Alpha and Omega
How the World Began: The Volcano God, Part 3. By Philip Freund. (Seeker and Warburg, 21s.) The Centenarians: A Fable. By Gilbert Phelps. (Heinemann, 15s.)
Forty Years On. By Doreen Wallace. (Collins, 13s. 6d.)
The Malefactor. By Humphrey Slater. (Wingate, 12s. 6d.) A Cage for Lovers. By Dawn Powell. (W. H. Allen, 12s. 6d.) The Scales of Love. By Peter de Polnay. (W. H. Allen, 12s. 6d.) The Children on the Shore. By Julia Birley. (Hamish Hamilton, 15s.)
HOW the World Began is the third volume of Philip Freund's impressive and maddening con= versation piece, The Volcano God. Against the background of the Blitz, a series of hysterically articulate intellectuals discourse to a quiet and agnostic central character on the mythical origins of the world, the supposed scientific origins of the World, the inception of life and its evolution, and, for an heroic chapter of 200 pages, the moral state of mankind and the validity and value of re- vealed religiOn. Every now and again they all knock off, but in a couple of pages they're at it again, and the premisses, deductions, syntheses, and illustrations come pouring past like a Derby field. Finally Clement, the central figure who is largely on the receiving end, goes off to fight a fire in the City, where he has a kind of fit— Presumably induced by chronic mental indiges- tion,
The trouble is this. The conversations and arguments are clever, speedy and flexible, by no Means superficial, and very readable for thirty Pages at a time. But it seems as though the same person is talking throughout the entire book, and that it is only by courtesy, as it were, or in order to break up the page, that an occasional remark is made between a different set of inverted commas. For a novel in the Peacockian vein to please, one requires diversity not only in the subject but also in the style of talk : there may be a fruity cynic, a batty vegetarian poet, a hedge priest and what You will, but a varied manner of discourse we Must have. True, Mr. Freund's people differ to the extent that one is an anthropologist, another 'a biologist and so on; but as they all talk in precisely the same fashion, with the same tricks of diction and the same methods of controversy, the total effect is of a party of axe-grinders all 'grinding away like one-oh, admittedly at different types of axe, but with an identical and excruciat- ing squeal.
We have two examples this week of the Apocalyptic Novel—what happens when the Bomb goes off. In Gilbert Phelps's talented but uneven book The Centenarians we are shown a Party of wise old men, all preserved to a great old age by scientific method and their own sheer brutal selfishness, who are conveyed to a moun- tain stronghold by international agreement so that they may survive the passage of the Four Horse- men and preserve the Arts and Sciences of man- kind. Mr. Phelps takes a basically hopeful view of this singular arrangement, and the old men, despite shiftless intervals spent playing whist, get a good deal down on paper and canvas—until the last Man and Woman appear, a deserter and his fancy piece who went on the run before everyone else was killed. The arrival of this promising couple throws the old men into fits of excitement; and a healthy educational routine is devised to fit Adam and Eve for propagating a new world. But Adam and Eve have come from an old world of bubble-gum and juke-boxes. They find the cul- tural atmosphere oppressive, the interest of the old men obscene—as in part it certainly is. All this is good entertainment with a sharp moral tang, but I fancy Mr. Phelps became rather uneasy, at this stage, about how to arrange his final Moral and indeed what this Moral was to be. In the event Adam and Eve, starved of Luckies, throw them- selves over a precipice and leave the old men still adding to the store of Wisdom, which will be unearthed, one assumes, by a New Race at the appointed time. Ars longs, vita brevis, I take it; there are sillier conclusions than that.
Doreen Wallace is more down to earth. She wants to know What would actually happen to you and me, both immediately and in the long run, if H-bombs fell on England. Her answers, given by her hero who tours this country forty years after the explosions, are speculative and rather fascinating. Well-disciplined agricultural communities, for example, survive and prosper, though only after immense labour and reversion to almost pre-historical methods. The universities hold high the torch of Knowledge, supported without payment by a peasantry properly respect: . ful of learning. But had we belonged, like cultured readers of the weeklies, to the urban bourgeoisie, we should have escaped in our cars, run out of petrol in the Welsh hills, failed to develop the natural, resources because of our fecklessness and ignorance of country pursuits, and finally started eating each other.
Short but rather sweet : The Malefactor, re- vised by, Humphrey Slater before his death, is a neatly told soldier's tale of generosity, courage and ingratitude. Mr. Slater was himself a soldier of resource, and he writes about active soldiering with a kind of stammering realism which at first seems merely clumsy but does in fact convey that paradox of action—the feeling of personal inadequacy which is yet combined with extreme clarity of immediate purpose. In A Cage for Lovers a possessive old maid blights the develop- ment of her young female companion. Skilful; but the young woman is so bloody she could be fed to a dragon for all you are likely to care. Peter de Polnay is back with a novel about Paris, as slick as ever and ten times as self-consciously Parisian. Finally, Julia Birley's first novel is much too long but very promising. She is at her best when she can bring herself to be nasty about people, and since she is writing about provincial dons and their wives this should not have been difficult. But Miss Birley is as ample in charity as in length; she• must slash at both.
SIMON RAVEN
ARTHUR DOBBS (1689-1765) was Surveyor- General of Ireland and Governor of South Caro- lina; but his fame rests—or should rest—on his claim to be considered one of the grandparents of Free Trade; his proposals to stimulate Commerce between Britain and Ireland foreshadowed the theories of Adam Smith. He was also one of the first advocates of a policy of full employment. A workmanlike .biography by Desmond Clarke (Arthur Dobbs, The Bodley Head, 25s.) now shows why his name has been forgotten, in spite of his merits. He had neither the background to become dominant in the Walpolean Establish- ment in his own right nor the inclination to fight it and impose himself through opposition. The result was that his engaging personality and un- doubted energy achieved only minor distinction : a waste of what might have been a remarkable talent. BRIAN INGLIS
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