacks
After a week's absence, Platypus is back with a vengeance and With a backlist larger than even a bookseller could imagine. If someone would be so kind as to pop on a postcard one hundred words, explaining the economics of paperback publishing, I would be most grateful. At the moment I'm simply an unenlightened consumer, although not I hope an undiscriminating one. Let me begin this week with some Paperbacks from Jonathan Cape, Who seem to have it both ways. They have begun two series, one entitled 'Writings of the Left '
and one entitled 'Roots of the Right' The editors of each are, respectively, Ralph Miliband and George Steiner. Enough said. have here from the first series the Selected Writings of Michael Bakunin (£2.25), some kind of Russian revolutionary. And, from the other and more respectable Side, Italian Fascisms (£2.25). 1 notice that in the blurbs on the back, ' Right-wing ' ideology is Synonymous with " readings in Fascist, Racist and Elitist Ideology,which is both bad scholarship and immature thought, while ' Left-wing ' Ideology is praised and romanticised in the work of dreadful butchers like Rosa Luxembourg and James Connolly. One-sided, to say the least. But I imagine good for sales. Jonathan Cape is a fashionable firm.
.While Platypus is in a disgruntled mood, let me mention two new volumes in Fontana's Modern Master' series. This was the series, you remember, which resembled wallpaper in its appearance and in its content. The newest modern masters are true to type, being both fashionable and terribly boring. They are Beckett (50p) by Al Alvarez and La, big (45p) by Edgar Z Friedenue,rg• Alvarez is not my favourite critic, and this particular volume ran true to form. It is abysmally dull and terribly familiar; the master in question being the most over-rated bore since Aphra Behn. The other is even less of a turnon, Laing being my candidate for the definitive Pseuds Corner. He has rather a good business and Publicity sense, though, so he can't be all bad. Mr Friedenberg ignores this most important side of his work, and latches upon its apparent content. Forgive me while I forget to relate ' to it. The Fontana series has no doubt been already consigned to the oblivion from which it sprang, but there must be some idiot student somewhere who reads the books and believes. Perhaps that is the audience for which they are intended. And for economics student, puzzle over the extra 5p for an extra ,seventeen pages. That's capitalism for you.
Another money-spinner for Fontana may be James Sculley's Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (45p). My own book of poetry was published last week, but I wasn't asked to contribute. The poets in question are all either dead or revered and, as is generally the case, their credos make bad read • ing. Scully is to be congratulated, however, for resurrecting Charles Olson's essay on ' Projective Verse.' This was an essay that enjoyed a cult success when I was at Cambridge, and was part of the context of such poets as Jeremy Prynne and Robert Creeley. He certainly wears well, in comparison with the more notable ' names ' in this anthology.
Everyman has been at it again, reprinting some of the most notable and most interesting writings of our culture. They don't seem to be content to rely upon the conventional list of ' greats,' and they have come up with some surprising but delightful volumes. I have three here: Robert Owen's A New View of Society (45p) is one, and amazingly cheap for the three hundred pages. I know nothing whatsoever about Owen, and so I'll turn to another of the books, Sir Walter Scott's Waveriey (70p) again cheap and again unknown to me. Blackwoods, thou should'st be living at this hour. And, finally, Mrs Gaskell's Wives And Daughters (75p). Don't be put off by the lit.
crit. from socialist academics which surrounds this book. It is simple and it is pleasant. Mrs Gaskell, like Mrs Humphry Ward, has been fobbed off with the stereotype of the lady writer, and this is a mistake. I think her better than Iris Murdoch.
I don't know whether you suffer, like me, from perfectly ordinary dreams but Dr Ann Faraday's Dream Power (50p) will explain it all in great detail and at great length. I am not one to dispute an expert, but I have always been inclined to leave dreams where God, or Life or Nature, put them — firmly in the distance and normally out of reach. If they are to be explored at all, I suggest it be left to poets like Chaucer who could at least make them entertaining. This is also the case with Edward de Bono's latest offering to an unsuspecting world: Po: Beyond Yes and No (Pelican 40p). Intriguing, ain't it? ' Po ' seems to be some kind of concept like yin and yan, but I am afraid it was beyond me. It entailed an alternative to the binary model of affirmation/negation, an idea which is not exactly new to me. But, like all popular 'thinkers,' I assume that Mr de Bono has retailed ancient concepts in a new and sufficiently stimulating guise. Po to you.
But for those of you who prefer a more methodical and well researched examination of our thought procedures. I suggest you
try S. Pit Corder's Introducing Applied Linguistics (Penguin
90p). This is a general introduction to that varied and complicated subject, and one that explains quite lucidly the various schools of linguistic thought. 1 was once quite involved in these studies, and I can testify to their importance — largely unacknowledged, as it happens, and largely unknown to those who like ' message' and ' content '. One of the innovators in linguistic theory has, of course, been Noam Chomsky. He is rather better known for his occasionally naive interventions in high politics. One thing the twentieth century has taught us is that academics should know their place. But Chomsky is very good when his rage has as its context the misuse of language or the misuse of concepts of language. His most recent publication in England,
The Backroom Boys (Fontana
60p) has that base, and it analyses the language and linguistic policies of American civil servants. Fascinating, and well documented.
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