Auberon Waugh on two American novels
Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff William Inge (Andre Deutsch £1.50)
Many distinguished and excellent novelists have started writing novels late in life—L. P. Hartley springs to mind and so, no doubt, would many others if one studied the matter. However, as a general rule, one must sadly observe that fifty-six is seldom the best age for writing novels let alone first novels. Mr Inge is well-known as a playwright, but pre- sumably he has been burning all this time with a fierce desire to say certain things which can only be said in the greater free- dom of the novel. This shows itself from time to time in sudden, quite unexpectedly coarse references to the private parts of his characters: they are brought on stage in a way which is still not quite possible in the theatre. It is also shown in the tiresome literary device of the multiple flashback, about which I never cease complaining in these pages. Everybody knows the flashback is no good in the theatre; obviously Mr Inge has been itching to have a go at it all this time. In fact, if readers can overcome their irri- tation he uses it rather well, with a question- mark hanging over from the first part which is answered in the second. But I still wish he wouldn't, and I wish all writers would accept how much more agreeable it is to read a book which starts at the beginning of the story and goes on to the end.
Mr Inge tells a pleasant, sentimental tale which might have been better as a slice-of- life short story, but is not really strong enough to have made a play. A spinster schoolteacher in a small mid-western town called Freedom has an affair with a Negro student, is discovered and gets the sack. If I had been she, r would have had the head- master in court for unjust dismissal, since the outrage occurred after school hours. But this does not seem to have occurred to her, nor to Mr Inge, who is more anxious to put over the message that 'virginity is an un- natural condition for an adult woman, and that a boy with black skin is human'.
This quotation comes from the dustcover, and reveals what might have proved another shortcoming of this pleasant and unpreten- tious book : ideas which may have seemed daring and original when the story was con- ceived are now fairly commonplace. But a study of the book itself—perhaps reviewers Should be forbidden to read the dustcover, or be sent copies without one (by the pub- lishers who still send review copies at all)— reveals that the fault lies with the blurb- writer. Of course there is plenty of support In Christian tradition for the belief that a boy with a black skin is human, even if pre- cise scriptural authority is slight; the law now recognises it as a proposition, even in the United States, although not without a cer- tain amount of agonising at the time. No- body nowadays even gives a thought to the Plight of small slave-owners at the time of Abolition. Many of these people had invested their life-savings in a slave or two to look after them in retirement, only to find their Property confiscated without compensation. That might make an excellent subject for Mr Inge's next novel.
Instead, the blurb-writer asks us to accept the exciting idea that a boy with a black skin may indeed be human. I am happy to report that nothing in Mr Inge's book could Possibly lead the impartial reader to such
a banal conclusion. His Negro is a vicious, copulating moron. Three-quarters of the book's poignancy depends upon the reader's accepting this fact. I can forgive Mr Inge's hesitation in stating it bluntly. America is so screwed up about its colour problem, its guilts and counter-guilts, its rebellions and backlashes that even the best of them can make no sense on the subject. The pity is that so many of them try. At one moment, during a flashback, the heroine is addressed by a Jewish girl-friend in these terms: 'Now that's real prejudice, Evelyn. If you think you have to go round loving all Jews because of what happened in, Germany. then you're as guilty as Hitler is, or war. For God's sake, respect us enough to hate us, when you feel like it.'
For God's sake, belt up. But that, as I have said, is excusable. What is inexcusable is when Mr Inge assures us that small-town worthies in the mid-west, are all obsessed by anti-communism. This is one cliché which simply has no foundation in truth any longer. Why does Mr Inge bore us by trying to perpetuate it? Novel readers are not like theatre audiences, who laugh all the louder because a joke is familiar. The reason for this is because novel-reading, is a lonely occupation, there is no temptation to sub- merge one's judgment in the mindlessness of the man. Mr Inge's love story is prettily told, but where social commentary is concerned he should either sharpen up his ideas or stick to the theatre.
William Butler's new novel is much better. In fact, it is superbly written, highly intelli- gent, tense and intellectually stimulating. I recommend it from the bottom of my heart, with only one tiny reservation about the very end. For some reason, Mr Butler rounds off a slightly disappointing and predictable conclusion with a completely fatuous and irrelevant chunk of poetry. But until that moment, the book has been a scorcher. I only review it in second place because I think that it is overpriced. If Mr Owen can assure me that the 50p difference between the price he charges for 159 pages of Butler and the price Deutsch charge for 169 pages of Inge represents a higher advance to the author, then I shall put his novels in first place again, when they merit it.
Three men are kidnapped by the father of a boy who has burnt himself to death in protest against American war policy. The father's purpose is to discover which is guilty of the murder of his son. One is the teacher who indoctrinated him with trendy-lefty ideas. Another is the Congressman who most actively supported the war policy, and under whose window the boy burnt himself to death. The third man is a businessman whose daughter betrayed the boy, and whose crime is, broadly speaking, that he created and sustained the intellectual and moral climate against which the boy was rebelling. A fourth candidate is, of course, the father himself.
• As I have said, it is a first-class novel. It could easily be described as a fictional autopsy on the rising generation of young Americans; for once, such a description could be justified. But to the publisher's eter- nal credit, he makes no such claims. One ap- proaches the book with all the greater keen- ness as a result. I would have devoted the whole column to singing its praises this week if I did not suspect that it was careless over- pricing of novels by publishers which started the vicious circle of smaller sales and higher prices until now over 90 per cent of novel readers prefer the indignity of the public library to the expense of buying new novels.
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