Bill Platypus's
Paperbacks
The latest publications from Penguin testify to, that strange amalgam of taste, inventiveness and fashionable cant which has become their hallmark. To begin with the best, Penguin Modern Classics have issued Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness (25p) which, as they say, needs no introduction from me. It is certainly a novel that bears re-reading, especially in the face of that constant stream of pulp known as the ' modern novel.' In this context, Anthony Burgess has always just escaped sheer contemporaneity, and in recognition of his pleasant but precarious achievement Penguin Books are issuing four of his earlier novels. In checklist fashion, they are: Inside Mr Enderby (35p), MF (30p), The Wanting Seed (35p) and Honey For The Bears (35p). This seems to be turning into the collected works of Burgess, since Penguin are also issuing a selection of his critical essays, Urgent Copy (45p). What it is to be a paperback hero!
Talking of which, Pelican have now issued a collection of Richard Hoggart's criticism in two volumes
entitled Speaking To Each Other (No. The first volume covers
' society ' (yawn) and the second 'literature,' but the similarities are more obvious than the differences. Platypus quite admires the manner in which Hoggart can convert intellectual argument into personal and human situations, but there is a, concomitant theoretical weakness that hinders his criticism. The judgements are °nen too easy, and the assumptions too devious.
Penguin Modern Poets have just published their twenty-third volume, with the work of Grigson, Muir and Stokes (35p). Although there is a certain, and perhaps necessary, conventionality about this series, it has found many friends. But if only Penguins were a little more adventurous . . . what about J. H. Prynne and Ed Dorn? Also from Penguin, a reissue of John Ardagh's The New France (Pelican E1). It is a large book, and well worth its price. Ardagh has updated his work to include the first years of Pompidou's presidency, but his work is more than simply historical. It covers the aspects of French life which are ignored in heavier and more portentous histories, for Ardagh includes literature and supermarkets, factories and vacations. In the French style, which is communicated by Ardagh with rigour and directness.
Three paperbacks with William Morris as their centre give Platypus a chance to catch up with this perverse and quirky Victorian. Pelican have issued his biography by Philip Henderson, called surprisingly William Morris (90p). It should at least have been readable, but Mr Henderson's prose is flat and his approach is the unimaginative, what-happened-next variety. In tandem, Pelican have reissued William Morris: Selected Writings And Designs (70p). Asa Briggs's selection points up very well Morris's varied and heterogeneous activities. He was designer, craftsman, poet, propagandist and satirist. And also romancer. For Unicorn Bookshop has issued Morris's romance The Sundering Flood. It is a nerveless book, written in a consciously archaic style which is altogether exhausting. Platypus, also is academically bent and would rather read the genuine article from Malory or Philip Sidney. But Unicorn Books gets an honourable mention for initiative.
Finally, Rosabeth Kanter's Commitment And Continuity (Harvard
University Press, £1.50). It is an historical and sociological account of the commune. Do I hear groans?
But Platypus, who lives in the commune at 99 Gower Street, finds the theme interesting enough. But how odd it is that sociologists and the like should treat these matters with such blandness and in such a perverse, polysyllabic monotone. A book for the university library rather than home. Or commune.
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