Light Fiction
THE light novel, capable as it is of fantasy, satire, or farce, seems to offer a temptation to authors in the interludes between their more serious undertakings, which raises the question, according to Dr. Gay, of whether vacation writing makes for good vacation reading.
Lark Ascending, by Mazo de la Roche (Atlantic Monthly and Little, Brown, $2.50), will serve to pass a pleasant evening among scenes as different as Cape Cod and Sicily; but it is not likely to engage one’s feelings intensely, for neither plot nor characters are wholly credible. The theme is the emergence of romance in the lives of a strangely assorted group of characters the moment they move from the rugged shores of Massachusetts to the subtropical coast of southern Europe. Whatever they are by nature develops rapidly under exposure to the sun, but the egoists remain egoists still, the unselfish remain unselfish, and each finds happiness within the hereditary limitations of his personality.
While reading the novel one should, if one can, forget the Jalna books, for it is an experiment in an entirely different genre. It is a story of contrasts, — in race, character, and environment, — and the contrasts are fascinating. And yet the story strikes one — and this is curious in so practised a novelist — as being the invention of a talented amateur; an effect which is heightened by the somewhat facile romanticism of such incidents as that of a Sicilian count ’on the beach’ at Teneriffe being adopted by a traveling lady from Cape Cod and afterward marrying her, and of a New York millionaire financing a Cape Cod druggist in the manufacture of a skin food to sell in Sicily. Such combinations of circumstance suggest humor, but they are not presented humorously; although a vein of quiet comedy does run throughout. One feels that in writing the novel the author has taken a vacation, and it is best read in a vacation mood.
Oddly like Lark Ascending in ground plan is They Winter Abroad, by James Aston (Viking, $2.50), but the two books have no other similarity. The latter is a brilliant example of what is now called the South Wind school — a type of fiction obviously owing a great deal to the novels of Thomas Love Peacock, something to Sterne, and perhaps not a little to Saki. As a type such fiction is intellectually hard-boiled, inclined to be cruel, prevailingly smart and witty, but very careful of style. At bottom it no doubt rests upon a hatred of romanticism and sentimentalism.
They Winter Abroad has all the marks of the type, but is more good-natured than most. Its bland recording of all the vagaries of sexual instinct may shock some, — if anyone is shockable on that subject any longer, — but it is still very amusing, and the author is quite as aware of the pathos of the loveless as he is of the joys and sorrows of the loved and loving.
His gallery is large. It includes all the English guests at a small hotel near Sorrento and it deals with the effect upon them of the coming of an Italian spring. It is a fantasia upon the theme of lust, passion, and love — a theme developed in a kind of wild cadenza by the Professor, between pages 180 and 188, which serves as both summary and embroidery of the main motif. The reader might well turn to this and read it first. It is immensely funny, but much more than merely funny. And one must admire the way in which the tone of irony is sustained throughout the book. Never does the author deviate into seriousness; and yet the ridiculousness of human beings under the advent of ‘the new year reviving old desires’ is really presented with sympathy and without malice.
The Postmaster-General, by Hilaire Belloc (Lippincott, $2.00), is also a venture in irony. To English readers it may have a significance hidden from Americans. Taking place in 1960, it narrates the intrigues in high political circles concerning a government contract to be awarded for a monopoly in television. The author has great fun with a solemn portrayal of the chicanery of important statesmen and financiers who, if they were not important, would be readily classified as thieves, hypocrites, and liars. It is possible that actual incidents are satirized; but for the uninformed reader the story is hardly more than an ironical manual of statecraft, in which one is taught that in that profession the most conscienceless is the most successful.
It begins well and is well sustained for more than half its length; but one feels that the author committed a bad blunder in permitting himself to become serious. The mistake occurs when he introduces the Jewish financier, Arthur Lawson, who, alone among the characters, has a sense of gratitude to benefactors and unselfishly helps a friend. In satire of this sort the mixture of moods is fatal, and it is such a mixture that makes this skit less memorable than some of Belloe’s earlier satires, such as The Merc)) of Allah. The illustrations, from pencil drawings by G. K. Chesterton, portray an interesting diversity of English types, but are not half so amusing as one would expect.
Big Business, by A. S. M. Hutchinson (Little, brown, $2.50), is a hilarious, bouncing, farce that might also have been better if the author had stuck to his initial idea. For the title is somewhat misleading. The story ostensibly deals with a provincial English promoter, Boy Bond, who is extremely diverting and indeed quite triumphant as a characterization done in a slapdash manner; but it soon develops in a quite different vein of intrigue — of a fraudulent claimant and the entanglements ensuing when the real claimant appears. Here the constant attempt to be amusing produces strain. The fact that the pictures by Gluyas Williams are more comic than the text suggests that the sort of humor the book presents would be fully effective only in a moving picture. Such incidents as that of Old Man Huggett’s throwing fried rissoles at the public in the Stupendity department store are pure movie material, as are in fact the incessant alarms and excursions that follow one another in breath-taking succession throughout. The vaudeville humor of the book, its high spirits and frank nonsense, make very good reading for warm weather.
R. M. GAY