Fiction
By SEAN O'FAOLAIN , 7s. ad.) Egypt Lane, -.13'y Don .Toribtliy. (Cassell. 7s, ad.) Spilt Milk. By Nis Petersen. (LoYst Dickson. 7s, IA.) Willows. of the Brook. By PhilipKeoley. (Dent. 7s. 6d.) In one of the above books I find the usual card inviting the reader to apply to the publisher for announcements of new IMOLs ; it is somewhat an unusual card because it classifies l ic•tiOTI under five headings---Ahoughtful and distinguished ; 1)(pular and romantic ; historical ; thrillers ; • short-stories. 1 have been wondering, after I had read my five or six books, ImW a critioShould 'CliiSS ifyIlletibn; and • I; think he shoi'ild, do so, not under • types, but under intentions. There is he writer whp :intends t o- say something that is worth say i !VIEW finely as,it can be said—he is innving• towards' a: work ()I' high' art.: is the:writer who intends. to _say :something that is, in effeet-whatever he may think-not . worth saying, ias finely as it can be said. He is the troublesome person ; beeause'lie ls'arso moving in the .ParnaSsian direction and. it is thecritid's task to decide whether what, he has to 'say• is or is not of slight' import, and most literary 'arguments rel:.okye• endlessly about this type. Very often he is the big best-seller. Thirdly, there is the man who intends to 'say something that he knows perfectly well is not worth saying- butr-whn intends to say it as finely as"-it can be said. He • is the: sinall .best7seller,. whose integrity, _having.. been sold on the side ,.of matter, usually ,so- impeaches his. integrity on ' the 'side of manner- that he does net -say. his Say as --finely 'as it could be said—eyen by him. Lastly, there is the man who sets out to say something that he knows isn't worth saying,. in a manner that he knows is not going to be the best manner. He gives us the thriller, the love-story, the slightly witty novel, the adventure-story, the wild-west yarn, and whatever else one leaves behind in the train.
I have thought this preamble to a notice of Man with Four Lives necessary because it is of its kind so. absolutely without flaw that any mention of it must seem, otherwise, like mention of a masterpiece. And of its type it is a masterpiece. It is in the direct line from Dracula, The Brass Bottle, She, The Woman in White, The Monk, and (without the poetry— which means, perhaps, a contradiction) The Duchess of Maifi. It is the sort of book of which the indolent reviewer likes to say, " I couldn't put it down until I had finished it," and it is so much that sort of a book that, even in this dignified journal, I feel entitled to say, with more accuracy and truth, that having put it down at midnight I again lit the light at half-past midnight to see what really did happen. A is a yarn of the first *Ater, told with a typical American slickness, dealing with -a German -ollicer whom an Englishman believed he had killed over and over again, but who, kept cropping up each time as fresh as ever. Characteristic of the modern touch is the main interest of these encounters—the disorder in the sexual life of the hero that results from his halluci- nations. The solution of the problem is undoubtedly weak but the journey is 'eliciting There is one bad blunder : tiie German spy is made-to-read in his shaving-nrirror a newspaper lying on the floor. It can't be done. " • Mr. Don Tracy knows very well that, what be has .to say is, in his own energetic language, " all .,poppycock.".. This ex-prize-fighter, armoured-car employee of his—they have to employ armoured-cars constantly in American cities to transport _specie from hank to business—who has a broken nose, loYes Anna, " the seductive and selfish wanton," hates and fears his elegant rival,-Slim Parsons, the racketeer, heist- guy` (whatever that is) and murderer, who wins her from him, has simply. walked down °tithe Hollywood screen. But does it matter that he never existed anywhere else ? Mr. Tracy knows how to write a bciolc- that is as quick and as slick as any gangster film, and in some curious way more exciting, and if one is unwilling, to go to a cinema in this slimmer 'weather one can have it all in Criss-cross, with the additional joy Of the birds, or the sea—an arrangement not, I hope, uncom- plimentary to Mr: Tracy's vision of life.
With Egypt Lane we are still in the world of light entertain- ment. This long, but by no means leisurely, book follows the career of Larry Loretto, a half-gypsy, born of a Romany mother and. a Gorki° father. Larry's career is like that of a kangaroo. In one cliapter he is a corporal in France ; then he is, tae': in -England .making love to a " real lady " who is attracted by his gypsy :eyes and the way he walks " as if he oughtn't tci. 12e wearing any clothes," but who draws the line at kissing ; the next minute he is in Russia with Kolichak ; he es &tines from the Bolsheviks and is adopted by a Khirghiz, chieftain ; he becomes a gangster in America and makes money ; he returns to buy the home of the " real lady," and ni:arries her ; finally during a protracted and unhappy, honeymoon he visits Russia again, sees,Akonlka. the .Russo-Japanese woman he had loved while was' as' with the. Kliirghiz nomads, and as the liner stands out to 'sea he tears off every 'Piece of fashionable dress he• wears, dives naked into the sea, and swims inshOre Jo answer the 'call of his hlood. -Clearly the measure . is good. The quality is wire doubi ful, while as for the style it is a. perpetual shoat.' Candles . arc either " a. snake's tongue• forking and spitting in trapped Airy. "); or " a tongue licking through the gloom " ; we read of " adder-dartings of muscle " ; of " Toni's tongue darting like a scorched adder " ; of " echoes whanging;" "eyes . squashing against his own eyes," " the sun lurching," " and ." the smashing white hell " of a snow- storm in woods, until the .desired effect is lost for sheer inability, as one might say, to hear what is being said.
I have attempted to classifynovels according to the author's But like Hades; is paved with good intentions. And though with Mr. Petersen's Spilt Milk we move upward in the scale Of values, assn often happens we drop rapidly in the scale of entertainment. Not that anybody can accuse Mr. Petersen of not having something to say and knowing far better than the majority of present-day writers how to put it : indeed, even in this novel of the Irish Troubles —the Irish crying over 'spilt 'milk—which• bears all the signs of hasty execution, he shows himself to be a wit and a phrase- maker of a fine mordancy. So , much so that it, seems a very great pity indeed that one should get from the very beginning—and the opening is in shockingly bad taste— the 'uncomfortable feeling that the 'pages have soMehow got confused, or that the author is stringing together undigested notes. For Mr. Petersen has gathered together an excellent group of characters and he has seen triSh life with a fresh eye; while his intellectual and emotional approabh has the tine disinfectant quality of a merciful cauterization. Bombay, the . ex-soldier, who reads flyspotted books and the Bible, Jimmy Malone the crippled photographer, in hospital half his time, " like a pipe tied up in tapes against the frost," with his cork marionettes, his knitting and his kindly ways, Father Aloysius of the Grey Friars, the Dutchman, are as cosy a hive of philosophers as ever murmured a Greek chorus in a'Hardy taproom. But the whole thing is splashed On 'the canvas Without 'eaie, mingled with bits' of topical hiStOry, or real names and events, that perpetually break the mood with a banal reference to Mary MaeSwiney or De Valera or Lloyd George. Surely!'itt cannot be. done in that way ? Real events and imaginary events exist on different .planes, and if they are not welded by the patience of brooding into one piece n11 sense of illusion is lost. Mr. Petersen has not been patient nor has his artistry overcome the resultant Sensenf irreality. And so, by degrees, to the conscientious artist. For Mr. Keeley's Willows of the Brook is an example of 'a man, who lesser natural gifts than, say, Mr. Petersen; less power over words, even, than Mr. Cowen or Mr. T'racy, has striven more conscientiously and achieved, within his limits, much more success than any of them. His quiet, highly original novel of two' refugee children lost in England • during the War does: not -excite one, does not titillate one—some may not even be entertained by it—but it does.'convey the strange sense of reality and of something that " really hap- pened ," which 'One' Often gets 'Utter, from. An oblique ,rather than 'a direct view lire. - The' War to Mr. Cowen is war. To Mr. Keeley it is a cataclysm whose ultimate reverbera- tions, whose incidental effects, produced in a handful of private lives—quite accidentally, one might say—a stir and tremble of emotions which he finds more intriguing than its immediate effects on the battlefield.
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