New Novels
The Hate Merchant. By Niven Busch. (W. H. Allen. 12s. 6d.)
PIETER VAN VLAANDEREN, police Lieutenant—a war hero (albeit in the Englishmen's war), a Rugby star—idolised by the little com- munity of Venterspan, is driven by his wife's inadequacy to make fumbling love to a native girl and, under the Immorality Laws of South Africa, destroys himself and his family. This is the burden of Mr. Paton's lament. The story is told in the words and through the eyes of Pieter's Aunt Sophie. This self-imposed limitation deprives Mr. Paton of the possibility of setting the local size of the incident against a broader perspective and accounts for a deal of the unsatisfactoriness of the successor to Cry, The Beloved Country. For 'the author's natural powers break only fitfully through the muffling, repetitive language ; the mannerisms, largely controlled in
the earlier book, have taken command. The story is never given the chance to swell into a tragedy of universal implications.
Not that Too Late the Phalarope is altogether a failure. The drtim- beat of inevitability sounds impressively through its pages. The crescendo of the police-station interrogation is handled with fine economy and bitter force. But it comes close to being the climax of a tract ; and Mr. Paton is too good a novelist to be content with a prize for propaganda, however praiseworthy the cause.. Because we are only shown van Vlaanderen in one dimension it is difficult to accept him or his motivations ; and he is backed by even fainter, flatter characters who contribute little to our feel of the man. The use of a bird symbol—the Phalarope of the obscure title—to pull the narrative up on to another level of experience is too contrived to succeed. Pieter van Vlaanderen stubbornly remains a provincial policeman who gets into trouble. When is a Boer not a bore ? Probably in Mr. Paton's next novel.
With The Rebels we return with a thump to the nineteenth century and the English family saga. Mr. Treece writes well and his manage- ment of the first person narrative developed by different members of a family to build up a rounded picture, is highly skilled. The Fishers are working steadily towards respectability in the Black Country of the 1880s and '90s ; Elijah and Tom, each with his own kind of strength, are well contrasted, and the central narrative of 'their sister Susan achieves at times a characterisation which is almost contrapuntal in its depths and delicacy. The background of clay and shanties, bull-terriers and fist fights is clearly drawn. And yet— and yet I found myself missing the fire and poetry of Mr. Treece's first novel. Perhaps it's just that Ancient Britain is more stimulating than nineteenth-century Darlaston. Perhaps I'm allergic to iron- masters. The fact remains that while admiring Mr. Treece's evident skill, I stayed outside this novel, looking at it, whereas I inhabited The Dark Island.
The Hate Merchant, which recounts the rise and fall of a phoney American preacher trading on race-hatred, is that kind of meaty, glossy, story in the American style which one casts for a film as one goes along. Mr. Busch, the cover proclaims, is also the author of Duel in the Sun which, as a film, won some notoriety (and was I remember, very funny 'in a blood-drenched sort of way) and had a trade nickname : Lust in the Dust. There's not so much lust in this one, just a bit here and there, including a particularly unpleasant scene in a motor-car. Gaspar D. Splane with his " immense, sinister power " and his "hawklike, handsome face" never comes alive ; but Spencer Tracy would do him very well. The acolytes he picks up along the way, Pros, the newspaper man turned publicity merchant, Doc Clouny, Ma Kindertvall—whose Sunshine Mission provides him with his first platform—these are more real ; and they will all give work to good character actors. Let us be clear : the theme with which Mr. Busch is dealing is an important one. It's the It Can't Happen Here theme. Mr. Robert Penn Warren in All the King's Men demonstrated that it could be handled with great read- ability and, at the same time, great honesty. But Mr. Busch has only the theme and the readability ; he doesn't really find out what creates Gaspar D. Splanes nor does he find ont—in more than a parochial way—what the effect is. The feeling of a film treatment with its inevitable superficiality and half-life is omnipresent. Anyway I look forward to seeing Spencer Tracy in the part. Or might it be
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