In the know
HENRY TUBE
Westward to Laughter Colin Maclnnes (MacGibbon and Kee 30s)
In the strange half-light of journalism, where subject-matter appears more important than its treatment, and where a transient social :`problem' (homosexuality, immigration. abortion) gains more attention than the permanent problems of our nature, it is not surprising that Colin Maclnnes has been much praised for being a `documentary' novelist. Nor is it surprising that Mr Maclnnes himself, having intended to be no such thing, should treat the compliment with reserve; for, though praise of any kind is grateful, to be praised today for giving the social facts is to be relegated tomorrow to the social archives. With the proper caution of a true novelist, then, he asks us to think of his novels, City of Spades and Absolute Beginners, 'as poetic evocations of a human situation, with undertones of social criticism of it; wildly romantic in mood, and as rigorously analytic as I can be, by implication'.
But for all his disclaimer, the documentary element in his novels does loom large. Time and again we find scenes in which one character who knows the inside facts about, say, the behaviour of the police, or whores. or West Indians in London, laboriously fills in another character who doesn't. These scenes become extremely tedious at second reading and often seem to be created solely in order to carry the required information. Seem, but I suspect are not. Rather than being forced to have one character fill in another in order to put across the docu- mentary facts, the truth is surely that Mr Maclnnes works the other way round. The human situation which he best under- stands and best evokes is that in which a knowing, hardened person puts it across an ignorant, innocent person.
Now there is no reason why a subtle and sympathetic novelist should not extract much good ore from this basic relationship. Per- haps not quite all human life is there, but at least a large part of it is. If Mr Maclnnes has not up to now extracted as much as he might have done, it has been due to his own relationship with his reader, which has been too openly, too crudely that of the person in the know to the person not. Furthermore, that of a nerccm in the know about un-
pleasant facts in which he is clearly anxious to rub his pupil's face. The odour of sancti- moniousness rises pungently from such passages as this (in Mr Love and Justice): "You know", Edward said, "these hospitals are really terrific. . . . People should know what goes on inside these places". "You might say, Ted", said Frankie, "they should know what goes on inside the cells and jails and station headquarters, too . . . here every- one is so damn innocent: so simon- pure. . . ." ' It is from Mr MacInnes's moral disappro- val of his readers, his habit of fixing them with a stony pedagogic glare over the top of the book, that most of the faults in his novels proceed: the lack of detail in the characters, the clumsily rigged viciousness of the plots (a rap on the knuckles to those counting on a happy ending), the sheer absence of interest in many of the situations, but in particular the insecurity of the style, which can be literary, careless and strident by turns. On the other hand, it is because of what lies behind the moral disapproval, a fierce sympathy with those who are not readers, a sense of outrage at what society does outside its back door while simpering odiously at its front, a rare understanding of what it is actually like to live under jungle law, that the persevering reader will refuse to turn his back on Mr Maclnnes.
Westward to Laughter is his reward. Abandoning none of his customary ingredi- ents, not his basic relationship of instructor to instructed, nor his inexorable plot, nor his rigorous concentration on the underparts of society, nor even his moral framework, Mr MacInnes has succeeded in distancing himself from his fiction, with the most mar- vellous results. At its simplest, this is an adventure story almost in the class of Kidnapped, whose opening it consciously recalls. Alexander Nairn, thrown like David Balfour on the mercy of a wicked uncle after the Jacobite Rising of 1745, is treacher- ously shipped off to the West Indies. More unfortunate than Balfour, though no less resourceful, Nairn encounters no Alan Breck Stewart, but reaches the West Indies, where he is first enslaved, then becomes a pirate and is finally hanged. It is, on the face of it, a grim tale, and Mr Maclnnes naturally spares us none of the anguish of contemplating the conditions of misery and squalor on which our ancestors throve: 'There is not one soul, son' says an old salt from a slaver, as he quaffs 'grog in the port of Bristol and instructs our hero, 'not one in this opulent agglomeration—that is not sustained, in all its civilised pursuits, by the fruits of the cargoes lying about us on the quays!' But perhaps because of their historical setting, perhaps because of the well-estab- lished literary genre to which they adhere, Mr MacInnes's characters, though con- structed on the general types he has used in earlier books, have gained individuality.
Still subordinate to the action, they no longer swim about in it like transparent fish, but display shades and colours which im- measurably increase the story's effect. Mr Newbury, the planter: Alexander's uncle, Zachary; and the pirate, Captain Nayle, all belong to Mr MacInnes's 'quiet villain' type, but each is a separate concoction of nastiness and charm. Diana, the planter's daughter, is a unique bitch, while the seventeen-year-old narrator is the best creation of all: an absolutely consistent and credible mixture of innocence and self-reliance, courage and rashness such as Mr Maclnnes has often attempted but never brought off until now. Above all, he has invented a style, which although deliberately 'period' in flavour, is really a perfect vehicle for his own special tone of voice. Mr Maclnnes has always been fond of curious little tricks and turns of usage, of throwing the high-flown pearl among the inarticulate swine and watching the effect, but where in his contemporary settings this is apt to seem pedantic, here in the calculated artifice of its setting it becomes humorous and lively. To tell this dreadfully gripping story in such an exhila- rating manner, with such an unmistakable sense of relish, is to take the reader by storm, confounding and uplifting him at the same moment. It may not be quite what the moralist ordered, but I believe that Mr Maclnnes the novelist has secretly had it in for Mr Maclnnes the moralist of all these years.
Previous page
