New Novels
WITH disrespect to neither place of origin it could be suggested that Three Lives is a typical English novel and Peyton Place a typical American one. By some people the former may be thought stodgy, the latter nasty. But of such people and such terms no cognisance need be taken here.
In any event, Lettice Cooper's Three Lives (the titlewas once Gertrude Stein's) is not at all stodgy. Homely, yes, and Yorkshire admittedly, but wholesome. There are few brushes with the natives, and for the Southron folk the language difficulty has been reduced to a minimum : re- maining stumbling-blocks (e.g., 'It's barn to tek oop') can be walked round. The scene is Nun- barrow Hall, a place not unlike the present Ashridge, where at weekends self-improving adults are lectured by what are known as dis- tinguished authors on such subjects as 'The Future of the Novel' and 'The Writer's Position in the World Today.' Just arrived to take up his duties as first warden is Lawrence Westlake, with his wife Margery and their children. It becomes clear that Margery is one of the three Lives. Amyas Durrant, introvert owner of the hall and still occupying its west wing, is the second Life. The third is, presumably, young Tod Greenwood, miner's son who hates mining and loves poach- ing. All are good risks. Steadfastly resisting any temptation to be satirical about it, the author adroitly dramatises the earnest warden at work, his aims, ideals, frustrations, his resentment of interference from the chairman of the education committee, his ultimate reliance upon Margery.
Margery is all our joy—as natural a young wife and mother as has given life to any novel this side of the war. Overwrought, she wastes her sym- pathy and love upon Amyas, who, thanks to Angst, is an interesting though not an endearing person. When for reasons not made too obvious he an- nounces his intention of going off to live in France with Tod the miner's son, she comes as near a breakdown as such a grand coper could permit herself. To suggest that this is a typical English novel is to offer a compliment to current home- grown products.' Nothing is here for jeers; in dignified prose it is faithful to what in our hearts at our best moments we know to be true of the generality of our fellow creatures.
What Grace Metalious in Peyton Place believes to be true of the inhabitants of her small New England town is startling—or would be if by now we did not know what to expect of small towns anywhere in America : the whole gamut of commotions, that is to say, from abortion to zymosis. To be shocked by such a standardised performance is no longer possible. Redeemed from monotony only at the cost of becoming ludicrous, it reaches a sticky end : 'Oh, I love you, she cried silently. I love every part of you. Your beauty and your cruelty, your kindness and ugliness.' The apostrophiser of the town is Allison, a would-be novelist who has just been seduced by a literary agent with the help of such lines as, 'You are truly beautiful. You have the long, aristocratic legs and exquisite breasts of a statue.' She is grieved when he turns out to be a married man; deeply grieved when, after all, he fails to find a publisher for her novel. Informed opinion considers it extremely unlikely that such a thing could happen over here. English literary agents seem to be able to 'place' anything.
It is doubtful whether since male homo- sexuality was admitted as a subject for treatment in English fiction it has inspired a more satisfac- tory novel than Martyn Goff's The Plaster Fabric: Accepting as unsurprising the fact that Laurie Kingston, a bookseller's assistant, should be picked. up at Marble Arch by Tom Beeston, a Guardsman, and that Tom should later be taken over by Laurie's girl friend, Susan, a Jewish artist, it proceeds through a series of untoward incidents to reveal, without unduly stressing, the private agonies and anxieties of respectable 'queers.' Knowledge and understanding of their difficulties is all it asks for; and it procures interest in them by a story—quite a good story in its own right— in which the normal are not neglected.
Laughter is what E. L. Malpass is after in Beefy Jones. He will get it only from those who can readily believe in the moronic Beefy himself, even if they jib at the gang of rogues of which he is a member under the directorship of Ida, a woman who holds that if crime doesn't pay it ought to. Beefy and his friends—Peg Leg Evans, Joe Vodka, Willie One Eye, Lofty Longbottom and Heck the sec.—inhabit the loft of a church hall, Beefy sleeping in a roll of linoleum with a hassock for pillow. Belief in him is a plant of slow growth, but patiently nurtured it flowers at last into pale smiles, and the preposterous goings- on in a Midland town gradually build up into a sentimental farce which is at least originally con- ceived and owes (alas) nothing to the Damon Runyon whom it recalls except a few Ameri- canisms. 'Erbye Dwid Mee' is English, not Welsh, nor American, and not funny. It was said to be Beefy's favourite hymn.
Where fiction is concerned Pliny's Ex Africa sem per aliquid novi is losing its aptness. By A. A. Murray's The Blanket it is difficult not to be re- minded of Blanket Boy's Moon and Turn to the Dark. It is the story, told with simple impressive; ness, of Lepotane, son of the second but of Phiri, a Basuto chief. Under his father's orders he assists at a ritual murder, the victim of which is, by mistake, his own brother. Horror leads him to confess and thus involve his father and others. What has not been explained to him is that by turning King's Evidence he himself escapes con- viction. Bewildered when set free, he returns to a hostile village. Will he be accepted as chief? He establishes his authority. No more medicine men. The good life that is to be will wipe out the shame that has come upon the village. And perhaps he will marry Mamolai, his sweetheart, a Christian convert, who had told him, 'I shall be married in a church. And I shall wear a white dress and a white veil.' Her favourite hymn is `Jesu, Lover of my Soul.'
DANIEL GEORGE
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