Graces and Disgraces
The Fume of Poppies. By Jonathan Kozol. (Michael Joseph, 13s. 6d.)
IN his new novel Yukio Mishima interprets the events leading to the burning of a Kyoto temple by a neurotic Zen novice in 1950. Mizoguchi is ugly and a stutterer : the Golden Temple symbol- ises 'beauty' for him and, as such, cuts him off from normal life. When he gazes at a woman's breast, it is transformed into the Temple : beauti- ful but sterile. Eventually, for motives less clear- cut than my synopsis suggests, he sets fire to the Temple. The book ends : 'I felt like a man who settles down for a smoke after finishing a job of work. I wanted to live.'
If the rest of the novel were as economical, as honest, as this, it would be a remarkable work. Unfortunately Mishima gives the impression of striving to be simultaneously a very Western novelist (philosophical disquisitions and conscien- tious documentation) and a very Eastern novelist (symbols galore). That the philosophising bores is not the translator's fault : when he is given a chance (as in the fine description of an approach- ing typhoon and such visualisations as 'My soli- tude grew more and more obese, just like a pig') he makes the most of it. But this novel is a carica- ture of post-war Japanese fiction. Mizoguchi is the typical hero : unhealthy, nastily conscious about his perversities, alternately arrogant and self-abasing, an inveterate inteIlectuttfiser yet contemptuous of reason. The incidents are similarly typical : a young woman squeezes milk out of her breast into a cup of tea held by an army officer; Mizoguchi tramples on the belly of a pregnant prostitute; Kashiwagi tells how he raped a widow of sixty as she worshipped his club- feet. . . .
After speaking of the book's Dostoievskian quality, its 'power,' Miss Nancy Wilson Ross re- marks in her introduction that the episodes are mostly 'presented free of judgment.' Despite its nominally powerful incidents, I would say that the novel is conspicuously lacking in power—and precisely because it is devoid of moral sensibility (which, by the way, is not exclusively a 'Puritan,' or even Western, accessory). Consequently noth- ing really matters : the trampling of the prostitute is unpleasant, not powerful; the burning of the Temple is shocking and ridiculous (in the way that the price of tobacco is), not powerful; the hero could eat his mother raw and we should only feel a faint disgust with the author. We have estab- lished no moral connection with Mizoguchi; as a character he is rather less 'powerful' than Alice's Red Queen. The episodes are gratuitous, just as the recurring 'symbols' omit to symbolise. But the book is certainly of cautionary interest, e.g., to our current Zenthusiasts.
How different is the home life of 'the Work- house Graces' ! Sisters Peter, Paul and Borgia (the cook, of course) are tending the workhouse's last survivor. When she dies, they will be recalled to their convent, ruled by an icy upper-class Mother Superior. However, Fate takes a not altogether Christian hand, and they end with more 'guests' than they began with. The good characters are rewarded, by being helped to America or matri- mony, and the bad are punished, though only by being foiled. The Workhouse Graces is 'library fiction' at its most accomplished. Within the con- ventions, it is beyond criticism. Life simply isn't like that : we wish it were.
The events of The Brink, or something analo- gous, could happen, one fears. A Russian missile crashes near an Air Force base in Nebraska. It turns out to be a failed space-rocket, but the retaliatory bombers have passed the point of no recall, and the Third World War has started—
except that Colonel Goldwater, acting on a hunch, has recalled the bombers. He is arrested for dis- obeying orders. One is permitted to save the world only if one does so in accordance with service regulations. There's a good story here, marred by the booming voice in which it is told : rather like a pacifist sermon accompanied by grinding of teeth and brandishing of fists. The characters are primitive; Mr. Brunner cares only for getting his message across: 'though nobody wants war, some people need war.' But he paints a blacker picture than perhaps he intended—in fact most of his characters seem to want war—and is hard put to it to end his novel without ending the world. Maybe he's not far out at 'that: dance .on the brink long enough, and war declares itself.
The remaining novels are about love. Love, alas, is what makes publishers' lists go round. At the age of twelve, `Joe' goes to live with her
artistic uncle and aunt (and Mel, the third person of the•menage and not half as charming a chap
as the . author thinks) in Percy Street. After a decent interval she presses her virginity upon Mel : 'Everybody else is always getting in and out of bed, so why shouldn't, I?' (That's what practi- cally every fictional character says these days, as soon as conceived.) Later she marries a solicitor
and leads a nice ordinary cultivated life in Ken- sington. One day she will probably write a neat and entertaining book about how she was Brought up in Bloomsbury. The Fume of Poppies, concerning two students who run away from Harvard and make love all over, is similarly epitomised in one of its sentences. 'Wendy's skirts had a way of riding up.'
D. J. ENRIGHT
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