Enjoyable but...
Tony Palmer
Experiment at Proto Philip Oakes (Andre Deutsch £2.25) A Distant Likeness Paul Bailey (Cape E1.60) The Time of the Crack Emma Tennant (Cape £1.60)
To write a good book is difficult. To write a great book is well nigh impossible, and cer tainly not an achievement come by intentionally. And given that most books described as great are probably little better than good, and most books described as good probably less than good, should one resign oneself to a reading life where even the good book will prove the exception? Should one in fact content oneself with the knowledge that the best one is likely to come across will be the good book and be mercifully relievpd that it is no worse?
None of the books I have read this week .could conceivably be described as great books, although each is enjoyable in its differing ways. Philip Oakes writes a strong narrative about an animal nutrition plant in which lives an ape called Otto who has been taught to communicate by means of rudimentary grunts and a sign language with his 'captors. The book has sociological implications (we are told), although these are so far embedded in the quasi-scientific gloss that Mr Oakes gives his yarn as to be more or less invisible. Emma Tennant has written a (mercifully short) satirical parable about the day the world came to an end when a crack appeared in it right down the middle the Thames and swallowed up all that was nearest and dearest in our civilisation including, presumably, the sewage which had polluted the river. All that remains is the Playboy Club, although that too eventually crumbles. Clearly, a very symbolical tale. And Paul Bailey, in the most strident and ambitious book of the three, retells in fragmentary form the frightened reminiscences of a police inspector who has doubtless been up to no good and is consequently suffering (if that's not too strong a word) from what police apologists delight in calling a guilty conscience. All three books have wit, just, and style, occasionally. They would all win prizes, school prizes that is, for fictional endeavour since they display many qualities thought admirable for the up and coming writer of fiction. They are 'concerned', 'economical', 'well-researched' and 'relevant'. They are also profoundly lazy pieces of writing.
Take Mr Oakes's book, for example. Mr Oakes is a well known writer about the corntemporary 'scene', whatever that is. Words pour out of him like diarrhoea about the 'arts today' and about the 'key personalities of our age'. Opinions he has never lacked. He has spoken authoritatively about The cinema, The theatre, The novel, The poem(and he is a good poet), The opera, The pop song and The television programme. He is the official spokesman, therefore, of Culturespeak, a new by-productof renaissance man, homo sundaytirnesian. Not his fault, of course, more probably ours for believing in such drivel. Yet, given that this is the area he knows best, consider how he treats it in his 'novel.' In scarcely veiled references to that other re
naissance man, the BBC spokesman Robert Robinson, Oakes writes "somehow he made every exchange, however casual, sound like a passage from a Victorian novel. What was more, his manner bred formality where none had existed." Earlier Oakes had described this same commentator's style as a "unique blend of courtesy and choler." Yes, and . . . ? But
there is nothing more. That is the sum total of MrOakes'sdescriptive analysis, it seems. Such a passage, therefore, would fit neatly into an 800-Word profile for Harper's Queen or some other similar organ. But as a character, admittedly a minor one, in a novel? Elsewhere, Mr Oakes ruminates on the dilemmas .ind moral absurdities which afflict the media, again a subject matter one would have thought he had known well. However, the ob
servations he allows us here would scarcely . .
merit inclusion in the Beano.
The. laziness of the writing has • militated against its subject matter, although it
• must be added that the fluency of Mr Oakes's prose — presumably acquired though frequent practice — does make the reading easy. Emma Tennant has had no such practice, on the other hand, but relies for the energy of her piece (a short story rather ;han a novel) upon the curiosity of the story and the mock seriousness of its incidents. Not that her book lacks the picturesque phrase. For example, she describes the tottering towers of Cheyne Walk following the earthquake as being like "exhausted guests at the end of a fancy dress party". There are also numerous genuflections toward fashionable causes — intellectualised Women's Lib being the most odious — although Miss Tennant's disgust at these sociological warts is too. genteel to be
effective. But then, she is genteel. Nothing wrong with that, except it does tend to pre condition one to expect. To expect to be admired, to expect to be wanted, and to expect to write easily. Which is exactly what Miss Tennant does, but not about anything. Her central idea, that a physical earthquake which disrupts accepted social harmony will not necessarily be replaced by a better scheme, lies plonk on the page. It should have been grappled with until the last drop of significance however absurd had been wrested from it. But it has not.
Paul Bailey certainly tries the hardest of the three, and in many ways his book is a con' siderable accomplishment if only in the amount of confusion it gives the reader. To .say that his book is fragmentary would be to imply that it had had an original plan which has now become — fragmented. If so, I would have preferred the original, although the spasmodic quality of the writing does suggest the ravings of The Police Mind. Inspector White is ghosting his memoirs for a Sunday newspaper. Inspector White is also clobbering the murderer of five little girls. Inspector White is remembering his childless marriage which eventually — fragmented. And finally Inspector White is reliving his own sexual nightmares while appearing to be merely on the job. Each story is interlaced with the next. Consequently the stream of consciousness was never muddier. Mr Bailey writes well; each paragraph jabs at you with pugnacious ferocity. But the result is surprisingly flabby, almost as if the style has been attempting to dictate the content and lost. Laziness again? Thus goodness in fiction writing defines itself. Competence plus a little Sunday afternoon stimulation. Not enough to disrupt the day, but sufficent to qualify for literary respectability. Readable and relevant, rare enough in new fiction after all, but hardly enough. Better a crashing failure, therefore than turgid goodness.
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