22 DECEMBER 1984, Page 43

Patrick Skene Catling

Although apparently it is unfashionable ever to endorse the judgment of a Booker Prize committee, this year they and I are in harmonious agreement. Of all the novels I read in 1984, Anita Brookner's romantical- ly melancholy story of autumnal loneliness, Hotel du Lac brought me closest to what Nabokov called 'aesthetic bliss'. It is a beautifully underwritten, poignantly sug- gestive little book, which I intend to read' again as soon as my aunt returns it. I derived great pleasure from another slender volume, More on Oxymoron, Pat- rick Hughes' seriously playful examination of self-contradictions in words and pic- tures. This is a book that makes one think about thought and the meaning of meaning without actually suffering a nervous break- own. In his introduction, the author says: I. find Chomskyite linguistics and Barthe- slan structuralism disappointing.' So do I. tle. quotes a graffito seen on a wall in Brighton which seems to sum up his Perception of the way things are: 'Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.' Mr Hughes manages to keep his face straight while making the reader's bend with smiles in contemplation of the clever madness of Magritte and the crazy-like-a- fox malapropisms of Sam Goldwyn. A delight.

It is difficult to nominate the worst books of 1984 without conferring upon them a distinctive importance which they do not deserve. Two productions of wasted intelligence that particularly saddened me were D.M. Thomas's Swallow and Norman Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance. Novels like these can seriously damage your men- tal health.