Enough of Their Guff
Declaration. (MacGibbon and Kee, 18s.) SEVERAL writers were asked to discuss, so far as I can judge from the introduction, 'the state of our civilisation' and their 'role in society.' Those who responded are : Lindsay Anderson, Kenneth Tynan, Stuart Holroyd, John Osborne, Doris Lessing, Colin Wilson, Bill Hopkins and John Wain. Their lucubrations are duly set forth in a volume which is reviewed as easily as hot air is to be grabbed by the handful.
The ringmaster of the circus, Mr. Tom Maschler, may certainly be congratulated on
getting the lions of this little lot to lie down with the lambs. Although, what in God's name John Osborne, Doris Lessing, Kenneth Tynan and John Wain (whom I do not group together by mentioning their names consecutively) are, each in his own way, doing behind the same bars as such woolly bleaters as Colin Wilson, Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd, I cannot imagine. Until the other day 1 had half-believed that Mr. Wilson was less reality than a publicity boy's fantasy. But the horrid truth has forced itself upon me in sentences as woolly as the jumper in which Mr. Wilson poses as he yearns towards the infinite. The long, ineptly executed and tangled chunk of verbal knitting which turns up here as an essay is entitled 'Beyond The Outsider,' and, so far as a moderately sane man can see, it is almost entirely devoid of meaning, apart from the ancient idea that the genius stands in some sense and of necessity outside the matrix of the society which bred him. If Mr. Wilson wishes to mature as a sort of English Camus he must not only contrive to express his sense coherently but, indeed, find something more expressible to express than the conviction of his own special genius—the most common of all adolescent illusions, alas.
Mr. Bill 'Hopkins and Mr. Stuart Holroyd, it seems to me, are essentially rather more serious than Mr. Wilson, but they also, in the feverish pursuit of 'religious and philosophical themes, thresh about among categories which they imagine to be real and mutually exclusive', either without any clear idea of what they want to say or without, as yet, a striking ability to express it in concrete terms. As I waded through the inchoate mass and mess of their musings, making all due allowance for simple inexperience on the one hand and youthful excess of enthusiasm on the other, it occurred to me that the 'sick- ness.of the world' so dear to them is reflected less in the content of their effusions than in the fact that those effusions are published, attract the attention' of journalists, and get the length of being discussed by people who know damn well that they do not need to look at this stuff sub specie ecternitatis to recognise it for the drooling that it is. One other thing : whenever they get on to the Machtfaktor, directly or other- wise, I recall other nonsensical writings : Colonel Nasser's, say, the late Adolf Hitler's, and the apocalyptic hurooshing that proliferated in pre- Revolution Russia. Remembering this, I feel for my ordinary, human, misshapen toenails—those dear sensitive objects which romantics in power love to remove from their critics one by one. The best advice these godless god-hunters can be given is to get together with Dr. Billy Graham, or hitch their wagons to the Old Testament and Jehovah's Witnesses, and discharge their preten- sions in a folic de grandeur whidh will appease their own egomania and do no harm to any save those whose minds are more tender than their
own. Meanwhile, for God's dignity, enough of their guff!
But the ringmaster's cage is not entirely filled with the fleecy tribe which has suddenly dis- covered the mystery of existence and must trot about baaing chaos like woolly ones on a hill- side craving the bite of the dog which brings them to the consciousness of here and now. Her! is Mr. Kenneth Tynan, a wit of the town, am' a good one : if he chooses to whistle up steam- rollers to crush butterfly concepts of the Right' who should grudge him some innocent pleasure? But shouldn't a wit think twice before deploying such massive engines against enemies so anonie as wicked press barons who lack political influ- ence, middle-aged novelists who suck up to the gentry, and other bogies of the same 'ineffectual sort? If he really falls to believing that our woes, and world-sorrow are due to a conspiracy cookeo up by the tweedy ones who smile out uP°0 us from the Taller, is he not in danger of losing his wit, if not his wits? And here is Miss Doris, Lessing, who speaks up frankly for 'the sinah personal voice' and tells us that she returns 10 Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and the like. So say we all. 'Goodness and compassion,' she advises, ‘warmth and humanity.' True enough, and I wish that some of her fellow-contributors thought so, to°. Long may she re-read Stendhal also, and decline invitations to pontificate Which reduce the tittle available for her own excellent imaginative writing.
And that goes also, lastly, for Mr. Jolla, Osborne, who shows quite, the biggest teeth 0L them all. Here's an old paradox. Mr. Osborne seems to feel ('to feel' rather than 'to think' — and I do not intend this as a snide crack) that (a) the popular press is rather disgusting, (b) the, Buckingham Palace business is overdone, (C) social science is a snare and a delusion, (d) bishops are a pain in the neck when they smarmingly try t°, square the accounts of God and CEesar, and (el pictures of smarties in glossies make a decent chap want to throw up. Those among other things. Now nothing is noteworthy in all this except the sentimental violence of Mr. Osborne 's expression. He is an artist—and one also in that sense which used to require a terminal e—aod
when he embodies his feelings in concrete ternns
of theatrical character, by art's alchemy he utters something of jmmediate, and perhaps even
abiding, value. I have said this about Mr. Osborne
before and I look forWard to saying it again, for all Mr. Osborne's unflattering opinion of those— other than himself, presumably—who write in the
ephemeral press. But let him turn from poet int°, preacher, and what do those potent emotions oi his transform themselves into but howls and yowls so grating in their obsessive egocentricitY that they would make even his warmest admirers
reach for old boots, bottles, and other traditional missiles against old moggie. Is this admirable writer solemnly asking us to believe that life 41 Britain today is distorted by a conspiracy directed by the Queen, a few hundred aristocrats, and a, few thousand journalists against millions an' millions of decent, ordinary, open-hearted digs like himself?
Mr. Osborne and a few of his fellow-contribu- tors would do well to take a tip from the Sphing of Swansea who prudently declined to contribute to this symposium, and walk by themselves, get on with the job, and count up to ten when asked to hold forth on the 'state of our civilisation' and their 'role in society.'
IAIN HAMILTON
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