FICTION

By WILLIAM PLOMER

The Bells of Basel. By:Louis Aragon. Translated by Haakon M.

Chevalier. (Peter Davie and Lovat Dickson. - 8s: 6d.) • - Juan jn Chinat By Eric Linklater. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) The Fleshly Screen:" Sy EdVard Dodge. (Faber. ' 7s. 6d) The Bruiser. By Jim Tully. (Michael Joseph. - 75. 6d.) .

I 'UNDERSTAND that in America Mr. Faulkner's latest book has had what is called a mixed reception, some regarding it as another triumph of his peculiar talent and some as a reduction almost to absurdity of his peculiar mannerisms. Yon may find it fascinating or exasperating; or both. Here is the old original Faullmerian bag of tricks—" the deep South -dead since z865 and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghOsis 1' Readers somewhat baffled, if not actually outraged, by: Mr. "Faulkner's ,syntax and his triMendous manoeuvrings

in search of a meaning will at any rate recognise his vigour and may easily find themselves caught up into the world of romantic horror which he has created. ; • In • Yoknapatawpha County old sins cast long shadows,

and as.you drive up to the old plantation hOrne (the approach-es much darkened by tropical growths of periphrasis) yon may expect to find a black sheep in wolf's clothing, a .nigiet: in,

the woodpile, and a posse of skeletOns in the cupboard. This was the home, not of Colonel Sartoris, but of Colonel Sutpen, and do not be surprised if you encounter a woman eating her heart out in a shuttered room or creeper-clad porch : this auto-cardiophagous person has probably been at her meal for years and years. A baffled, outraged man comes home to die, a defeated man hides himself in an upper room to which for years he draws up food in a basket, and a passionate man transmits his violence and uneasiness to the third and fourth generation. In chronicling defeat Mr. Faulkner seems to be prophesying woe, and like Jeremiah he rather piles it on.

What is the real source of all this misfortune ? His characters are defeated by something more sharply definable than the vague menace, or doom, which is proper to the literature of romantic horror and entirely overshadows the writings, for instance, of that earlier Southerner, Edgar Allan Poe. In

fact, the Fall of the House of Sutpen seems to be chiefly caused by a touch of the tarbrush. Absalom, Absalom ! abounds in dark hints on this dark subject. I think it suggests pretty

plainly that the Negro, like the Jew, has not only influenced his persecutors more than they generally care to admit but has a way of surviving them ; and also that the most dangerous thing generated by a close contact between two races of different colours is the mixture of love and hate, of fear and admiration, which comes to govern their relations.

Now this book has a perfectly logical plot and various merits and beauties, but reading it tends at times to be little easier than it would be to knit with barbed wire. The legend of Colonel Sutpen, who arrived on the banks of theMisSissippi early in the last century to build a mansion and found

is not presented ; it has to be found out. But lu-ckily- Mr. Faulkner is always ready to construct a mountain from which

we may catch a glimpse of some significant molehill, and as clues to his purpose he provides on this occasion a map, a who's who, and a chronological table.

No clues are needed to The Bells of Basel ; they peal for themselves. This is a revolutionary novel, the fruit of a hard and sharp Frentth intelligenCe and' a •Freneh kind of pOlitical fervour. ; French politics since 1789 seem to have been so full of abrupt changes, experiments and contradictions, that it is perfectly easy to agree with Frenchmen of any shade of political opinion whatsoever that any reforms they propose

may well be worth trying. A novel advocating the election

of an Emperor instead of a President might be just as persuasive as one that turned to Rome or Moscow for salvation. Where The Bells of Basel chiefly differs from other revolutionary novels is that it is largely about the improvement in the social

position of women that is supposed 'to'result from the estab- lishment of communism. The syliole book, says M. Aragon, points to the woman of toclii,"..,ykose social problem is no longer different from that of man, and who

" has nothing in common with the doll whose enslavement, prosti- tution and idleness have been the substance of songs and poems through all human societies, until today . . . Now—and here— begins the new romance. Here ends the romance of eh:, ahy."

Part One is designed to exhibit such a doll in her surroundings. Her name is Diane de NettencoUrt, and she moves in well- to-do Parisian society during the first decade of the present century. That society is shown as trivial and venal at best, and at worst utterly nasty and corrupt: M. Aragon's account of it is a thoroughly well-informed and rather horrifying

piece of satire. Leaving Diane among all those sharks, crooks, gossips, usurers, parasites, maxis complcusants, and what not,

we come to Catherine Simoriidze.. We have reached Part Two, and Catherine is struggling away from dollhood towards the light. A consumptive anarchist of Georgian parentage who divides her tune between politics and love affairs, she is

snatched from suicide by a staunch trade-unionist. Finally, at a jamboree of international socialists in Basel in 1912,

we arc given a glimpse of the New Wonian in the shape of Clara Zetkin. This parade of French social and political life should not be missed by feminists.

If Mr. Faulkner's answer to life is a kind of heroic 'defeatism, and M. Aragon's a red flag inscribed Votes for Women, what about Mr. Linklater:s ? Quoting Byron, he says he is not out to " sketch your world exactly as it goes."

He sees clearly enough that life, especially in Shanghai, is largely made up of abrupt juxtapositions of the sublime and the ridiculous, the 'pleasant and the horrible, the funny and the appalling, and -he does his best to make this plain in his own hearty way. Perhaps his point of view is not unlike that of his Juan, who says : • " The only choice fOr_a sensible mind is to be in love or to laugh at things. Heads i3 Venus,_ and tails Voltaire, if you like to put it so. And I prefer the Cyprian obverse, because too much laughter is rather sterilising."

Both love and laughter seem rather sterile in Juan in China, though Mr. Linklater's comic invention is at its best delightful.

The _Sisters Karamazov (" the Only _Genuine Russo-Siamese. Twins ") are almost worthy of Alice in Wonderland : . . . the door opened and the Sisters Karamazov came in, the one carrying a cup, the other a glass of tea. They wished him good-morning in the friendliest fashion, and then, putting down the glass and the cup of.teaonarched with unusual agreement to the window and closed the curtains again. Varya switched on the electric light, and Masha said, ' That is much nicer, isn't it ? ' . Then they remembered the tea they had brought, and Masha said she had thought he would rather have it made in the English fashions

bin Varya was sure he would prefer the Russian style." _

The Fleshly Screen and The Bruiser are 'both booki" which' may appear simple and unassuming. Mr. Faulkner may well have read Wuthering Heights, M. Aragon will have read

Balzac, Mr. Linklater has certainly read Ben Jonson, but Messrs. Dodge and Tully give rather the impression that each has been content to read with great concentration a single chapter in the book of life. This is not to say that: they are in the least deficient in literary skill. Indeed Mr.;

Dodge's study of a young man in the provinces growing up. and marrying not quite the right girl is done with very con- siderable taste, both natural and cultivated. We get far to

feW novels of English provincial or small-town life, and when we do get any, they generally seem to have been written by business men to amuse the sort of women they might be

likely to marry. Mr. Dodge's young man, who and in a draper's shop, is a person of unusual fineness; and it is not

surprising that Peter Pedlar is aware of " the fleshly screen " between thought and act. This is a gentle and genuine book, as unpretentious as the best kind of English Water-colour, and absolutely free of vulgarity. " There was no disappointment on his face," we are told of Peter at the end, " only a kind of peace as if he were communing with himself." And, it might be added, a kind of wisdom.

Mr. Jim Tully writes like a born talker, and an Irish-

Arnerican talker at that. The Bruiser is all about a boxer, Shane Rory, who rose from obscurity to a heavyweight championship.

You have only to listen to the wisecracks about him to under- stand that he- is one of thOSe magic heroes homanity Is always looking for. He was born with clenched fists and his jaw was

so sharp " it'd cut • the leather of a glove." Further : `.` You see hini go once an' you'll swear he's got cyclones in his gloves. He blisters the air when he misses."

This is a folk tale,is old as the hills and Yct-of the- prenni.