Auberon Waugh on new fiction
Recent advances in psychiatry may or may not have made a significant contribution to the treatment of the insane—I like to keep an open mind about that sort of thing—but nobody who reads novels can doubt that the Popularisation of psychology has had a ghastly effect on the modern novel.
It was for this reason that one approached Maureen Duffy's latest novel with misgiving. Its description on the dustcover could scarcely he more alarming: 'Maureen Duffy has achieved a major novel in a style that is both precise and poetic to express many levels of meaning.' Poetic styles, in my experience, are best left alone. Major novels if tackled at all, generally require to he pre- ceded by a reading of the New Teolment and an hour of quiet prayer and meditation in order to preserve even the semblance of charity. But where a novel claims to possess many levels of meaning, the only possible way to tackle it is with two bottles of wood port and half a bottle of brandy inside one. Then I remembered previous occasions on which hooks had not been nearly as had as Weidenfeld's blurb writer made them appear,
and put away my Bible and the rest of my survival kit. 'This is a novel of ambiguity: of age, sex and intention. On holiday in their villa in Italy, a love affair develops between the mother and the father's secretary. The child, with jealousy ferociously awakened, sets out to destroy the relationship with all the skill and concentration of a master spy.' That brief summary tells the whole story of the book, insofar as it has a story. The child alters a letter to the mother from a neighbour to make it look like a love-letter; the child next pretends to be posting a letter • from the mother to the same neighbour. The lover, in jealous fury, kills himself and the child—whether metaphorically or physically is not clear—becomes the mother's lover. Stated as baldly as that, one can see that the plot has all the banality and reckless im- plausibility of a Greek tragedy. Recent evidence may suggest that the ancient Athenians cried their eyes out during all those miserable plays by Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus, but Miss Duffy—who is keenly aware of her novel's resemblance to a Greek tragedy—can scarcely expect quite the same involvement. Hence, presumably, its many levels of meaning.
In order to trick out the story, and keep her readers happy, Miss Duffy interpolates a book within a book, which consists of con- versations on life, religion. art, historical mythology etc. These are held in rather a stilted and formal way between the charac- ters, so that the child's father can record them and turn them into a major work of philosophy. Miss Duffy also keeps us guessing as to the sex of her protagonist, called 'Kit'. and invariably referred to as 'the chil6'. I am
not quite sure why she thinks this a worth- while thing to do. It certainly reveals a
curious indifference to readership psycho-
logy. Most readers will merely be irritated. I would be cleli.41ted to reveal the answer,
and put everybody out of suspense. but Miss Duffy keeps her secret. In most ways, one would judge that Kit is a boy—I have never heard the expression 'jerk off' applied to female masturbation—but Miss Duffy is deliberately unspecific, and her many descrip:- tions of Kit masturbating suggest that the ambiguity is deliberate. It is curious that last week I was complaining of excessive anatomical detail in a novelist's description of sex, while this week I must complain that traditional decent reticence is used to create even worse confusion and boredom.
Miss Duffy makes her intention plain in a passage which comes after one of the philo- sophical recording sessions—'You will be wondering, putative reader, why I have reported' all this. The answer is quite simple: it interests me and you, forgive me, don't.
. . . You are privileged, if you even exist, to look over my shoulder and study my recrea- tion but you mustn't interfere with your chatter about what you like. . . . You want nothing but the story and then you complain because people like me prefer non-fiction: tracts, flower poems, plainchant, as if epic, romance, saga, novel hadn't always been the fit place for these things.' One could criticise this statement for its almost breathtaking arrogance, but to do so would be to miss the point it makes and misunderstand a whole attitude to the novel. In the first place, of course, Miss Duffy is
right when she says that in its history the novel has embraced tracts, flower poems and even. I dare say, plainchant, although I am not absolutely sure that Miss Duffy knows what plainchant is. I groan whenever I see a novel breaking into prose poetry not be- cause I feel it has no business to do so but because in nine cases out of ten it is written in exactly the defiant attitude which Miss Duffy describes. The novel is not seen as a means of directing or delighting its readers, but as a vehicle for the author's ego-trip. Readers, if any, are invited to wonder and admire, but scarcely to enjoy. The tragedy is that people taking a novel from the library have no way of registering enjoyment or boredom, and libraries pay far too much attention to reviewers. No doubt reviewers will be quite polite about this hook, and, in a way, it deserves it: Miss Duffy shows considerable erudition, a capacity for pro- found thought and occasional flashes of wit. She is also quite right to describe the lives of the rich. The canon enshrined in the dogma that readers can only identify them- selves with characters in their own socio- economic grouping is too obvious for me to insult readers of the SPECTATOR by its repetition. The novel is an escape from the familiar world or it is nothing. But it is a crying shame that someone of Miss Duffy's intelligence, education and acute observation should consciously require to please her readers in other ways.
Of course, her practice is not quite so austere as her declared intentions. The idea of withholding her protagonist's sex can only have been prompted by a wish to entertain her readers, however mistaken in its concep- tion. Those who enjoy crossword puzzles, quoting games, riddles, intellectual puzzles of all sorts may well enjoy this book, but it is not for those who enjoy suspending their disbelief and burying themselves in a story. Perhaps the kindest way to describe it is as a sexed-up Saki, but 1 am afraid that even that is not very kind, nor entirely accurate, since Saki was nothing if not a storyteller.
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