In the waughs
Sir: Auberon Waugh's recent effort (July 17) in your columns can scarcely pass without an exclamation of astonishment. Particularly striking was the way that it led from a literary study of men in a situation of both personal and class insecurity to the statement that the population of Clydeside in general and (by implication) UCS workers in particular, are "brutal," "violent," "stunted," "stupid" and even " subhuman " — the only rational argument adduced being a series of nostrums about " spongeing off the taxpayer," "gainful employment" and so forth.
A literary Thersites undertaking to entertain his audience by jeering at all corners must inevitably find it difficult to introduce variety into his vituperation, but it is still a dangerous novelty for him to say things about real people. Like Odysseus, they might fight back and '' bother to chase" Mr Waugh at least until he is safely over the intellectual horizon.
Richard Eales Christ's College, Cambridge Sir: A review which talks about "lady novelists" invariably, in my experience, goes on to be arch and spiteful and Auberon Waugh's novel-column was no exception. A brief examination of recent back number of The Spectator indicates that this particular reviewer has apparently ceased to review with any pretension toward accuracy or responsibility, and perhaps, therefore, neither readers nor authors should take him as anything but a song and dance act — or a sick joke. However, one overall implication in his recent review of my novel Fly Away Home seems to be libellous, and since you have seen fit to publish It perhaps you will be so good as to publish also this letter.
Mr Waugh's copy seems designed to suggest, among other things, that I and the heroine of the novel are one and the same person — "It seems impossible to believe that the book is not what it pretends to be, the journal of a sad, over-intelligent housewife of the middle class." May I assure both Mr Waugh and your readers that, contrary to what he pretends, I am so talented that I can actually invent characters, and situations. Nor, indeed, do the circumstances of my own life correspond, even remotely, to those of my current heroine. (They do, however, correspond to those of another character in the book, whose presence Mr Waugh does not even seem to have noticed.) As he perfectly well knows, I myself do not live in France. nor am I married to a Frenchman (or a publisher, or a Jew. or a failure, for that matter). I am not, as it happens, the mother of two little girls. Nor am I underemployed, under-occupied, nor — self-evidently — do I lack suitable outlets for my capabilities. Nor, except when forced into professional contact with such people as Mr Waugh, am I dissatisfied with my lot. In short, I am both happy and successful, thank you — though I rather wonder if the same can be said of Mr Waugh? A sense of fundamental failure is, at any rate, the only explanation I can find for his peculiar spleen.
Gillian Tindall 2 Leighton Road, London NW5
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