The literary
iceberg
Tony Palmer er. Death Cap June Thomson (Constable 1„e £2.00) ifi.der on a Dying Day John Dunn (David 'Ice and Watson E2.00) L.rernember when working with Jonathan 7111er on his film of Alice in Wonderland ad‘refLtising in the Personal Columns of the p;'"es for suitable locations. We were having ri"rticular difficulty in finding a mid-Victoy:n rectory that had not been tarted up be
recognition and was thus suitably h "led and rectory-like to serve as Alice's prie• To our surprise, we were swamped with ah!tographs, begging letters and offers of
ost any service you care to mention; h"„ftsequently I arranged a grand tour of the 8;pe counties for the good doctor so that a eeted few of these noble piles could be wresPeeted first-hand. To our further surprise, occufound that a considerable number of the
Pants of these rustic retreats were not only
ne to 'loan us their houses but more tiutnnantly (for them) almost desperate to Upon us examples of their literary :NUL Volume upon volume of poem, novel 11,1d, ornithological study were produced from ot;t0J11 drawers dusted off and stuffed into k°,riefcases. Dr Miller of course was from the :Jig world outside. He knew the ways of 11._' literati. He would see that these hitherto ,nblemished flowerings of the English genius that receive publication at last. I must say and Dr Dr Miller was the essence of courtesy Patience, although of course he never did anYt
tow about the manuscripts. And how d he? All that I read were rubbish.
thYet, rubbish or no they were I suspect only re,e.UP of a gigantic literary iceberg which gi—'" suggests we shOuld ignore but a nagap.118 doubt insists that somewhere out there the privet hedges of England lurks 1.1:Y_,De another Jane Austen or another Tom d:ruY. My wife, for example, seems to have f,;aens of female friends who have been writtheir 'novel' for the last God knows how many years, furiously scribbling away in old school exercise books or poised meaningfully above portable typewriters trying to remember what happened to their youth which they now realise they have irretrievably screwed up. Was this the atmosphere, I wonder, in which June Thomson came to write her second novel, The Death Cap? Its literary merits are nil, the dialogue scarce raises itself above the level of "I was fair parched" and its metaphysics are reduced to ".the replies might be abrupt and merely factual but a great deal more was implied beneath the surface." Well, well. No doubt time will tell and all will be revealed. But it doesn't and it isn't, probably because ,Mrs Thomson — "a parttime teacher" and mother of two — is in
'endless cups of tea or " understanding*count capable of either. The plot or lack of it is too banal to remember but it centres around one
stroking his chin thoughtfullY, or drinking ry folk" or patting his inevitable dog, the Inspector Finch, who is generally given to,t ever faithful cairn who stands ready at the door to greet the intrepid Inspector when he comes home at night having done a good day's joj) at the force. Masquerading as a thriller, the book lurches from cliché to cliché until the temperature is so high that one can scarce bring oneself to turn the final page. In my case, this was because I had fallen asleep long since not least because the punch line is actually on the first page. "Not that there was much hope of anything exciting happening," paragraph two begins. Right first time.
So why did Mrs Thomson go to all that trouble and Constable Crime (her publisher) to all that expense? To fill up the library shelves? To add fuel to the fire (although come to think of it that's probably the right use of this particular novel) of the arguments in favour of a better deal for the novelist? To justify the notion that fiction lives, although there's not a great deal of evidence of it here? To fulfil a blind obsession on the part of the author, with Art? And how many copies will such a work sell? 1500 at most? Now I know from bitter experience just how hard it is to write any kind of book and confess to feeling a certain wry amusement watching someone in a bookshop pick up one of mine, casually leaf it through, totally oblivious of the sweat and heartache which had gone into its creation, probably ignorant of the subject matter and author, and yet fork out E2 or so for its purchase of which I get all of 15p, enough for one and a half bus rides. What madness it all is. And yet people like Mrs Thomson *go on banging away at their typewriters or scribbling away in their exercise books for the dubious reward of seeing their name in print. Give up Mrs Thomson. No one will hold it against you, least of all me. John Dunn, however, was clearly aiming at higher things, no less than a moral tale of our times about the wonderful world of the theatre which eats people for lunch and spits them out for dinner. En passant, or should it be en passage, Alexander Kerr, "one of the most interesting playwrights of our time," screws Katherine, Rosemary, Paula, Isabel, Marion, Diana and Hilda, is screwed by practically everyone else in sight, and all for art. This romance is further burdened by a crushing sense of irony. Will Alex Kern-, a fun-loving, working class lad from Surrey hit the big time? Not until he has conquered the box office, gone to Malta to escape the tax man, returned, been rejected, allowed a property magnate who owns the lease on his Belgravia apartment to screw his wife in return for credit, and finished up writing plays that only the state-subsidised theatres will put on.
Only then will he know what it's all about, Daddyo, this thing called creativity. Only -then will he be "assured of immortality almost at this instant of [his] death." Alas, the book never gets that far, so the unique qualities of this 'artist' remain obscured for us. But meanwhile Mr Dunn tells his story with a maximum of fuss and a minimum of sensi bility. The artist as a flagrant layabout comes • across well as does his innate sense of breeding. Dom Perignon as opposed to Coca Cola and moules instead of fish and chips: What any of this has to do with the theatre — except in the sense that we are all 'incurably
' theatrical — I confess is quite beyond me. Although I would be the first to admit that from the viewpoint Of smog-laden California from which I write, perspectives do get muddled. The dialogue is mercifully free of the darling syndrome although mercilessly shackled with every other predictability. Perhaps the book is satire, in which case give me straightforward filth.
Yet both Mr Dunn and Mrs Thomson are to be congratulated. Both succeeded in persuading a publisher to give their doodlings the authority of print. Both got paid for their' cheapies and both have so far got away with it, unlike those dozens of others that is whose dusty manuscripts still litter the bottom drawers of England. And in case you think I have been too harsh on these thrusting authors, or given them too much space, consider this: every week at least thirty-five new novels are printed in this country alone. That's nearly 2,000 a year. And the two I have chosen this week represent the majority. So the novel lives?
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