ANOTHER VOICE
On the things which are really important to the ordinary person
AUBERON WAUGH
newly fashionable book reviewer has been drawing attention to himself quite successfully with a thesis which has appeared and reappeared with such fre- quency in the past week or two that we must suppose it has convinced at least a number of literary editors that it is original, or newly relevant, or at very least some- thing which needs saying. The nub of it is that the English novel is declining in intellectual appeal and virtue because it fails to engage itself in the main issues of the day; and the blame for this lies in large part with book reviewers who do not encourage authors to be 'serious' — i.e. engaged or committed, on one side or another, in all these contemporary issues.
Such a view which has been discussed at literary conferences and seminars for much longer than I can remember, is certainly not worth discussing here yet again — we newspaper columnists have altogether more serious things to discuss — except that my eye was caught by the list of issues which, in the far from humble opinion of this Angry Young Critic, are those to which the 'serious' novelist should apply himself. I do not know how the list originally appeared but it first caught my eye in a book of cobbled-up literary journalism which appeared recently, and which I was given to review by the Inde- pendent:
To rest supine in the wide, comforting darkness is an agreeable position, but it is not something you can do in the late 1980s. Mrs Thatcher. The European single market. The Bomb. Fundamentalist Islam. Whatever one may feel about them, they are not something you can ignore, not any more, and the writer who does so is simply not a functioning part of the world.
So taken was the Guardian with this thesis that it bought the serialisation rights of the book (which, as I say, was largely composed of warmed-up journalism) and ran it for several days. Then, on Thursday, this newly fashionable book reviewer was asked by the Independent to give his reflections on the Booker short-list:
Set against the great issues that animate us at the end of the 1980s, the preoccupations of the average literary novel look sadly remote. Mrs Thatcher. The Bomb. Islamic fun- damentalism. They are not something you can ignore, not any more, and the writer who does so is hardly a functioning part of the world.
If there is any significance in the fact that the European single market seems to have dropped out of the list of anxieties which writers must entertain if they are to remain a functioning part of the world, it surely strengthens my point that these subjects are best left to newspaper columnists. Since giving up writing novels, after my fifth, 18 years ago, to concentrate on criticism and current affairs, I have written frequently and at length on all the subjects, except possibly the Bomb which I have never been able to find very interesting.
But it is one thing to treat of these burning topics in a newspaper or magazine article while they are still the flavour of the month, quite another to compose a novel and expect people still to be interested in your views on the subject when the novel appears a year later. No doubt the single European market seemed a good thing to feel strongly about at the time. Since then we have had Aids, the drugs war, the Hillsborough disaster, the Green or Bookerite menace...
Obviously there is nothing wrong with featuring contemporary preoccupations, so long as the novelist can do it in an amusing or original way, but he has to choose his preoccupations very carefully. They must coincide with those of his readers. That is why novels written for vegetarian Hamp- stead housewives tend to be about vegeta- rian Hampstead housewives. To suppose, as this Angry Young Critic does, that more novel readers are preoccupied with Mrs Thatcher, the European single market, the Bomb and fundamentalist Islam than are prepared to be interested in the marriages and love affairs of vegetarian housewives in Hampstead, is to take a gamble. It might pay off, but I see no particular reason why it should. All the evidence suggests that people prefer reading newspaper articles on political subjects, if they are interested in them at all. In neither case would the novelist be addressing us with a universal message, merely shifting from one group to another. It is the inability of so many foreign novelists — especially the French `It's coming out in blue touchpaper-back' — to comprehend that the novel is seldom a suitable vehicle for universal messages which makes foreign fiction little more than a joke. If the novel is not a useful vehicle for political or philosophical truths, the argu- ment runs, it should at least reflect the ordinary everyday life of the society in which it is set. It is true that a few masters of the craft are able to illuminate a wider range of popular experience within their particular societies than others — Water- house, perhaps, in England, Kellman, perhaps, in Scotland (whom I have never read, having no particular interest in work- ing class Clydesiders), Kundera in Czechoslovakia and one or two South Americans — but one is still stuck for a definition of 'ordinary' life which is less questionable than such concepts as 'the average man', `Mr and Mrs Average Bri- ton'.
I wonder if I was alone in detecting a note of desperation in the text of the advertisement for Martin Amis's new novel which occupied a full page of the Independent on Saturday. Over a picture of office workers swarming across Waterloo Bridge at rush hour we read: Today, in London, the average man will think about sex 20 times. One man in three will masturbate. One person will be mur- dered within three days. A woman will be sexually assaulted every three hours. And five children will die from parental abuse within the week. LONDON FIELDS by Martin Amis was published on September 21st by Jonathan Cape. It's a novel about ordinary, everyday life.
Amis can speak for himself and his friends, but I refuse to believe that one man in three of my acquaintance mastur- bates every day or that all masturbate once every three days. If the 31/2 million males in London all think of sex 20 times a day (how can he possibly know?) it is a miracle there is only one sexual assault every three hours. This is not ordinary, everyday life. It is heated minority fantasy, and none the worse for that.
If there is a single distinguishing key to changing English society I would guess it might be the price of housing. I am beginning to doubt whether I shall be able to fit my thesis on this and the distinction between 'junk' and 'real' money into a single page of The Spectator. Perhaps it is time I wrote another novel.
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