Fiction
By WILLIAM PLOMER • ONE of the principal dangers that beset the novelist is the mismanagement of language, and it is a danger. that none of these four authors has altogether succeeded in escaping. No doubt such mismanagement is sometimes a reflection of a want of balance or discipline in the workings of an author's intelligence, thus Herr :Non- SalomOn's isTiting suffers -from an excess of cerebration, Misi Elizabeth Madox Roberts strains too .much after tragic and prophetic effects, and Mr. Fallas strains after them too little •; but sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Maurice Baring, it seems to imply what might almost be called an excess of balance. Mr. Baring is an experienced writer—Darby and Joan is his forty-ninth book— and is deservedly admired for his uncommon qualities, not . the least of which are decorum, clarity, and restraint-. )He believes, he says, that " the spirits of truth . . . undiluted, are too raw for the drinker of fiction. For in fiction there is a degree of truth which is trop vrai pour etre toldre." For better or worse, the contemporary drinker of fiction has tended, under American influence, to acquire a taste for strong waters, and admirers of the school that has produced The Postman Always Rings Twice, They Shoot horses, Don't They ? and Paths of Glory may-find their palates too vitiated to saviour Mr, Baring's delicate distillations. His story, he tells is derived from a sixteenth-century source, but he gives it -a nineteenth-century setting. It is a good, story,•and tells of two lovers separated by mischance and Misunderstanding arising from the non-delivery. of a lettersdriven far apart, more or less unsatisfactorily -married, and only reunited after- a long series of experiences, which include murder and sudden death. Although this story is in some was affecting, 'and is told with taste and,often marked by light and elegant toucheS, it. suffers from two disadvantages. The first is that Mr. Baring seems to turn the whole world into a drawing room, and a Victorian drawing room at that ; the second is that in his pursuit of simplicity and stylistic good manners he often falls into a way of writing so plain and flat that it may be called, in its context, a mishandling of words, for he gives us again and again an account of individual movements and social engagements that becomes by repetition almost burlesque. At the same time he takes undue pains to avoid stirring his readers, as if the least excitement would be too much for them.
The Wooden Pillow is another book which suffers from having been written from an outmoded point of view. It has a damaging blurb, which includes references to " peeps into old Japan " and " peeps into the hearts of the elusive Geisha," besides an extraordinary statement to the effect that Much of what remains of the beauty of un-Westernised Japan has not yet been seen by Western eyes. Turning to the book itself one cannot help regretting that anybody should have seen fit to produce yet another of these peeping books on a subject that has been peeped at far too often. Mr. Carl Fallas appears as an arch and belated follower of the school-of Loti, an amateur of the quaint, the tiny, and the obviously pretty :
" Oh, Rice-in-grain,' suddenly called Thistle-flower in mock distress, ' you have trodden on a tear I. '-"
Admittedly there are numerous aspects of Japanese life in which quaintness, smallness and obvious prettiness are to be found, but we have heard ton much about them from fond European-visitors, and it is high time for more important things to be noticed.. .1;h0 Woodes, t an-a Is:, on internal evidence, IL deal-With triviaj.eveil ts at a -Lime Lan:. long alter the Russo-Japanese.War, and their i rig iality is only,redeeined here and:there IsY flieWriY in which I lie■' are treated, while Mr. FallaS often marg. -his- effects by a headstrong .inahility to find the mot juste. Thus sake cannot possibly be called an " acrid " drink, it is not a national habit to take one's bath " standing up," the obi, or sash, is not tied in a bow, nothing so singular is to be found in Japan as a " doll-like " tree, the strident' chirruping of cicadas can scarcely fall as " music " 'on even a doting ear, and what on earth can the insect be which utters " ceaseless bell-like notes ." .2 .Distance seems to have lent inaccuracy ,as. well as enchantment to Mr.' Fallas' view. He gives us, in the inist• desultory and ineon- sequent fashion, an amatory episode Between a young European named . Grier, the reason for Whose presence.' in ;Tapart is, i think, nowhere given, and a yoimg Japanese girl, namedKaya. The great difficulty in writing of such episiscles (as ; in experiencing them) is as a rule the language barrier, :for the Japanese speak one of the most, difficult of tongues and do not easily master English. Though the utterance of sweet nothings may sometimes have to stance in real life it would make heavy going in a novel, so Mr. ['alias has had to strain probability a little in order to enable people to talk to each other: -1 Unfortunately tiresome l i t cr al t rans- lotion of honorifics—the substitution' of " honourably " for " please " is an example—only makes for more quaintness. The episode ends with the usual departure,of the sentimental Western male, and, although Mr. :Fillies give us here' and there an effeetie 'Scene, he Makes-far toe much of his trivilil- ities, land throWS 'no new or unexpected light on Japan. WithOat- writing anything like a sociological novel, lie might well have attempted to convey some idea of the tremendous forces .at. work in the ,country at the time of which' he writes, if only' as the essential background for little things. To read .11-Cannot he Stormed is to sigh for - little things, for Herr von Salem„ )1 1 gives us sociology at.fts most ponderous, and it is riot yeryessy to understand why he has chosen to Put it inn More or ley; S n id ioal forth.” We have had a number of novels in the last few ye; Us dealing with post-War Germany, and some of 'theni have been well done. Herr von Salomon has a special case to present. 1 lis hero; Hans Iversen„ known as lye, is a war veteran. " When he began to observe the World consciously he found himself in a dirty-grey, devastated landscape in which an unceasing bait-of-iron poured down from the sky," and peace gave him on the whole the impression " that he had been transferred to another battle-sector." He began to fight, as journalist and agitator, for the farmers of north-west Germany against economic hardships and bUreaueratic interference, but was arrested and imprisoned in Berlin, where he remained, struggling to maintain his principles in that huge ferment of conflicting ideas and political ! • rivalries, endlessly talking and thinking, often interestingly, I about the problem of the Jew, the position of the artist, the plight of the farmers, the place of religion, the trend of power, and such matters, till the rubber truncheon felled him in the end. Ile is the only character in the book with any semblance of life, and we are left knowing. little more about him than the way his mind works. Herr yon Salomon, like his hero, is evidently a deeply serious thinker :, as a writer he makes demands to which only certain-deeply serious readers are likely to respond. Sometimes one paragraph occupies five pages, and on a single page one finds. phrases like " form of agrarian revolution," " process of industrialisa- tion," " constitutionally. to reorganise . the, industrial apparatus," " the reorganised process . of production," guaranteeing stern-lay," " the productivity of the land cannot be notiCeably',enhaneecl,"' " comingwith the necessity, for a moreecononsy based 011 Collectivism." . For relief of a sort her rhetorical passags, sometimes powerful, sometimes turgid.; of which 'tine following sentence is an example : " For where would be, any hope, except in the certainty that even the crudest actors on the Iimelit-stage,Ahle night-figures of the gutter; the exhausted bodies on the tops of omnibuses;lhe apoplectic masses of flesh outside the little hells, that the *hold 'Carnivarpro- cession spewed out on to the,,streets.fromsvery door 'and entranao,, ' is the plaything of an untamable force, teased hither and thither by dark menacing forces, exposed and surrendered, torn between the choice of being the salt of the earth, or dust and ashes whipped on by the all-powerful will which knocks at every door, surrounded by breakers like 'an island in thIL:::::l4 i novels about people in :ist:o i;0,ea? " Miss Roberts has written a the remoter fruits 'cif Kentrieky, and lie 'Sat Fin.111 a Raven deals, hi'PrieklY prose, with the same part of the world. It would not perhaps be wholly unfair to quote from a soliloqUy of a certain Dickon words which might almost serve as an epitome of the book :, " In beginning was Chaos, unformed matter. Runs then a long tale, natural processes. In the end Chaos. All wore out."
Previous page
