Fiction

BY BONAMY DOBRiM •

Men Against the Sea. By Charles isTordhoff and James Norman Hall: (Chapman and Hall. 7s. 6d.) .

Miss JARRETT has nearly succeeded in a very difficult task. With so many novels one wonders what on earth the authors wrote them for ; we know why Miss Jarrett wrote—She wanted to present us with a complete experience for Our- selves. This is, of course, to mis-state what actually hap- pened, for the artist in the process of creation does not think of his audience ; he is himself his audience, and his job is to make an object. Why I say that Miss Jarrett has N'ery nearly succeeded, rather than altogether, is because the object is not quite complete, which we realize by feeling that the emotions aroused are, somehow, not quite resolved. What is wrong, we ask, with Night Over Fitch's Pond? It is enthralling enough, the people are real, the story is revealing, and the tension is maintained ; yet in some way the mechanism of our emotion has not " clicked." I venture to think that it is because the pace is too even ; the book just fails to attain dramatic quality, not in its matter, but in its effect upon ourselves, and the dramatic sensation • is nearly always produced by change of speed. Perhaps the method, the sotto voce soliloquy, is inimical to this, Nit in every other way the book is completely successful. The narrator is a semi-cripple involved in the relations of a woman he adores with an egotistic husband, another man whom she loves, and 'his monstrously evil wife : the bOok then is a study in egotism, in devotion, in hatred, the whole seen, and this is most delicately suggested, through the slightly distorted eyes of the cripple, who goes over the past while he sits out the night by the side of the drowned body of the husband of the woman he loves. Perhaps also the book just fails (I have the highest levels in mind) because although the sense of good and evil is there, the sense of their power is not brought out strongly enough. But it is a fine achievement, a serious attempt at a work of art, and to be recommended to anyone who asks of a novel more than that it shall be a time-begUiler. Miss Jarrett has intuition, 'faaidiousness, and a .fine tact ; there is not "a word too much in the book, and if only there had been that

little extra twist, one would be completely satisfied. -

We are satisfied by Forward Oh Time ! - But then it does not aim so high. The experience we are given is on a more

physical plane, the plane of material curiosity, in this instance about what is happening in Russia. It is an odd story, • a little too erratically cinematographic in effect for complete comfort, about a desperate record-breaking achievement in the difficult art of laying cement blocks. The scene is a great industrial town in process of birth on a steppe, and we get a glimpse of the kind of feeling that animates the young Russian. It is very vivid, and the struggle assumes grandiose proportions, for it is the struggle between two ideas, or schools of thought, the one which says that "A construction is not a stunt " and the other which declares that " In the epoch of Reconstruction, tempos decide everything." It is all very sordid and inefficient, terribly uncomfortable and crude, yet a certain heroic quality does emerge. This is what Mr. Kataev wanted to convey. In his dedication, which is numbered Chapter I, though it is the blast but one of the book, he says :

" And it is not for nothing that Gorky constantly repeati : Write the history of factories and plants. Write the history-of the Red Army. Create the history of the great Russian prole- tarian revolution which is a thousand thousand times greater and more splendid than the ' great ' French revolution."

So Mr. Kataev is one of those who is creating the legend, the legend which is to be the Iliad and Odyssey of the futtire Russia. There is much to be said for conceiving the novel as this : Fielding, in the preface to Joseph Andrews, declared that the novel was a prose epic what we are not quite certain about, however, is the quality of the heroism. It looks as though in Russia it was suspiciously like our -old friend the

Public School Spirit, with the various shock-brigadiers and their teams saying that they will, they will be Cock House. There is no harm in that, but the Russians cannot expect us to be very excited about it.

The quality of the wfiting, even in translation (and I suspect Mr. Charles Malamuth's translation of being very good), is interesting and -alive, and the characters come out

with great clarity : they are delightfully earnest and inter- esting, and the comic element is provided by the Americans, especially the millionaire, Mr. Ray Roupe, who is not quite sure about the ultimate value of all this effort, and occasionally murmurs " Babylon." Dbubts also infect the villain of the piece—only mildly villainous however—Nalbandov, the inventor of the cry, A construction is not a stunt." I confess that in my bourgeois soul I have a certain sympathy for Nalbandov : he hai a respect for material ; he cannot bear to see machines misused. He lacks the Cock House spirit, but wants to see the job well done. But he is carefully made to be less interesting than the undoubtedly fascinating engineer Margulies, whose eager spirit dominates the story from first to last. It is an exciting story : one's blood warms as one reads it, but it does not make one want to live in Russia—not yet.

For a really epic story there is Men Against the Sea. This is a continuation of the same authors' Mutiny, which

retold the story of the mutiny of the ` Bounty,' whereas this one tells the story of Bligh's amazing journey of intolerable

days over thousands of miles in an open boat. The story, based on Bligh's log, is straightforwardly told, and will no doubt be read by hundreds who would not read Bligh's own account, or rather, as that great authority Mr. Manwaring suggests, Bligh's account written up by Admiral Burney. The authors give the tale to the ship's doctor to tell (perhaps because the ship's doctor told The Voyage of the Pandora),

and he does it very well : he adds " human interest " details to Bligh's account, and he never offends. Whether, however, he really adds anything of significance is more doubtful.

He gives, for instance, two pages to what in Bligh reads as follows :

" One person, in particular [Purcell, the carpenter], went so far as to tell me, with a mutinous look, that he was as good a man as myself. It was not possible for me to judge where this might have an end, if not stopped in time ; therefore, to prevent sucn disputes in future, I determined either to preserve my com- mand or die in the attempt ; and, seizing a cutlass, I ordered him to take hold of another, and defend himself ; on which he called out that I was going to kill him, and immediately made concessions. I did not allow this to interfere further with the harmony of the boat's crew, and everything soon became quiet."

It seems that today the novel reader does not like his story too concentrated, nor does he like to have to make any effort of the imagination. He has to be given everything. It is a pity that the novel should have become lazy reading, for I suppose nobody will deny that it is the only effective literary art-form' of our tithe: It should, therefore, illuminate

and explain the urgencies and the vital thought of our day, a field which, for the most part, it leaves deplorably alone.

But, of course, with most material something extra is necessary. It is only very great stories, filled with implica- tion, such as the Bible stories, that can be told in a few hundred words. This is clearly-shown by The Child Manuela, which as play and film was so successful, this being the novel of Madchen in Uniform, but which as here presented is extremely thin. It exemplifies also the pronouncement Mr. Graham Greene made the other day, that characters or subjects directly approached are flat. This is not altogether true : to have approached Bligh's journey anything but directly would have been a mistake.. But where psychology

or interesting social relations are involved, the indirect approach is essential, and that is where Miss Jarrett scores

so heavily. The Child Manuela will interest those who saw

the play or the film, for people seen in action provide the imaginative stimulus which in a novel must be given either by the form or the language, or preferably both. The book is mildly moving, but it should have been so much better. It does not arrive at the stage of being an experience for the reader.