Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOMER

Mr. Norris Changes Trains. By Christopher Isherwood. (Hogarth Press. is. 6d.) " Inoxy," said somebody, perhaps Professor Saintsbury, " is

the salt of the novel," and it is for its saltiness in the first place that Mr. Isherwood's new book may be recommended :

it is a feat of sustained irony of a quality which would do no 'discredit to the author of South Wind. The story is told in the first person by William Bradshaw, a young but experienced and highly intelligent Englishman who lives in

Berlin, though it is not clear why- he lives there: Returning to Germany he meets in the train a middle-aged Englishman, Arthur Norris, who arouses -his Curiosity. Norris is not exactly " God's Englishman." Left over from the 'nineties,

he has been " living-on-his,-wits" for thirty .years,:and in his case this means that he has been living on the shadiest of commercial and political transactioris,'gOing front' one country to another on " little Missions " Withcomplete unscrupulous- nesS and varying succesi., In mOdern fiction therdis- -aperfect army of international crooks, strong, silent, ruthless, self-; posSessed, and quite un-human. _Here at. last lis-,the real thing, weak, garrulous, the very pattern of moral shabbiness,' tiN:illing parasite on Miyo- tie who haS power, a person whose whOle attitude to life is summed up in the words "It's quite extraordinary what a lot of good money is lying aboUt, waiting to be picked up. Yes,' positively picked up. Even nowadays. Only one must -have- the eyes to see it. -And capital. A certain amount of capital is absolutely essential."

The balance of the story, depends _ entirely on the relation. betiveen the narrator and. Norris himself, and it is a little

difficult to understand why :Bradshaw should have cultivated

the. acquaintance- s---o proMptly and thoroughly. You make. up romances about people," was the comment of a female acquaintance, " instead of seeing them as they are." And Bradshaw thought she Might. be right. He would write home to England describing Norris as " a most amazing old crook," but only meant by this that I wanted to imagine him as a glorified being ; audacious and self-reliant, reckless and calm. All of which, in reality, he only too painfully and obviously wasn't." He ' also told himself that he was a subtle connoisseur of human nature." But the real point is that he formed a kind of affection for Norris, and an entirely credible one, for by the time the book is done the reader

hiniself has actually begun to share it.

The book, which is continuously amusing and intelligent from the first page to the last, may be described as a full- length poitrait with numerous implications—social,

and psychological. It has value as a view of Berlin during the years preceding Hitler's triumph, and accordingly as a study of social disintegration and upheaval, and it has a deeper meaning than that, for it may be taken as a comment on the state of civilization in general during -theSe last few years, and it may be that in the figure of Ludwig Bayer, a communist leader, we are tentatively invited to anticipate the possibility of a cleaner and better-behaved world. Bayer, in surroundings suggestive of simplicity, efficiency and good humour, had " extraordinarily vivid animal -eyes of a dark reddish brown. His glance was direct, challenging . . . His mere repose suggested a force of concentration which was hYpimtic in its intensity. Arthur, I- could see: felt this also ; he squirmed uneasily on his seat and carefully avoided looking Bayer at the ,eyes."

The other subsidiary characters arc brilliantly sketched, especially Helen Pratt, an' English journalist ; Schmidt, Nairis'S " secretary and right hand " ; Bradshaw's landlady, Fri. Schroeder ; Otto, a cheerful tough ; and Kuno, the Baron.

Idle Warriors also takes us to Germany, but to Germany in wartime, and the idle warriors are English, French and Russian prisoners locked up in a fort. Described as a novel, it has all the appearance of a straightforward book of reminiscence. The GreatWar has produced a whole literature of captivity, and it is worth enquiring how much Mr. Ratcliffe's

book adds to our knowledge. Not very much, perhaps. The horrors and humours of captivity are pretty familiar by.

now. We know how lightly men went to war, and may go again :

" I had not thought of the Germans as men. They were the; enemy and in war one killed the enemy. It was a matter of course that men should be killed on both sides. It would not happen to me, of course . . . nor to anyone closely connected with me. In the first days of the war a friend in the cavalry had. written to me : This -game is marvellously exciting . . ..it is, rather like fox-hunting, only ten times as dangerous . . .'

We know how lying propaganda provoked reprisals, or

threats of reprisals. We know how plainly men locked upi together reveal the best and worst in their natures, and

how their peculiarities get on one another's nerves. Mr.. Ratcliffe quotes George Moore to the effect that " Nature, ifi you pinch it in one pla6e, bulges out in another after the' manner of a lady's figure," and we know of the surprising:.

developments of latent tendencies in supposedly staid natures,! and of the passions aroused. among the segregated, " some-1 times as clear as crystal water and as pure, sometimes ardent; and jealous and sensual." The life and psychology of

prisoners is seldom what is called a " pleasant " subject, but Mr. Ratcliffe manages to treat it pleasantly, even humorously,' and with dignity and shrewdness besides, so a place may well be found for his book on the same shelf as, for instance, The Enormous Room and Black Monastery. He ends with an exciting account of a successful escape.

Mr. R. C. Hutchinson's last book, The Unfor gotten- Prisoner,; was well received, but his new one is unsatisfying. If the book has any main point, it is probably that a don who ran away- from women until he was past forty suddenly began to run' after one, whom he had taken to idealizing with a kind of fashioned sentimentality that might perhaps be called " chivalrous." The pursuit is wrapped up in another one, a: search for a lost German missionary, that extends as far as Siberia. There can be no question of the seriousness of Mr.: Hutchinson's intentions, but they are carried out with such a: mixture of the abrupt and the diffuse that it is as difficult to' keep one's bearings as it is to feel that he has found on this. occasion a suitable vehicle for his descriptive and other gifts.

The Wolves was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1932. More than twice as long and certainly twice as interesting as most novels, it is c, meerned with the declining fortunes of a Havre ship-owning family, the Jobourgs, at the end of last century. It is an ambitious book, and in its subject matter reminds one at moments of Buddenbrooks, of The Brothers Karantazov, and of Old People and the Things that Pass, though in treat- ment it does not bear comparison with any of those master- pieces. But if it fails in some respects to be noble, profound and terrible on the grandest scale, it is written with great Sureness and understanding. Like some other writers about French provincial life, M. Mazeline takes a sombre and on the whole a not very elevated view of human nature. He tells of a complex .family life, .ridden. with jealousies, incorm- patabilities, suspicions,. and selfish passions, poisoned 133' Slander and intrigue, andrrupted by money ; of anonymouS fetters, calculating alliarces and lifelong hostilities, while

" through the half-open window, a light wind slipped into the mom, bringing an odour of timber, of tar, and of cordage, anal lifting the net curtain in a kind of respirant undulation."

Attention is centred upon Max milian Jobourg, a " weak" Character strongly drawn, over whose life, :which is hard enough in any case, there falls (and here one thinks of

Couperus) the long shadow of an old indiscretion :

" In one's own family,' he said, ' one can never start afresh. My wife and children have formed a definite conception of me, and I shall never succeed in modifying it. To them I am a laiy good-for-nothing who has proved himself incapable of keeping either his money or his dignity . . . They have never bothered to find out what is meant by justice and injustice, or by 'devotion. The pleasure of any sort of sacrifice means nothing to them. Yei, my friend, they are imbeciles, and in their presence I feel small, mean, fit for any degradation.' "

But this " weak " character is. really stronger than his sur- roundings, for he is not entirely 'ruled by " vanity, hypocrisy and avarice."

(Shorter Notices are on page 350).