Bill Platypus's
Paperbacks
For those of you who, like Platypus, are tired of the cult of the contemporary, a reissue — after a moratorium of ten years — of the seventh volume of the Pelican Guide to English Literature: The Modern Age (80p) will only confirm your prejudices. Still edited by Boris Ford, it still manifests the same lit. crit. and sociological crit. cant which has marked English literary studies for more than a generation. A book only for the beginner, and for those who like breadth without depth. On the same lines, it would be as well to steer clear of David Timms's Philip Larkin (Oliver and Boyd 75p). a study of that famous poet of yesteryear. Mr Larkin came to prominence in one of those small tidal waves of literary fashion, and has since receded into the Edwardian pastoral landscape at Which he is most adept. A long study seems superfluous at best, Short-sighted at worst.
• But English journalism still manages to hatO a few eggs, and here is one with J. B. Priestley's The Art of the Dramatist (Heinemann Educational Books 60p). Why this particular pamphlet should be thought of as ' educational' baffles me, since it merely repeats the conventional wisdom of the now distant past. As far as Platypus is concerned, modern drama ends with Ibsen, and the English embroidery is on the margin and on the wane. Still, a book for school children who like to feel they know something. And for those of you who like to feel superior, Penguins have just published a book on that contemporary menace, Tourism Blessing or Blight? (Pelican 40p). For those of us who live near Bayswater, it is known to be an unrelieved blight and I am always glad of confirmation from professors, sociologists and other such animals. Sir George Young has, in this book, cast a no doubt professional eye on the phenomenon. Also a cold one, foreseeing chaos and dementia praecox unless these awful people are forecast and planned. As far as I'm concerned, they should be refused entry before they set fork on what was once a reasonably happy island.
I am glad to see that popular novelists can't get away with absolute murder, and Arrow have just published Jonathan Segal Chicken (35p), s send-up of that awful best-seller, Joanthan Livingstone Seagull, which captured the hearts of the inane and and mae a million for the author whose name I have already forgotten. It is a witty and bitchy book, which amply repays the time and trouble which were once taken with its more serious and less significant forbear.
And, finally, for those who like the book of the TV series, Pan have issued Thomas Hardy's. Wessex Tales (30p). A cheaply. produced book, but nothing could alter the strength of the stories themselves,
Previous page
