Fiction

By SEAN O'FAOLAIN River Niger. By Simon Jetty. (Boriswood. 7s. ad.)

A .Murder. Makes a Man is an extraordinarily puzzling book. It is offered by the 'Publishers.... as a novel by " the Catholic Dreiser," which purports to mean that Mr. Walsh has inter- preted life by values other than those of Dreiser and the Naturalists. The challenge is exciting, and so, indeed, is the novel, though not in the -usual sense of the word, It deals with a ingrderess and her paramour, both Catholics ; she is sentenced to a limited term of imprisonment, he to death, commuted to life-imprisonment. :But there, about a fourth of the way through, is. where Mr..Walsh really begins, and for

the remainder of the book his sole interest is in the rehabilita- tion of the spiritual life of the convict Stephen Wieskieviez.

It • does not sound very "exciting," baldly stated like that, but by playing tennis between the in-jail and out-of-jail subjectivity and objectivity, and by having as little subjecti- vity as poisible, and by letting us follow this spiritual adven- ture through the life of the chaplain, and a girl friend of Stephen, and the lovable Jew who helps them both, by holding, that is, a balance of interest between more lives than Stephen's—though all well connected—he does hold us in alert emotional partnership with his own interest in this aspect of a human being's life. And since no one will say that it is not an important and interesting aspect, and because Mr. Walsh is a writer of adequate skill, the result is a novel entirely out of the ordinary.

., Yet it is a puzzling book, because, in effect, Mr. Walsh is

not really interested in passion and murder, and his murderess is, in the matter of the murder, of an incredible psychology.

Mr. Walsh is, briefly, only partially interested in the human side of life. One of the best things in the book, for example,

is the scene when the philanthropic Jew, Kaplan, is asked by the convict to buy him a crucifix : one really wonders if Mr. Walsh quite sees the humorous side of this incident at all, for though he handles it as a very interesting incidental, one has the uneasy feeling that what he is really eager to get on to is the point where the Jew will take the crucifix in his hands and begin to philosophise. And yet his priest, his little convent, his old women in the home—all the more lyrical

aspects of life, all that he is really partial to in life—is very touching. I am afraid there is a sectarian bias here, or a moral censorship, which, though kept well in hand, peeps out in such' sneers as that which gives to the antagonists of his partialities such qualities as ",miserly dispositioris, a meagre birth-rate, and a preference for dogs over babies." Still, it

is one of those books one wants to lend around wholesale in sell reli of opinions, and that it arouses so much critical *ea riosity is surely a sign thaf it raises live questions.

(Purely on points of detail .were safety-razors common in 49G7-? –Was psycho-analysis: popularly known then ? Was there bitter anti-clerical feeling in Mexico under Diaz ? • The church and state controversy alwayS existed; but I have the idea that it was not until the Socialist Revolution of 1910

and after the death of Madero' that it became really acute. In a novel with 'a historical progression such details jar.)

Every novelist has to adapt his genius to his material, and

when we turn from Mr. Walsh's 3 to 1 interest in the.'iuner, natural, to Lord Dunsany's 3 to 1 interest in the fantastic we are actually watching another aspect of a similar problem. For Up in the Hills deals with material that at first sight seems very tough wood for Lord Dunsany's delicate chisel. It is the period of the Irish " Civil War " and the hero, or rather the anti-herd (since it is a kind of •'picaresque novel), is one Mickey Connor, the guerilla leader of an illegal army led by one Patsy Ilefferman, and later with the legal army of the Free State ; from this Lord DIP n sany has to extract the stuff on which he will play lightly with his resourceful, inventive, volatile imagination. If Lord Dunsany were not a poet—if, that. is to say, he were a George Birmingham—he could farce it to his heart's content. But it is his great charm that he always has an anchor in reality, like a very long and very light

mooring-rope to a very bright balloon, and his humour is not farce. So, while his ingenuity has a 'grand day-out in getting Mickey into and out of a variety of scrapes, his integrity cannot prevent us from getting now and again a nasty smell of blood until we wonder a little whether. this is all quite in the best of good taste; HOWever, a reviewer is .not an angel and readers with a more angelic indifference to grim impli- cations may be better fitted to get the proper kind of fun out of this light-hearted and charming saga by one of the very fen' modern Irish writers who can still, with Lever, be merry without being '

Yet a third novelist for whom the straight story of events appears to be either of inadequate interest, or, more likely, of inadequate subtlety. Here Lies a Most Beautiful Lady suggests the metaphor of musical undertones ; one strikes a chord and in dying it produces an echoing tone of slightly altered pitch—and in reading this novel one realises presently that one is never hearing the original tone note at all but always the fainter echo. Ostensibly this novel deals with the life of J. J. Billiter, who has married a " ve'rray partit gentil " maid whom he drags all over the world in his adven- turing for furs, oil, timber, revolution, or gold, in Canada, Mexico, or the Carpathians : but in fact it is the novel of Hester Billiter, and when the note of J. J. is struck what we really hear is the undertone of Hester. It is reality at the remove of a very delicate echo, so that one enjoys the manner of this novel at least as much as and probably more than the lavish material. Sometimes this reticent method goes much too far, and in these days of swift readers many will find an annoyance in its allusiveness. The total effect is of a picture seen through a milky light, a conversation or a melody heard muffled by distance, sweet in tone but definitely very cloudy and indistinct.

There is nothing in the least cloudy about Mr. Ralph Straus's Five Men Go to Prison, and there is here no question of an author evading a straightforward story : he revels in it, " in fact," taking a simple burglary and recounting step by step the process of detection and conviction. But circum- stantial reality is always exciting when presented with a live interest, and this narrative boldly exploits that kind of interest without caring a rap for artistic recreation. This is not to say that Mr. Straus is not a craftsman of the most able kind. On the contrary, he knows, perfectly well, like the astute craftsman he is, that artistic recreation is exactly what is not wanted here, just as he knows that what he has written is no more a novel than a volume in Fathous Trials Series '- could. be called a drama ; but, for all that, a Famous Trial can be very dramatic and this book which is no novel makes an excellent yarn.

And lastly the liqueur—River Niger, to be sipped, for a gulp will poison. Full of wisecracks like Oscar Wilde in a nightmare : `Business with the capital B—the B in most men's bonnets.' . . • ' The Godsips died of parallel strokes.' . .* . ' Kiss Y What, 'im ? It would be like throwing kisses into a toob station till he puts his teeth in.' . . . Deptford in those days consisted of fiat-chested houses coughing romance on to the pavement.' . . . 'Finding that to tell the truth would be'uneivil,"Burgundy let it lie.'

These sample bottles give the flaVour. As to the style, which seems intent on revealing as little information as possible :

" She is a permanent orchestra, rendering the tonal symphony of the slave trade against the full-blooded lascivious background of Dahomey. That beauty at which men catch their breath, that rere• dos to the chancel of Venus, is a filigree of death-music caught suddenly in a veil of most sensitive flesh."

And as to the story ? Well, with a style like that who could know what the story is about? And no reviewer should be asked to read such a book twice in a fortnight, and I refuse to. Besides, I repeat, it is a liqueur, not a beer. The late T. E. Lawrence said all that was necessary about it in two lines—though, being an Irishman, he couldn't stop inside two pages more :

" It is too tenuous, too dispersed, too omnivorous. Too-too, in fast. But good, very, very good."

To knoW how a book can be both " too-too " and " very good " one must read River Niger, for there is not (I had almost said, I hope) another like it.