Mr. Sloping-Both-Ways
Peron. By Frank Owen. (Cresset Press, 21s.) As well as acquisitiveness, the motives of authors include inquisitiveness, vanity, selfishness, bloody-mindedness, injured pride, megalomania, modesty, generosity, moral conviction and the literary equivalent of incurable loquacity. I can- not put my finger on Frank Owen's motive in writing Peron.
It did cross my mind that, as a man who knows a lot about the popular press, Mr. Owen was going on the assumption that it was the woman in the case which made it essential to give the story the full front-page treatment. That is what it gets, though without the headlines. History and geography are treated with the minimum of weight, but Evita is pushed forward whenever pos- sible. It would be unjust to Mr. Owen to suggest that he does this in an ungallant way: indeed, while not making any bones about her question- able methods of collecting money he goes out of
dis- her of be hey to hat jig, hat ers his way to emphasise that some of it was tributed with generosity and sincerity in attempts to improve the present and future Argentina. There are passages which ought to printed in a specially sloping type, so far do t lean backwards to do justice to Evita and eve: Peron himself, but Mr. Owen does not shirk w he sees as his duty—the exposure of the swindll terror, scandal, concupiscence and treachery I were part of the lives of the Perons, their follov and, for a time, their unhappy country.
GERARD
Previous page
