Long View of Linklater
READING Tlw Merry Muse, and chasing Magnus once more over the picaresque road which leads him home to Orkney and the salty harshness of reality, makes me ponder again the queer nature of the Establishment Game which we reviewers Play. Somebody from Grimsby; or Nliddlesbrough Writes a goodish novel about middling low-life in Grimsby' or NI iddlesbrough. Some metropolitan reviewers are tickled pink to learn that people from Grimsby or Middlesbrough arc human too. The novel is justly praised; then unwisely over- praised; then the gossip-writers move in. A fashion IS confirmed and for some years the reviewers pay for their initial enthusiasm by owlishly assessing dreary imitations laboriously manufactured by holly boys who would be better off teaching gram- mar, if they know any.
Genius can look after itself, no doubt, but heaven knows what damage is done to potential talent of a respectable order by our persistent inflation of the second- and third-rate by the Young and tender. New books pile up. and from to many of them comes a thin whine that scarcely merits the name of 'protest' and soon ceases to amuse. Hate, envy, malice, gracelessness and greed are great sport, of course, but only V■ hen they are demonstrated by someone with a grasp of the World and a genuinely comic view of it. It is not only in newspaper headlines that irony is danger- ous. There is no satire so outrageous that people Will not take it literally. There is no articulate eccentric who cannot get himself a following. Re- viewers in their small way, and in their bigger way those who operate the wurlitzers of publicity, have a responsibility. Let a youth do his agonised Sparring match with God, or God knows what, not in private as is usual but in public; let one or two good reviewers be captivated by the spectacle; and before you can whisper Pascal or Tupper, here is a• national hero with disciples crying anguish. Between the reek of brithstone on the one hand and the stink of vomit and brilliantine on the other there is little enough fresh air these days in which the ordinary everyday smell of humanity can make itself felt.
Behind the spectacles and beneath that great bald dome the eyes of Mr. Linklatcr look out keenly on the desirable world. There is a glint of the white-maa's ferocity in them, perhaps? The prose well matches the face that one meets on the back of the Penguins, and the north-easterly coolness that comes off the page has the tang of sanity in it.
Two things surprise me now. One is the extreme Seottishness of Linklater. When I was younger and still more ignorant, and hungry for a Scot- tishness as blatant as the war-pipe, the writings of Mr. Linklater struck me as highly Englified affairs. Certainly the Celtic Twilight never cast a Violet shadow on that splendid brow, and as for national frenzy, the reader may be referred to the fine ripe fruit, in Magnus Merriman, of his one incursion into romanticism. The cast of his mind is too sceptical, his muse too hard-headed, for such ploys. He writes out of a long Lowland tradition of sharp-edged preoccupatibn with the here-and-now and impatience with all manner of pie-ln-the-sky, and many a poet from the Makars on would see in him a kindred spirit. It never Occurred to me Until now to see him in that tradi- tion which, in verse, came to a spectacular stop With Burns. The other thing that surprises me is that his reputation has been done something less than justice during recent years. Perhaps it is his total lack of pretentiousness, the direct nature of his imagination, his steadfast inability to be solemn while considering such natural functions as copulation. the sardonic steadiness with which he views our absurdities—maybe it is this, as well as his unevenness, which makes him poor copy for literary speculators and the predators of the gossip columns which follow their lead.
It is somehow characteristic of him that at a time when we are often told about the growing solemnity of youth and the likelihood of another bout of earnest dullness, he should come out with a comedy which celebrates the world, the flesh and old Adam with an ebullience that half a dozen of his heavier-handed juniors in the trade could not muster among them. The Merry Muse is a highly extravagant bit of work. His principal character. Max Arbuthnot, is a respectable. rich Edinburgh law yer. aged sixty, with such an appetite that he gladly tumbles a young woman on the floor of his office:
In the room below, the attention of Hoyle and the junior accountant was again directed to the curiom: rhythmic movement of the ceiling. For a little while they stared at it with bewilder- ment and a wild surmise; and then, as another Bake of dislodged, plaster fell on his ledger. Atkinson let out a wistful sigh,
11' I know anything,' he said . . .
'You know very little.' said Hoyle. . . .
This kind of thing, which abounds, looks simple and is anything but. It is no small feat to create a solid character like Max, supply him with local habitation and a name, make him wholly credible, and then inflate him until he is tw ice the size of life. The plot allows Mr. Linklater to set into the middle of his comedy a kind of Dionysiac interlude which may lead vulgar Westerners like myself to second thoughts about Edinburgh. Max's miserable sister in Peebles finds herself on her husband's death with a curious book on her hands which, she has been led to believe, may be worth something. Max takes over the book, a first edition of The Alerry Muses, Burns's collection of bawdy songs. with eight leaves of manuscript obscenities of matchless brilliance, in BUrns's own hand, sewn into the back. He must first, and quietly, establish their authenticity, so he calls in the aid of a Highland poet whom he knows (and whom his married daughter knows better). This is the darkly melancholy Yacky Doo (Euchaimi Dubh—Black Hector). Yacky Doo loses the book and before you can say 'Whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad' the verses at the back have been copied out and circulated round Edinburgh. For days no work is done. Typewriters are silent. Housewives abandon their stoves. Stern accountants and advocates smile like Silenus. 'And presently from the Gardens came a chorus of gentle rapture like the moan of doves in immemorial elms.' The Athens of the North, it will be seen, compares more than favourably with the pleasure grounds of Antioch. It says a great deal for Mr. Linklater's energy of imagination that he can ram such an improbable cadenza into his comedy and nearly get away with it. In another ludicrous scene he takes death itself in his comic stride. Poor Yacky Doo, the black. beloved Gael who finds the world not 'worth living in, is killed by a car. He has a magnificently farcical funeral attended by assorted literary pundits, most of them straight from life.
Neatness is not the sort of formal quality we should particularly look for in Mr. Linklater's work. What matters is his view of the world and the energy with which he embodies it in comic terms. May he grow increasingly outrageous through his sixties and seventies, correcting our solemnities by drawing attention, in any damned way lie likes, to our hairy tails.
lAIN AM ILION
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