Sitt,—Seldom can a practised master of the literary snakes-and-ladders game
have given himself away so completely as Mr. Kingsley Amis did last week. After two columns of virulent sniping at the 'highbrow travel-book' (I bet he doesn't talk about 'highbrow novels' unless they're written by the wrong people) he ends with an exhortation to such authors as Mr. Peter Mayne 'to write the thing as a novel.' 0 sancta simplicitas! Naturally, the fact that Mr. Amis is himself a novelist (or at least has published a novel) hasn't influenced his judgement, any more than the fact that, the kind of travel-book he slates is steadily increasing both its serious reputation and its sales. Though he describes The Narrow Smile (with ludicrous inadequacy) as 'a straight- forward account of the Pathans,' he admits, rather nervously, Mr. Mayne's talent for character-drawing; and then, presto, out goes this invitation to the new and dangerously popular opposition group to come in under the old umbrella. Mr. Amis, in fact, is worried; his vested interests are being dis- turbed.
His attack is a characteristic one. 'Elaborate and unfashionable graces'—well, we know Mr. Amis is a great one for fashions, though what they have to do with literary values only Mr. Antis and the sociologists know. Anyway, he makes the fatal mistake of quoting a little hit of Mr. Lee; it stands out like an oasis in the desert of Mr. Amis's own scratchy, reach- me-down, utility prose. This elevation of gracelessness into grace is a fashion most of us, I suspect, could do without. (So is the sniggering facetiousness, the priggish urban puritanism which colour its author's senti- ments.) It probably explains, too, the inappli- cability of his metaphors: if he really expects anyone to find greener grass in Spain cr Pakistan he's in for a big disappointment.
Lastly, I would like to remind him that 'western civilisation' includes the Mediter- ranean, which largely produced it; and that the prevalent habit of travelling south is due to an urge to avoid, not so much 'the exhausted sterilitjes' of that civilisation as a whole, as the cold, tasteless urbanism of its
Nordic,sector; a sector in which that prince of provincial bores, Mr. Amis's own Lucky Jim, is clearly more than at home.—Yours faith fully-,
PETER GREEN 55 Oakley Gardens, Chelsea, London, SW3
' [Mr. Amis is in Portugal, and the Spectator has not yet been able to obtain his comments on these letters.]
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