Fiction
The Memoirs of Pontius Pilate. By C. M. Franzero. (Allen and UnwirE 108. 6d.)
AT a time when so much criticism of the arts is angrily subjective, it may seem pedantic to discuss technique. Yet the risk must be taken. Several of the novels on our list, particularly Answer to Question 33, raise technical questions ; and, after all, every novelist must be concerned to find the most effective way of presenting his story. Speaking generally, one may say that the more arbitrary the story, the more it depends on plot and invention, the easier it is to set down. This does not mean that it is technically easy to write a detective story or a thriller, but with them the problem is one of pattern ; the ingredients are relatively docile, the characters are biddable. They are less important than the things that happen to them. The novelist who is looking for the truth about life and character has a harder task, because the organisation of his story, his plot if he uses one, is dictated by certain irreducible realities to which he must be faithful. Thus for him the problems of presenta- tion are highly important. Where shall he enter his story ? How must it lie in time ? From what point of view shall he tell it ?
Three of the novelists above choose the attractive but dangerous first person singular. Mr. Sykes, whose book is by far the most interesting, leaps triumphantly over this technical hurdle. Others have taxed, if not tripped, him. He starts his story in what we may call the topical manner, with the answer to a question in the House of Commons, and then proceeds to tell us all that led up to the question. This disposes of some difficulties, but creates a new one. The story is held together, apart from the narrator's personality, by the character of Caroline. But the question in the House con- cerned another woman, Isabella. Thus at the outset the reader's attention is focused upon a character to whom there is no further allusion till more than half way through the book. Mr. Sykes, sensitive to this flaw, tries to cover it up by making Isabella not only a substitute for Caroline but like her physically. He has also been bothered by the time difficulty, and not even the narrator's non- chalance can hide the fact that some of his transitions are no more than "years passed by," and certain reappearances of characters : "Here comes Charlie again."
But these signs of strain are less a reproach to the writer than a tribute to the vitality of the story. Here, thank heaven, is a novel which is about real things, looking straight at life and trying to interpret what it sees. It holds the interest (after an excessively genealogical passage early on), and it engages the full powers of the reader. The writing is intelligent and humane, the characters are well observed and, what is rarer, understood, and the whole story gives that feeling of inevitability which means that the writer's imagination has been deeply stirred and has made sense of its disturbance.
Mr. Cheyney also knows what he is writing about. He also uses first-person narrative successfully. The world which he has injected into a peaceful strip of Devon is not at all like Mr. Sykes's world, but, in its horrid way, it is made no less convincing. In boxing parlance (which suits the book as well as any other) Mr. Cheyney takes things easy for the opening rounds, gets to work somewhere about the sixth, and then goes banging away with both hands till the final bell. The start is loose and casual and there are one or two lucky coincidences—a chance call at a house the number of nails in a boot. But before the end every thread has been remorselessly pulled tight. The plot development is tidy, expert and surprising. If certain of our younger novelists would listen, I would recommend them to take a look at Mr. Cheyney and one or two others in the same line. of business. They would learn much about sheer pre- sentation, about suspense and timing. Even on character they would get a terrifying sidelight or two. True, the women are remarkable only for their physical vitality and an instant propensity to believe that their men are unfaithful to them. But Claud is sharply seen ; and the narrator, with his boozing and his hunches—and his philoso- phisings—is, in his essence, a frightening phenomenon of our time. "Life, I thought, was a pretty screwy sort of proposition. But life itself wasn't screwy - it was people who made it like that. Try Any- thing Twice may have been written for light reading only, but it is in Jung's sense a contemporary, myth and skilfully told.
The other novels are less skilful, or less interesting. A greater novelist than Mr. Franzero first had the idea that Pilate was a rather unimaginative civil servant upon whom the crucifixion of Jesus made no lasting impression. Nothing of value is added by conscientiously loading this thesis with masses of historical detail—even if some of it, touching the sexual practices of Tiberius is not of a kind that commonly finds its way into print. Mr. Booth Tarkington could hardly fail to be skilful, but his heroine is a pretentious little egotist, about as unpleasant as his trick of making adverbs out of present and past participles. Whether renouncing the family fortunes for art, or forcing her injured young airman cousin to propose to her because she cannot face a second jilting, she is for ever dramatising herself.
The Golden Bowl is honest, crude and well intentioned. It tries to come to grips with simple human beings and with nature. There are good passages of natural description in it ; one can accept old Pa Thor and his faith that any day now it will rain but the writer
is not equal to the demands of the theme. Three rain; to Mecca has the weakness implied in its title. Part satire, part frolic, part farce, with characters amenable to manipulation, it disappoints because, although obviously intelligent, the author has been un- certain of his aim. An arbitrary story calls for singleness of purpose.
L. A. G. STRONG.
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