Sum of parts
TREVOR GROVE
The Hand-Reared Boy: 4 Novel for Our Times Brian W. Aldiss (Weidenfeld 30s)
Brian W. Aldiss has recently been voted Britain's Most Popular Science Fiction Author—'by a sweeping majority'. Were he less obviously capable of bearing up under the load, I should hesitate to add my own small laurel to his already ponderous brow.
As it is, 1 am confident that in nominating Mr Aldiss's latest 'straight' novel, The Hand- Reared Boy, the Best Middling Length
Lightly Humorous Masturbation Orientated English Novel of 1970 I shall not only live to see this amazing declaration of faith go unchallenged, but shall, furthermore, be acquitted of adding one jot to a literary ego some might consider already well enough celebrated.
Mr Aldiss's head is not so easily turned. Indeed I rather doubt whether it turns, in the swivelling sense of the word, at all. Beyond looking up at the planets and down at his privates, Mr Aldiss's head seems capable of only limited motion. This might account in large part (for the largest, see page 83 of this book: it measures a foot long and belongs to Harper Junior, who just for the record is thirteen years old) for his previous successes. 1 have no doubt it will account for this one.
In choosing his theme for The Hand- Reared Boy (pun) the author has clearly given the market close attention. Some- where, as Mr Aldiss well knew (his gaze shifting from the galaxies to the level of life as it is lived), a copywriter's ballpoint brooded over the abyss . . . 'The English Portnoy . . .• The point won't bear labour- ing. Mr Aldiss, who needs no lessons from his readers on how to make fiction out of science, hardly needs me to point out how admirably he makes a science out of fic- tion: the ingredients just so, the mixing just so, and the rest can safely be left to the reader. The pity is that if the mixture and the mixing just miss being just so, the only thing left to the reader is the decision whether to give it away or throw the sorry mess out of the window.
This book has the distinction of being the first of a quartet of novels (a 'fictitious auto- biography') that will, according to an ex- quisitely droll blurb, 'reveal with increasing power the malformation of spiritual and sexual life by the anti-human preconcep- tions of our century.' Why not 'A sexual Music of Time' while we're about it? But it's revealing I grant you.
At the age of five Horatio Stubbs. our hero, unbuttons and shows off 'his rosy little wee-wee' to Sheila and Hilda (also aged five). On the next page Hilda shows him hers. Revelations follow thick and fast— divers infant exhibitionists, an imaginative elder brother, a housemaid who advances Master Horace's education no end and school acquaintances who seem to be whole- heartedly bent on retarding it.
By the end of the book our Horry is seventeen. He has enjoyed fumbling rela- tions with two girls, one severely paranoid school matron and by my computation has abused himself (or more often, happy lad, been abused) some 18,720 times. This is a splendid achievement. So would Mr Aldiss's be were it not for a small omission on his part and that is that he entirely neglects to interest or entertain us along the way.
Adopting that ruefully mock serious man- ner with which 'lightly' comic writers, habitu- ally say one thing and disguise the fact that they really rather feebly mean it, Mr Aldiss gives us a typical reflection (i.e. interval be- tween bouts): 'All I regret are my literary flaws, which will not permit me to relive here those early years. All I can do is to re-tell them, as honestly as possible, from the standpoint of age and memory.' In other words, hey ho for thinly amusing porno- graphy. Modesty rather than space forbids a quote. Enough to say that without being either mouthwateringly dirty or outrageous- ly funny this novel succeeds at most points in being effortlessly vulgar.
I take it that the point of sexual obses- sions, in literature at any rate, is that they should excite one either to lust or to laughter. This book excited me to neither. Perhaps I am not especially excitable. For anyone who is, who has a penchant for adolescent lubricity and who can stomach a woefully English diet of nudging boorish- ness, half-hearted farce and creeping, tongue- in-cheek sentimentality, this is the book, Mr Aldiss is your man and no doubt Carry on Wanking will be the film. Anyone who isn't, hasn't and can't, I suggest keeps his distance.
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