IT'S A LONG WAY TO OXYRHYNCHUS

By WILLIAM GOLDING

No archwology is more entertaining or engrossing than an examination of one's own detritus. The business of turning out a house IS like the clearing of a building site in London Where work gets held up by the discovery every so often of a broken pot, or the bricks of a Roman wall. Old photographs remind us in bloodless outline—how brown they are, some of them —of forgotten places and people. Then, by the magic Perhaps of physiology, the brain floods, lets loose a riot of colour and noise, in total recall. I sit on the stairs, dusty, laden, and peer at the faded Profile of a young man. I remember suddenly how that young man had concluded his front view was a dead loss, and turned his face side- ways, at once proudly and sheepishly, embar- rassed by the admission that he cared at all. I Peer at the child grinning joyously from behind a tennis racket. In those days, the sun was "right on the spacious, asphalt court, and the net was up there, at hair-height.

But the writer can enjoy his own rubbish more than this. He is privileged. We have come to see the limits of archteology to lie precisely , Where the written word takes over; and the writer, ny his very trade, leaves a trail of scribbled paper behind him. These speak, for it is their function. At the very moment when these papers most doubted the validity of their voice, at the moment wnen they were most clearly the voice of ' desperation, they come up into full volume.

When I have tried every publisher there is and still been turned down, and am still haunted by this desperate, cruel, bloody business of believing I can write—when all ways are blocked, I can think of one left I shall take my MSS aboard a boat. I shall go to Egypt. I shall get up the Nile to Oxyrhynchus, walk into the dumb, dry desert and bury the lot next to the city rubbish tip. In 5000 AD they will be excavated by Pekin Univer- sity, and published among the seven hundred and fifty volumes of Vestiges of Western Literature. Of course no one will read them, any more than they read Erinna or Bacchylides. This obses- sion with writing is pointless as alcoholism and

31 there's no Authors Anonymous to wean you from

3 the typewriter.

Was it sheer envy, I wonder, that set me so busily writing parodies? Perhaps I felt that play- ing the sedulous ape would get me a foothold in this world where I now stand with a different set of difficulties. Ruefully I contemplate the set of irreverent sketches with which I soothed my mixture of love, jealousy, admiration and hate. Can this be M. Mauriac taking a love-tap? • • At a certain age there comes, he thought. Whether we will or no, the unappeasable terror of the irremediable, and the knowledge of the un- familiar sadness of those we are accustomed to C. all parents. Nervous as he was himself, he pitied net.. He spoke quietly, fondly, almost. 'Ten francs Maman. I wish to continue my studies.'

Madame Faucet clutched her purse with a shaking hand. Her words were half suffocated With emotion.

'The five. The five I gave you at the New Year.' Roland's eyes rested candidly on her face. They are spent.' How plausible and like old Faucet he was! The same casual attitude to money—the same glib assurance that had broken her heart. Wordlessly she shook her head.

'One franc, then.'

Beads of sweat were standing on her chin, dripping from the point of her nose. The word was forced from her like a projectile.

'Never.'

Roland spread his arms wide and turned on his heel. He approached the first Faucet franc, now framed in state by the chimney.

'That, at least—.'

Madame Faucet staggered forward.

Upstairs Mariette lay in the great bed, crying quietly. No one had been near her for a week. 'Roland!' she cried, again and again, and knew he would not come. The pulse in her brain took on a new and exterior persistence. Downstairs Madame Faucet was nailing the franc to the wall, stroke after stroke; a stroke for old Faucet, a stroke for Roland, a stroke for Simon.

Cheek by jowl with this fragment lies more readily identifiable material. Mr. C. S. Forester might guess, from the scholarship it shows, what enjoyment he has always given me. There is no meanness in the parody—only gratitude.

The noise of battle made concentration difficult, but he set himself to calculate the odds. At mid- day they had been ten miles off the French coast; and with both ships moving towards it, his sea- man's instinct told him they must be nearer. It would be a close thing. A seaman's head, blown vertically by some ballistic whim, vanished into the smoke, and Hornblower waited idly for it to come down again. Seven seconds. The drag of the ascent was nicely equalled by the drag of the descent and acceleration was thirty-two feet per second per second. It was an easy exercise to calculate that the man's head had gone twice as high as the main mast. Possibly the French captain over there in the smoke was making the same deduc- tion.

'Ha-hm,' said Hornblower, 'Ha-hm.'

A ball shattered the larboard grating, struck Bush on the forehead and rebounded through the mizzen mast.

`Mr. Langley!' roared Bush. 'Replace that mast immediately !'

It was a kindness to the boy to keep him occu- pied. Hornblower resumed his meditation. What would the French captain do? He might go on fighting; or he might stop. In war, nothing was certain. And even if they beat this ship, there was the rest of the French fleet to contend with, to say nothing of the galleys, the gunboats, the shore ba tteries- 'Ha-hm,' said Hornblower.

And even if the French were defeated, he would have to refit the ship. He peered forward. Most of the maindeck guns were heaped amidships, the bulwarks were beaten flat, and the fo'castle was on fire. Dead men and fragments of men lay in heaps. The pumps were clanking—after the battle he would have to turn the ship upside down and shake the water out. As he watched, a dose of chain shot divided a gun's crew with grotesque neatness at the waist; but with the indomitable courage of British seamen, the men fought on.

'Glorious!' shouted Bush, striking a fist into the palm of the other hand. 'Glorious! What will they think of this in Boots?'

Boots. Hornblower had not thought of Boots.

There was a breath of air coming from seaward. They might win yet. A storm might blow up, the French might get tired, or someone might run out of ammunition. It was not much of a chance but it was a chance all the same—about as likely as leading the deuce of spades and having it taken by the joker.

A twenty-four-pound ball howled between his legs. He repressed an involuntary shudder, telling himself that he dreaded mutilation far more than death. How long could this go on? He glanced down at his uniform and was relieved to see that he was still a captain. It was most disconcerting to be invented backwards.

Well, bless me. I like that—but it cannot be good, for no one published it, or any of these dusty, crumpled papers. They have been shut away for a good many years and something of their ache was shut in with them.

Why do people make parodies? It is surely rooted in admiration. That which has neither rhythm nor sense cannot be parodied. The happy parodist has to know his victim/idol in his blood and bones as well as superficially. He has to be able to put on the idiosyncratic rhythm like a coat. It were a wondrous sight to see

That ghild become a willow-tree, His brother trees among— Long and ardent admiration must have gone to the breeding of those lines—how else could the author have trodden the line between artlessness and bathos, and finally elected to jump lightly down on the side of ridicule? It is only the faintest remove from that position to the one of Beaumont and Fletcher, who had the pulse of Shakespearian lines so deeply in them that for hundreds of years even reputable scholars have thought the Two Noble Kinsmen was by Shake- speare. For admiration, always sufficient for imitation, is not enough for parody. Parody de- pends on the mean advantage of being wise after

someone else's event.

Aiming high enough, we have as our weapon nothing but admiration. Like Beaumont we can only catch the tricks of style which are them- selves admirable.

COUNCILLOR: My lord, What time of night is this?

PRINCE: 'Tis closing time. This final voice, this mortal publican Must be complied with, else we add to death Indignity, and find ourselves chucked out.

SEBASTIAN :

Burst, noble heart, and take a downward flight.

PRINCE:

Don't be so hasty. I that have talked of him, Addressed Death as a member of my family Now feel a touch of carnal diffidence At meeting him. This last impediment, His door, this entrance tied with silken thread, This wicket gate of pleached gossamer, Yields to the infant's fretting, and the breath Of frailest age; but once we are within, It is an iron and removeless portal.

I spill hot life. My pulse begins to fail—

I die. Thou laden beast Humanity, Thou dust, thou clod, thou god, thou angel-ape, Thou tragic and ambiguous animal, See'st thou this knacker's yard? So shalt thou

end--

Oh life, oh life, never behold the sun! (Dies.) Indeed, the top of admiration is emulation; but emulation is not parody, except in the unconscious tribute paid by inadequacy.

Well, I must get on with the job. I shall put these few papers aside—and throw the rest into a dustbin a long, long way from Oxyrhynchus.