NEW NOVELS
Dark laughs
MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH
War Memorial Martin Russ (Michael Joseph 25s) The Looming Shadow Legson Kayira (Long- mans 21s) The Klansman William Bradford Huie W. H. Allen 30s) L'Amante Anglaise Marguerite Duras (Hamish Hamilton 25s) Martin Russ's War Memorial, one of whose chief virtues is that it is beautifully done, could not have been written but for Catch 22. That said, it is vital to point out that it is a quite different sort of book, one with its own angles on human behaviour in and out of war, and its own brand of humour—a humour so black that it not only comes across as the whitest froth, but iu one way is.
The hero is Joe Shasta, a man as naïve— stupid is not quite the word—as any modern war novel has known. A Mexican Indian aged twenty-five, Shasta sets out to find his former commanding officer, Lieutenant Met- raw; the war has been over for some years, although Shasta, now a civilian, understands that there is another one taking place in Korea. First he encounters Metraw's sister, who fancies him so much that she makes a physical assault on him. But he only likes cheap blondes.
Himself utterly loyal to what he under- stands is the esprit of the Marine Corps, Shasta expects Metraw (and everyone else) to share his feelings. But Metraw, who sells sewing-machines and vacuum-cleaners, wants only to forget war and make money. He can- not understand Shasta but nevertheless employs him. Shasta tries to serve him in the same devoted spirit as he served him (with total, one might say counter-military, inefficiency) at the Battle of. Tarawa. Interspersed with the record of his involvement in the campaign to place a Suck-master cleaner in every home in Oregon are Shasta's pricelessly naive recollections of the bloody beaches of Tarawa.
Martin Russ has done more than merely cash in on the current fashion for treating the horrors of war and the phenomenon of heroism (or what used to be called heroism) as farce. This has frequently amounted to a meaningless and callous exercise. But Mr Russ has much art at his command and, instead of conveying the notion that he would like to be funny, he really is funny. The result is an account of war that is quite as authentic, in its refreshingly unfamiliar way, as more traditional accounts. Thus, we do not simply admire the author's apparently ruthless atti- tude and his skill in maintaining it: we are shocked because this really is an aspect of war, one that is more valid today than what we have (callously?) become used to.
Mr Russ's real achievement is to demon- strate, seemingly without ever straining to do so, that Shasta's apparent (and in some senses real) idiocy is decent and human as well as idiotic. Although he does not know it, Shasta does not like killing people: he has a kind of conscience. And if his loyalty to the Marines is crazy, then what is loyalty to the Marines anyway? This is a clever book, but not too clever. Its technique is impeccable; and it explores, with originality and success, the tragedy of modern war.
Legson Kayira, who was born in a country village in Malawi, is already well known for his autobiographical I Will Try. The Looming Shadow, set in just such a village as the one of his birth, in the late 'thirties, is not the best novel to come from Africa in the 'sixties; but it is one of the most relaxed, lucidly written, informative and delightful. Basically it is the story of a feud between two brothers-in-law, one of whom accuses the other of bewitching him. This is serious as well as comic, for while one side of village life is governed by the future, the other is governed by the superstitious past—and under the old laws witches are persecuted and killed.
Comedy such as this could only be achieved by an African. Mr Kayira is firmly on the side of the future, and does not attempt to conceal this. And although his book may suffer be- cause he tends—understandably enough—to emphasise the comic aspect of the past at the expense of certain of its poetic virtues, he keeps the two forces nicely and truthfully in balance. He is ironic enough to be able to write: 'But all this persecution of witches had changed, even for these traditionally minded people, and witches had found refuge in the law of the land.'
But if the villagers of Central Africa were in some senses backward in the 'thirties, then a new word is needed to describe some of the people of so-called civilised Alabama in the late 'sixties. William Bradford Huie's The Klansman is a graphic account of the role played by the Ku Klux Klan and its supporters in present- day Alabama. The horrible story it tells, of the cruelty bred by fear of negroes, may well be true: it resembles news stories closely enough. The material is as hideous as that dealt with by Mr Russ; but the book is too crude to be judged as serious fiction. The writing is that of an excellent and literate re- porter, not that of a novelist. Mr Huie's portrait of the puzzled, brutish sheriff, Big Track Bascombe, is not without a certain depth and understanding; but the depth is that of a liberal journalist rather than an imagina- tive writer. It is only necessary to recollect Faulkner to recognise this. Nevertheless, as documentary writing this has considerable impact.
Barbara Bray's translation of Marguerite Duras's L'Amante Anglaise probably does as much as anything could for a novel that is —hadn't someone better face it sooner or later?—a crushing bore. A woman has been murdered, and this explores in question-and- answer form the motives of the killer. The situation Mme Duras examines is not un- interesting, nor is her psychology anything but subtle and honest; but her portentous- ness and lack of humour here combine to stifle all the vitality of the original conception. Simenon would have done almost exactly the same thing a thousand times better. As it is, this is just 'an important French novel,' and after the right things have been said at the right times it will pass from notice.
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