Steel & glass

Paul Ableman

The Provocateur Rene-Victor Pilhes (Marion Boyars £4.95)

When in doubt, outline the plot. The Prench subsidiary of a giant American Multi-national corporation called Rosserys and Mitchell is attacked by a sinister force. The attack is two-pronged. On the one hand, the foundations of the 'steel-and-glass building' (a phrase that is incanted, with dwindling satirical returns, throughout the work) are physically assailed. On the other hand, and more Obscurely, a series of scrolls adumbrating, Without apparent bias, the basic principles Of capitalism is distributed to the 1200 employees of the firm.

These desperate, and modishly dis parate, assaults cause a flurry of defen sive activity. Cabals and caucuses form and re-form amongst the senior execu tives. The American overlord flies in

from Iowa. Detectives are employed and the peril, which remains nebulous, is

traced to the catacombs and labyrinths beneath Paris. The representative of the

Workers, whose speech is as pompous as e Gaulle's, darkly prophesies the end. it when the threatened catastrophe finally occurs its significance is transMuted by a would-be surprise ending that It, as, to my certain knowledge, been used in at least two films. Still, there seems no innre point in my further undermining 1,11is already rickety book by revealing it taan there is for The Provocateur of the title to be undermining Rosserys and Mitchell.

The texts contained in the mysteriously destructive scrolls are much the most interesting part of the work: Concepts such as cash-flow, amortisation, staffand-line, and the difference between stocks and bonds, which have always seemed to me mysteries deeper than, and quite as potent as, witchcraft, are crisply

Plained. But just why their exposure to

staff of a firm should place not only fat particular enterprise but virtually the 'Inure of the West in jeopardy is never satisfactorily elucidated.

Perhaps it doesn't need to be. The

Provocateur is not, and does not pretend ,Isei be, a naturalistic novel. It is part alleg"rY and part satire. But it is by no means evident what the allegory represents or Iyhat, apart from the barn-door target of e,aPitalism, is being satirised. Does the ,steel-and-glass building' represent Cap oltalism or The West or The Church or tilture or even, as might be whimsically ginstrued from certain passages, French astronomy? The names of the twelve

(ahal) directors who band together to combat the menace are gratuitously odd. Or can it be that there are columns of Musterffies, Saint-Raines, Aberauds, Le Rantecs, Yritieris and the rest of them in the Paris telephone directory? Possibly clues lurk in those names but, if so, I have been unable to prize them out. The headquarters of the multinational is in Des Moines. Monks? Is that significant? Very probably since, in one curious passage, the directors dress up as monks. But this theme, like most of the others initiated, is never fully developed. The building is situated next to Pare Lachaise cemetery and the web of evil physically connects the two sites. Since the fact is repeatedly emphasised, it must be of central significance to the book but, in spite of much conscientious pondering, I remain unsure why. And nor, to be candid, did I find enough power in the vision or vivacity in the writing to make me care very much.

For an allegory to have literary impact it is not, of course, necessary for it to be transparent but it is essential for the reader to perceive that it shelters profound truths. I have both read and seen Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot several times and, although still unsure as to what Pozzo, Lucky, Estragon and Vladimir symbolise, the play continues to enthrall me. Very likely the allegorical structure is not, and was never intended to be, precise enough for reduction to formula. But the reader is made to care about the characters and their strange adventures. Beckett's allegorical figures have dimension and interior vitality. Those of M. Pilhes, on the other hand,

are mere counters in a game. Games lovers may well love this book. It is unlikely that book lovers will. Elephantine whimsy is the closest the book gets to humour. Portentous, and often questionable, assertions are the closest it gets to wisdom.

Perhaps the essential trouble with this book is that it suffers from the very faults it castigates. When the mighty boss of Rosserys and Mitchell, Ralph McGanter, who is alleged, but never shown, to be 'one of the three most powerful men in the world', sneers: '...for me, men are no more than wooden posts, fields no more than plots of earth that produce grass ...

the sea a reservoir of salt, of energy, of fish ...' we are supposed to shudder at the barren soul of Capitalism. But the text we are reading is just as barren. M. Pilhes, who is revealed at the end as not only the author but the narrator of the book, was, according to the blurb, for many years 'a top executive with a lead ing French advertising agency'. He doubt less believes that his long familiarity with big business, combined with humanist values, has armed him for a searing attack on corporation imperialism but, on the evidence of this book, he has left it too late. The steel-and-glass have entered his soul. A week of curiosities and some original talent. George Moor's three novellas range from Yorkshire to Japan. They differ widely in tone, from the sinister reverberations of the title story to the hilariously pawky humour of 'Nightingale Island'. In the first, a mysogynistic Yorkshireman is charmed, his mind and ter ritory invaded by the mysterious, auburn Mrs Fox, his tenant, who disappears, leaving only terrifyingly animal traces: 'The dim cold room had been the abode of foxes...' There is real talent for scarifying here, quietly built up, and the story lingers, gnawing worryingly at the mind, just enough obfuscation to keep the apprehension itching. However, the Japanese setting provides a surer base for the author's more confident bent for wild, dead-pan invention. An English teacher links up with a former student, who introduces him to the delights of whisky smuggling and, subsequently, gaol. The outlandish incident and alien setting are approached with earthy inventiveness: a stolid red-brick foundation which soars to pinnacles of fantasy; often very funny.

James Lees-Milne is quite another matter. Round the Clock is a slight, mannered formal dance around the idea that over-demonstrative love alienates its object. Each member of the St Clair family, including the dog and the housekeeper, is besotted with another, but in no case is the attachment reciprocated. Everyone is under illusions about everyone else and, specifically, blind to their own self-love. But the plot, which is minimal, is merely a contrivance for a series of cynical observations on self-delusion, in which the dog is used for the author's olympian purposes.

The sledgehammer approach is combined with fine exactitude of observation about the physical 'world which he approaches with abounding imagination, creating impressions of an English world which he clearly loves, but which houses people whom he clearly doesn't. In this as well as in his style, he recalls Pope.

Finally, oddity of the week is The King of the Dead, a collection of very shorts stories by a Libyan writer living in Ireland. Beat that. In the belief that fiction is for opening windows on other worlds, inner and outer, I recommend this collection, particularly for the moving descriptions of childhood in a Bedouin family. You may also be moved to ponder on what makes a short story. But you'll certainly not read anything else like it this year.

Mary Hope