Fiction
By L. A. G. STRONG.
THERE are at least twenty novels this week which ought to . have attention, and it is utterly impossible for a reviewer to read them all. Mr. Wyndham Lewis is always a difficult proposition, so I may be pardoned for attending to him first. It is always easy, especially when one has to decide in a hurry, to mistake oddity for originality, and strongly expressed personality for genius. All the same, I feel pretty sure about Mr. Wyndham Lewis. If there is a stronger personality in contemporary literature, I have not yet made his acquaintance ; and Mr. Lewis' misses, no less than his hits, reinforce my belief that he has the real thing in him. The fable of Snooty Baronet does not much matter. Snooty is primarily snooty and secondly a writer, with baronet coming a bad third. Humph, his literary agent, persuades him to go to Persia with him and with Val, Snooty's light of love, who accompanies them principally in order to pay for Snooty. The reasons for the journey are to study the connexion of Mithras with bull- fighting, and to have Snooty captured by brigands as , a publicity stunt. A series of curious adventures ends _by depositing Snooty beside the Bosphorus, disgusted with publicity and Behaviour (his abiding interest), but happy in the company of his Persian Lily. The story is a development of the monologue, and the use of this form enables Mr. Lewis to pursue any hare his progress startles, and to launch at any moment a fresh offensive in his unceasing war against shams and false values. Snooty Baronet is an alarmingly honest book. It makes salutary reading; in more senses than one ; and those who want to see how brilliantly Mr. Lewis can write need do no more than read the chapter about the bullfight in which McPhaill is injured. I can give no adequate account of Snooty Baronet here ; it is of first-rate importance, and must be read.
Mr. Norman. Lindsay suggests for a moment a parallel with Mr. Wyndham Lewis, since both are artists in more than one Medium ; but Mr. Lindsay, sure with his pencil, is not always sore with his pen. Redheap was not, I am told, entirely to the taste of his compatriots, and the present volume is likely to please them even less. It gives us an insight into about the most unpleasant type of society which could possibly bear the outward marks of civilization. As- in Redheap, there are passages which show that the author possesses genius, albeit genius in another kind. There are also passages which are frankly not good at all.
Sunset Song is the biggest book I know which has come out of modern Scotland. Mr. Lewis Grassic Gibbon also has the real thing. His story has its faults, and its occasional absurdi- ties, and there are passages in it which would make Miss Stella Gibbons' eye gleam coldly (see below). Some of its writing is magnificent ; some of it is bad : " So out from the ploughing match at Pittodrie the two of them rode together, Joan sitting upon the hair of her, gold it was and so long, and laughing up into the dour, keen face that was Guthrie's."
Later on we have " the groaning shambles that was Nell." The first-class writer that is Mr. Gibbon might easily do without these and other mannerisms. He is a first-class writer ; of that there can be no doubt. Sunset Song makes no concession to the reader, avoids the usual devices of punctu- ation, and goes its own way with the power of a river in spate. It is the work of real strength, able, as all real strength is, to express the extremes of tenderness and delicacy. The love story of Ewan and Chris, with the grim background of which its own apparent defeat is a symbol, winds through a landscape which is as deeply realized, materially and spiritually, as the background in any modern book which is known to me. It is absurd, on the strength of one reading, to say how good a book Mr. Gibbon has written. I can only say that I think he has written something permanent, which his countrymen will treasure proudly as a testimony to the things they low. I had better add that the book is exceedingly outspoken, and that those whose idea of a good Scottish book is of the idyllic, kailyard type may get a few shocks if they read it.
Mr. T. F. Powys has also a touch of the real thing. He creates his own world, which is always one of the signs of genius. It is an odd world, and I think that a good many of us would be unhappy in it. Its people are usually either good and foolish, or wicked and depraved beyond belief. It would be easy enough to make fun of such characters as George Douse and Torn Hawn from the title story of Mr. Powys' trio. George Douse, whose heart was as sour as mud," found his only pleasures in the misfortunes of others. From crucifying cats he went on to practising nameless outrages upon the persons of the innocent. Tom Hawn, while not of so depraved a taste, was of singularly unhygienic habits. It is Mr. Powys' touch of genius that he can construct, from these gloomy and- occasion- ally ludicrous accessories, a tale which has the queer thrill of beauty. There is in his work abundant appreciation of goodness, but he finds it a rare flower indeed.- In fact, for him there appears to be not a problem of evil, but a problem of good.
Miss Stella Gibbons seizes upon these accessories and those of other authors, notably D. H. Lawrence, as material for her light-hearted parody. She sends her heroine on a visit to a farm :
" Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its- way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm.
Tho farm was crouched on a bleak hillside, whence its fields. fanged with flints, dropped steeply to the village of Howling a mile away."
Writers like Lawrence and Mr. Powys are easy enough to caricature, and the cruder of the crude parodies of them have not been amusing ; but the first part of Cold Comfort Farm is as funny as could be wished. The commercial requirements of the novel have done Miss Gibbons some disservice, but she has very gallantly tackled the problem of lengthening her story without allowing the joke to wear thin. It cannot be denied, however, that the first part of the book is the best. I admit that I began with a prejudice against it, for I greatly admire Lawrence, and I considerably admire and greatly respect Mr. Powys (not that they are Miss Gibbons' only butts, by any means) ; but the quality of the parody suggests that the parodist also admires their virtues. Was it not Mr. Max Beerbohm who said once that affection is necessary to the making of a good parody ?
Greenbanks is a pleasant, quiet, delightful domestic book, lifted head and shoulders above the ranks of pleasant, quiet, delightful domestic books by the uncanny accuracy of its portraiture and the lightness and delicacy of its touch. Louisa lives at the house, with her brood gathered more or less around her. There is no plot worth speaking- of. Ambrose and Jim, her virtuous and self-satisfied sons, make league against Charles, her rolling-stone son, whom she adores. Laura, her daughter, marries the wrong man out of pique, and runs away from him. Rachel, her grandchild, pops in and out of the house and grows up. It is all perfectly ordinary, and far from undistinguished. The portraits of Laura, Rachel, and Ambrose (partiCularly Ambrose) are as good as they can be. The only figure not quite in the picture is Kate Barlow, wh4 seems to be a character of fiction strayed in among these real people ; and I do wish she might have been allowed to have het clergyman. A very good piece of work, which deserves a wide popularity—and is pretty sure to get it.
Doing me the honour of a dedication, Mr. Michaelhouse makes it difficult for me to say much about his book. Charming Manners is the story of a young man's struggle between love and his vocation in the church, told with the most attractive freshness, sincerity, and lightness of touch. Its pictures of Oxford and of life in a theological college are both amusing and penetrating, and its hero has the charm which is claimed for. him. I recommend Charming Manners with confidence to readers of all - kinds.
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