DIARY FROM A DUSTBIN
By H. B. Creswell
This distinctly unpleasant and quite amusing diary (Faber, 7s. 6d.) is a book to make one wince. But that presumably is the author's intention : to appal the reader and at the same time to make him smile. He succeeds, of course, right off, ill rousing our disgust at the sly, snivelling creature whose pilferings, cunning, folly and utter worthlessness are " ex- patiated " (as the diarist himself would say) in this prize piece of comic offal from the dustlseap. " The reason I cannot keep you on," he says, "is not because of what you havn done,' he says, " but because of what you are," he says—as it anyone could. take his meaning, talking that style I " Me ? Mr. Sparrow," I says, all of an exclamation at him. " Yes, You " he says, staring at me pretty straight I will say.' Of his mother : There was something I read in a Mag about an old woman who was a " crone "—it called her. That 19 Mother all over ; in my opinion. She is a crone, Mother is- Instinctively one recoils (a point to the author) ; frequently one pauses, puzzled, to admire some hideously revealing tura of phrase, some poisonous gaffe or misdemeanour in these far from " candied outpourings of the atrocious Mervyn F. Spinnerbrook. Touché again. But is the game worth the cackle ? The author, one supposes, laughs last—certainly he alone can tell why lie wrote the book ; and it is quite inn,- possible to guess how he came to write it so well ; but who shall say why anyone should read it ? The publishers' admir' able blurb offers us both wit and guidance on this subject ; butt even so, is Spinnerbrook " a figure in the true comic' tradition" ? Truer to say that at his best Mr. Creswell is faintly reminiscent of Mark Twain. And there may be, indeed, an unchartered tradition in dustbin-grubbing—an art, alas, widely practised in our great metropolis—but, for all its cleverness, for all its thoroughness, what manner of quest is this that we should be invited to embark on it ? Diary frost a Dustbin is a sociological document, funny but foul to the touch---undoubtedly a remarkable book to have written.
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