Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOMER

The Beachcomber. By William McFee. (Faber. 8s. 641.) The Man Who Had Everything. By Louis Bromfield. (Cassell. fis.) Richard Savage. By Gwyn Jones. (Gollancz. 8s. 60.) IN recommending their wares, publishers sometimes seem not to mind making fools of themselves so long as tbcy can make gulls of their customers, and sometimes a reviewer is tempted to take the bait without the hook and use the

recommendation, or blurb, as a basis for discussing a batch of novels. Mr. E. M. Forster, I believe, once went even further, and exactly indicated the character of a selection of novels by light-heartedly describing the pictures on their dust-covers. But the dust-cover is not necessarily fit only for an immediate descent into the; dustbin, for ,blarbs arc sometimes neat, apt and useful, and authors themselves, it is said, sometimes have a, hand in the composition of them. The blurb of The Beachcomber contains a particularly good passage :

" Mr. Mi:Fee deals firmly with the congenital sentimentalism that is apt to creep into the heart and brain of the Anglo-Saxon race when the sea' is mentioned. He has small sympathy with the Yo-Heave-Ho school of aesthetics, which is always detected by a nostalgia for sailing ships, and what are called the great chlys of sail'. The theory that a vessel, which has to go at right angles to its destination and covers something like throe times the distance, because the wind 18 'not' going that way, is superior. to a vessel that is propelled in the direction in which the passengers wish to go, is still popular with those who have very little knowledge of the working world."

This affords a useful indication of Mr. McFee's presentation of seafaring life in his tenth novel, a presentation not in the least like Conrad's, not so literary as Mr. H. M. Tomlinson's, nor so stark as Mr. Jaines Hanley's, but genuine in its own way and the product, evidently, of natural abilities, much experience, and matured opinions. In some ways Mr: McFee is comparable to Mr. Somerset Maugham, for he is full of worldly wisdom, guiltless of fancy writing, and a possessor of sound and assimilated learning. As an artist he shows himself less adroit and less • economical, and on the whole one would recommend The Beachcomber to middle-aged readers rather than young ones and to men rather than women. A long book, perhaps' midtily bang, 7 it presents a point of view with great fullness and a number of case histories in considerable detail. The point of view, which one takes as that of the author, is put by the narrator, Mr. Spenlove, a wise, experienced chief engineer, and the case history he is chiefly occupied in presenting is that of Sidney Nevile;' a personable young Englishman who is' always re- discovering that he has " found an object in life," the object being invariably a new woman. " I'm not a man at all, only a beachcomber," he once remarked. " I get pretty sick of it all at times, and as for women, it's find 'em, fool 'em, and forget- 'em." When a man talks like' that about women it generally means he is obsessed with them, and we make the acquaintance of Nevile's obsessions in turn, the Greek courtesan in Malta, the Anglo-German parvenu's daughter on a yacht, the mysteriouS Athalie Rhys in New York, &e. On the whole it is easier to listen to Mr. Spenlove's " yarns " • than to share his appreciation of Nevile. His curiosity, shrewd knowledge of the world, dry. humour, and incidental comments are the making of the book ; for example :

" Englishmen often disguise envy by being ribald."

" A German can never believe you aren't exactly like himself, and is always astounded when you hit back."

" She was, beyond all peradventure, something new. History, Mr. Spenlove reminded himself, held no record of any man success- fully resisting that particular terriptatiOn:".

If The Beachcomber may be called a repository of worldly

wisdom, ." The lInkn. Own' Quantity and Thg Man Who Had Jeverything,are studies in the insufliciencY,-of worldly success. Hermann Broch's book • is the 'Suttler of the two. - Herr Broth, the author of The Sleepwnikers,„-which has been much 'admired, did not • begin, to' until–he ''was • forty-five. Previously he had been known as. a highly successful business man, but he sold out his interests in- Larder 10.-devote'llimself to mathematics,. philosopbys,, AustAiuttitiffroL new book, a short one, is about•an able young German matlic. matician, Richard Hieck : ” The vision inside Richard Hieck's ungainly skull with if stubble of hair had accomplished something that was a literal advance into some new-found-land of mathematics, an act of creative interpretation ; and so there was discovered another portion of that complicated, infinite and boundless structure 0f balanced forces which is built up•ont of nothing but the relations of things to each other and yet constitutes the most wonderful achievement of mathematics."

Since fiction is concerned with the relations of people to each other and with a structure of balanced forces, there seems no reason why it should not be given a kind of niathc•

matical-mystical foundation. But so serious an approach will not appeal to everybody. When Richard goes out with

his girl, " already in the tram he had begun to expound Einstein's conception of the universe," • and very soon he is telling her that " it is probable that the craters hi the moon were caused by gigantic meteorites." Whether it is usual or not for scientifically-minded persons to interlard their caresses with references to " the geometrical possibilities and difficulties of the most radical of spatial hypotheseF," this maths' matical courtship makes one think at moments of Erasmus Darwin, the. Loves of the Triangles, and Dr. Strabismus ;

but Herr Broth's seriousness does not prevent hiM • being human and tender in the search for " the unknown quant ity,'

which is love. And Richard in the end seems wiser then his brother Otto, the unstable sensualist, or his religious sislet Susanne, both of whom are also looking, rather clumsily, for truth and happiness.

Herr Broth makes us feel, truly enough, that everything is very much more complicated than it seems. Mr, Louis Bromfield, on the other hand, simplifies things, people, and encounters, in order to drive, home the not very novel lesson that worldly people pay the penalties of worldliness, but his book is of some interest as a symptom of American discontent. Tom Ashford, a,, highly successful Tlaywright, has a wife Sally whom he doe's- not love but with whom lie has " come to an arrangement," he has IWO- sons, at the money he needs, and boundless health and energy. "OnlY one thing had failed him and that, strangely enough, seeded to be life itself." His mistress, Maisie, a highly successful actress, is in love with him and wishes to help him. " The

trouble is, my dear, that there isn't anything you can do You see there isn't anything I want." "'But," shys • shot " that's like being already dead." In order to revive, Ashford rushes off to France-with his family to try and remake his life in the setting of a highly romantic adventure that he enjoyed at the end of the War. His family sensibly desert hiirt ; he meets again his partner in the adventure and finally cables t° Maisie, who has taken to drink, that he is coming back to her.

The reader has realised that Ashford " wasn't the only American who had been frantically alive all his life without ever having lived at all," but is not convinced that life in the end has yielded him up many of its secrets. In fact, we are left saying " So what ? " that " brief, terrifying and inclaSive phrase " which, says Mr. Bromfield, only Americans could have invented. What remains is the central and clearly'

.expressed truth : •

" It was odd how, as you won success, you were removed WI? by little, imperceptibly, away from the rest of the world, until at last. you lost the feel and even the savour of ordinary pleasalib things and became a little inhuman, so that even though Y°,11 made a great effort to establish once more a contact With the supple ones—the plodders, the dull ones, the failures—it was not possibl°,' It was as if they would no longer accept you. Somehow you fount' yourself shut into a dubious fantastic paradise surrounded only bl those Who had succeeded."

And you can't get out of that paradise by just wanting to. Whether. Richard. Savage was an impostor or not, the story of his life has giv,en,Iltr.Gwyn Jones an idea for a book. Twice the 'length of an average novel, it tells an . unflagging stall with a minimum of cloak-and-sword picturesqueness, suggest'

ins something of the more sordid aspects of eighteenth-century London but.suftering from a common defect of quasi-historical fiction, that is to say, a lack of attiW4' here' and a 'certain thinnese

and crudeness in characterisation, , ,