Stopping Short and Running On
Cadenza: An Excursion. By Ralph Cusack. (Hamish Hamilton, 18s.)
READING this collection of anecdotal and sensual reminiscences by a very Irish Irishman is an enjoyably unnerving experience : one never knows what is going to happen next. Also, one is often not quite sure what is happening at the time. From beginning to end the writer is in an advanced state of verbal intoxication; but the impression of monotony which this condition might give to his readers is avoided by the use of amazingly varied and abruptly changing rhythms. 'It was long before Hitler and his doings and his epoch on a wide, dusty road north of Ljubljana in a high valley of the rocky Karawanken : she was dark and dark-skinned and very, very supple. We were cycling along and the cycle-wheels were spinning in the sunlight, sifting through a paling, backwards for a fall, forwards for the outing. I was looking our for plants.' The amount of writers, and indeed of ways of writing, whose influence might be traced in this short passage alone, is so impres- sively large that perhaps one should just forget about them and grant Mr. Cusack the quality of originality. He is an experimental writer in the sense that he is prepared to try anything once. This book is not for those who like prose to stop short of its full meaning; but those who do not mind being carried by words ahead of their con- tent, and are prepared to journey mentally a little way back from the effect of a passage to reach its import, will find Cadenza a stimulating and attrac- tive work.
FRANCIS WYNDH AM
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