Fiction
The Angelic Avengers. By Pierre Andrezel. (Putnam. lOs. 6d.)
THE world which Miss Compton-Burnett reveals to her readers in her studies of middle-class family existence is a desolate limbo where the lost—stripped, isolated egos thrown together through economic and biological accident—grate irritatingly upon each other and in the process develop psycho-verbal techniques of attack and defence, the presentation of which is the principal business of her novels. She is an expert at the revealing repartee, and her simple technique is to leave everything to emerge from the conversation. The result, in Manservant and Maidservant, is an odd book, a book of non- dramatic dialogue, a conversation piece, with description, movement, atmosphere (the time is 1892, but that is irrelevant) all cut in order to come to the cackle. And what does emerge? A number of shady secrets and double-dealings, of no intrinsic significance, and
a residual sense of evil, waste and frustration. -
"How wicked everyone is I " said Mortimer. " There does not seem to be a single exception."
" Do you feel that you provide one ? " said Horace, in a cold tone.
Miss relations strength is her keen, merciless eye for human felations (sub-hut-Ilan relations?) ; her weakness, apart from her limitations of scope is lack of a definite viewpoint towards the reality she presents. Dihen Samuel Butler wrote The Way Of All Flesh his picture of Victoiian domesticity contained within itself a contrasting viewpoint, climatically expressed, from which he was able to develop a radical' criticism of that picture within its own framework, and consequently his reader is not left in any doubt as to the novel's values. Manservant and Maidservant, however, has no protagonist and antagonist, and its author stands dispassionately apart from her characters, coldly observing. The reader is left with the evil, the waste and the frustration on his hands, with not the least indication of what he is to make of it. And this is distressing. Nevertheless, within its limits the book is well done, and this is the best pick of a rather poor week.
The Member of the Wedding is the third novel—to me, the first— of Miss Carson McCullers, a young American writer. It is about a tall, gawky gifl of twelve, Frankie, or F. Jasmine Adams as she comes later to 'call herself, who is awkwardly passing from tomboy child- hood to girlhood, and during the interval is terribly at a loose end, oppressed with the feeling that she "doesn't belong." As she is not a member of any group, gang or club, she attaches herself in fantasy to her brother's wedding-party ; she becomes " a member of the wedding," but meanwhile she hangs around the small town where she is living with the one-eyed negro servant, Berenice, and the six-year-old John Henry. I wish I could say that this was a " sensitive " study, but it appears to me remarkably insensitive, written in a clogged and turgid prose reminiscent of the worst of Faulkner and Gertrude Stein, with not a single clear visual image or pure emotional perception. " Visceral' is the word, perhaps. The unity of the book comes from an obsessed preoccupation with a feeling of dense, animal life, of which Berenice appears to be the focus. • Half-conscious images of sexuality, coupled with horror, disgust and brutality, continually recur, but in a spasmodic, uncon- trolled way, until eventually one comes to realise, without any notice- able assistance from the author, that the real theme of the book is Frankie's progress towards the state of sexual initiation. It is a pity Miss McCullers herself doesn't seem to be clear about what she is trying to do, however, and what attitude to take towards it. There seems something badly wrong, for instance, with the disparity evident at the tale's end between the importance given to Frankie's enthralled discovery of a new girl-friend and to John Henry's casual death by meningitis. A single, representative passage from The Angelic Avengers should serve to place the book: A ball to a young girl is not only an experience or an adventure ; it is a revelation. When she dances, she realises why she exists, and why she has been born. As the poet in the moment of inspira- tion, transported and Beautified, sees himself as the interpreter of the universe, so does the girl, as she glides over the floor, conceive the truth about herself and about life.
In the fantasy world of this novel, emotions are " great and over- whelming," dreams are " beautiful," young girls are " cihartating and innocent," and the great value in life is happiness." One doesn't
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