Incredible America
WHO were the Mizners The Mizners were an eccentric " old " Californian family whose most remarkable members were named Addison and Wilson. These two flourished, in all meanings of the word, during the first quarter of the century, and they form some- times the theme, sometimes the thin connecting thread, of Alva
• Johnston's ferociously entertaining chronicle.
How were they incredible ? They were incredible in behaviour and livelihood. Addison was the less incredible ; he was only incredible in becoming an architect of quarter-million-dollar Palm Beach houses without knowing how houses were built. He excelled at drawing crayon sketches of what he wanted and at interior decora- tion ; the actual construction was up to assistants. His genius emerged when buildings were nearing completion. Then he would rip a wall down to resite a window or insert an arched doorway leading only to the back of a chimney, rebuild a tower by shouting directions to the masons, reluctantly agree to provide a staircase (exterior : an interior one wasn't " called for "). This off-the-cuff procedure" kept his buildings from smelling of the drawing-board." The result would embody his conception of a Spanish-Moorish- Gothic house- that had been bombarded, sacked and patched up during the Peninsular War. Men in hobnailed boots tramped up and down staircases to simulate the marks of spurs, a marble mantel- piece was sledgehammered and stuck together again to implant an atmosphere of ancient violence, furniture was attacked with broken beer-bottles, ice-p.cks and acid to take the newness off. Spain was looted for church relics, paintings, tapestries, ceilings, ironwork and (with King Alfonso's help) the panelling from the Salamanca chamber
• where, reputedly, Ferdinand and Isabella gave Columbus his com- mission. Add.son loved culture.
• Bow was Wilson incredible ? Everything he did was incredible. Just take a look. Starting as rich man's son, he stopped it soon and became enough things to supply any two writers with jacket-flap lists of occupations. He was manager to a fighting bear and, later, Stanley Ketchel, the Michigan Assassin ; speaker of " Latin " (really Spanish obscenities) at a travelling medicine-show ; ballad- singer with lantern-slide accompaniment ; roulette-wheel fixer and gambling-hell proprietor ; prospector and chiseller on the Klondike, where he .lost two teeth biting a frozen doughnut ; ringmaster, Old-Master racketeer, drug-addict, ex-drug-add,ct—the tot. He might have been a writer, and was bullied into collaborating in a couple of inflammatory plays, but his ideas were usually talked away or shelved for the easier and more pleasurable art of" gentle larceny," locating saps, saturating them with charm and gags, then plundering them in such a way as to proVoke no kickback. His grasp of the allied art of conversation is often mentioned in these pag s, but less often demonstrated. Wisecracker and deflater rather than wit, he suffers by transcription and his sayings serve chiefly to illustrate his temperament.
The climax of incredibility came with the Florida boom of 1924-25. Johnston's g ft for telling, combining and piing up an scdotes is just right for this part of his tale. Wh le cities, complete with !tote Is, film-studios and universities, were springing up oven ett on paw.' and estate-agents' relief maps, while a hot-dog man, a m nor poet, a bicycle racer were making p:ckings toialling twi n.y-i wo mil on dollars, Addison was building his houses and Wilson waq 11
the suckers and annexing parts of the beach. The crash broke them both. And who had paid for it all ? Not they and the other losers, but everybody all over America who, during a period of rising pro- ductivity, unconsciously floated the new millionaires. It was gentle larceny on a national scale. No wonder Wilson enjoyed himself while it lasted.
They were incredible all right, but so was everyone and everything around them. The Mizners flourished merely because, with their extra share of that outrageous American vitality that seems to lie at the mid-point of horseplay, business-men's bonhomie and go- getting, they fitted their environment perfectly. What is the reader to think of that vitality and that environment ? The question arises as soon as he sees that Johnston's pervasive irony is only smartness, only a way of not committing oneself. An easy answer is that it couldn't happen here • and the reasons why it couldn't can be glimpsed as obstacles 'between ourselves and an understanding of America. Those interested in this problem will have to read this book, and so will those who want to hear about the General and the rubber frankfurters, Mama and the fire-engine, and the technique (" a closely-guarded secret for years ") for risiug in any profession without money.
KINGSLEY AMIS
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