FICTION
By FORREST REID
" ECKSIZE. Grey frecksize. Chiboo tson frecksize." (" Exercise. Get ready for exercise. Put your boots on for exercise.") They are the first, as they are the last, words of Mr. Phelan's Lifer, the most impressive novel I have read for a considerable time. In saying this I am not thinking primarily of its literary quality. It is extremely well done, with a complete and quiet sincerity, but very soon one takes that for granted and becomes absorbed in the human drama presented. " There is no autobiographical material in this novel," the author tells us in a foreword ; " no person in the book represents a real character." And this, in the literal sense he means, may easily be true, though in another sense every person in the book is a real character, the whole material is taken directly from life, the fusing and shaping not being a matter of imaginative invention, but the fusing and shaping of deep personal im- pressions.
The hero, Arthur Mansell, has been sentenced to death and reprieved ; the story begins when he awakens on his first morning in Rockville Prison. " Ecksize. Grey frecksize. Chiboo tson frecksize."
The method is impressionistic. All we ever learn of Mansell's past is deduced from the present, and remains uncertain. I myself gather that he came of decent people, that there were troubles in his boyhood, that he ran away to sea, that unem- ployment and a susceptibility to immediate influence led to an attempted burglary in which somebody was shot. But Mansell's mind has already become confused when these images flicker across it, and I may be mistaken. His life in prison opens promisingly, and for a time we hope he will pull through. We very much want him to pull through, for there seems to be nothing vicious or evil in him, and instinctively he makes the right friends. These are old lags, and far from innocent, yet something in Mansell's youth appeals to them (he is only twenty), and they try in their rough unsentimental way to keep him clean and give him confidence. One of them, indeed, the little Socialist, Cobb, who is doing a twelve years stretch, gives him a chance to escape. The original plan included the escape of Cobb also, but when the hour arrives only one can take advantage of it, and with extraordinary generosity he leaves the field clear for the younger man. There is a strain of weakness in Mansell, however, an indecision, springing doubtless from his more imaginative nature, and he hangs back. It is no time for hesitation. " Run " Cobb urges him frantically. " Oh, Jesus, you yellow bastard. So long." And that is the last Mansell ever sees of him.
It marks a stage in the mental and spiritual deterioration the book is now to trace. Mansell is moved from Rockville to the less isolated Fenfield, where conditions are said to be easier. He takes with him the notebooks in which he writes his poems and his music, and for a while he does find things easier, getting work as a gardener. But after his hysterical attack on a warder everything becomes much worse, and for four years he is placed among the " balmies." Then a new government introduces several changes, and Mansell is brought back to ordinary prison life. The changes henceforth are within himself. He becomes increasingly silent, his talk, when he does talk, is like that of the other convicts, his hold on reality is weakened. As the years pass he becomes " pore old Mansell," for at a little over thirty he looks fifty. And at last the once longed-for day of release is reached. Out in the world, he is provided with twenty-five shillings a week for two weeks- " a good spell " in which to look around for a job. It is indeed perhaps as good as two years would have been, since he has no references, and naturally, for this half-dazed creature, there are no jobs. His second crime, a theft from a coffee stall, sends him back to prison, this time definitely for life, and the familiar chant to which he wakens up actually brings him a kind of drugged, blank peace : " Ecksize. Grey frecksize. Chiboo tson frecksize."
It is a disturbing book—the reader had better be prepared for that. The sexual life in prison, the foul language, the violence and brutality—these are given with an uncom-
promising realism. On the other hand there is no pandering to morbid curiosity ; the treatment is grave, detached, impartial. And from beginning to end the novel is alive, tragic without bitterness, leaving one faced with what seems an insoluble problem. It differs from the ordinary run of fiction in that one feels it to be inevitable, that the author's mind was so saturated with his subject that he had to write it. It has the genuineness of a cry, of something that rises unbidden out of the depths.
Pity the Tyrant is an American first novel, and I think a good one. The nameless hero is a New York engineer who has been sent out by his employers to Lima in Peru to do a job there. The Tyrant, who gives the book its title, never enters the story except as topic for sympathetic conversation. Since his fall he has been kept locked up, and there have been eight presidents in seven months. All this is to create the background of political intrigue and instability which colours everything. It is an atmosphere at once futile and exciting, suggesting, if such a thing can be imagined, a rather dangerous comic opera. At the boarding-house of Sefiora Brett the engineer takes up his residence ; and there, too, live Puffguts, a bottle manufacturer, a Californian lady interested in archaeology, a crazy woman from Havana, and others. Lima itself, or rather its climate, is not in the least what one might have expected. It is a climate that makes everything grey or black, under leaden clouds that drizzle but never really rain. There is no sunlight ; the surrounding country is dull green, with mud walls, ruins of houses, ruins of villages or tombs. And the city is a half-dead city, with isolated glimpses of modern civilisation, street cars on trolleys, that run noisily by damp sidewalks, through a sea of decay. . Life is unreal and fantastic. The engineer has a passing love-affair with Francesca, and makes friends with Abarim, an Indian. But he is bored and indifferent, finding his only escape in writing letters to the girl at home to whom he is engaged. It is because there is nothing else to do that he becomes involved in trivial entanglements, gets, through Francesca, mixed up in a strike of " telefonistas," quarrels with Puffguts, and actually challenges him to a duel. The police get wind of that : a duel between two foreigners is not permissible, may lead to all kinds of complications. So the whole adventure fizzles out, and when his job is finished he starts for home. There is no more story than I have indicated, but because the exotic city and people are evoked with a half-ironical sympathy, it is amusing and interesting. One is drawn into that life as the engineer was. We watch it all through his eyes, and know that before he reaches New York it will be hardly more real to him than a dream. Sefiora Brett and Francesca see him off. Sefiora Brett cries a little, but Francesca doesn't, because she is only part Peruvian. The whole picture strikes one as authentic. Here and there the foreign reader may be checked by an unfamiliar American- ism, but the story is told with both humour and charm.
The Big Firm is a conscientious novel, not explicitly didactic, yet presenting a critical survey of the contemporary scene. The characters are carefully drawn to type, and there is a very modern love story set against a background of big business and world politics. This is cleverly managed, though after our two previous books the atmosphere may seem a little thin, and the whole tale to strike a somewhat familiar and literary note. It may be partly because the people in it are so much more sophisticated than Mr. Phelan's and Mr. Storm's. Owen, the young hero, falls in love with the complex and promiscuous Caro, and when Caro fails him falls in love with Nicola. Such things happen, but for me the rapidity with which his affections are transferred made it difficult to sym- pathise with either passion. Nor did I get the impression that the book really had its roots in life. It is, rather, an intelligent commentary on life, made by one interested in all its more topical problems, social and political. As such. therefore, I commend it, for it is well written, thoughtful and suggestive. Also the story—though I never forgot it was a story—has plenty of colour, movement and variety ; the threads in it are deftly interwoven, and the minor characters clearly outlined.
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