extreme legibility

*Lord Dismiss Us by Michael Campbell (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968)

 

Lord Dismiss Us is a big, ambitious, and mostly successful novel about homosexuality in English public schools, circa 1960.

The novel is set entirely at Weatherhill, a small (200 students, all boys) second-rate (one boy is sent there because he can no longer afford to attend Eton) public school in Buckinghamshire.  Its large scope is made up of intimate portraits of a wide cross-section of Weatherhill citizens: Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree, the new headmaster and his sepulchral wife (and their deeply unhappy daughter, Lucretia); a variety of schoolmasters, including Rowles, who has been there for 45 years, hates women and boys older than 18, and gives the boys some stoic and begrudging compassion; Ashley, a young master, brilliant and creative, who is unhappily languishing at Weatherhill, his alma mater, because he did not get a position at Cambridge; Cyrus Starr, the chaplain, who is dying from stomach cancer and lives a strange life of indolence and indulgence in his sumptuous private apartment, attended to by a pack of dirty boys called the "Starlings," ; and several boys of various ages, including our hero, Carelton, who experiences his first overwhelming love with Nicky Allen, a circumspect and beautiful boy a year or two younger

The action takes place over a sing summer term, which is Carelton's last -- he will attend Oxford in the fall.  Carelton is blessed -- he is athletic, beautiful, intelligent, moral, kind, and creative and his first experience of love is overwhelming and poignantly described.  The plot of the book revolves around the Crabtree's mission to cleanse the school of "moral laxity" -- meaning any and all relationships between the boys, emotional or carnal, casual or profound.  Crabtree (with much sinister and underhanded help from his wife) goes about this in a brutal and stupid way that produces tragic and devastating results, despite the tepid interference of a few enlightened masters.  

Campbell creates a rich, complex, and engaging world full of original and interesting characters.  The book is quite funny and involving, and I enjoyed reading it very much.  There are a few places where the action blurs and the reader wonders what is actually happening, but the overall picture is beautiful and bright.

Iris Murdoch heralded this novel with a blurb that perfectly captures my response:  "Marvelous.  I read it very slowly because I was enjoying it so much.  I think it achieves a sort of tragic beauty and is really about LOVE, which all novels profess to be about, but hardly any are."

 

*The Chameleons by John Broderick (Ivan Obolensky, Inc., 1961)

 

The Chameleons is a short novel set in a small village outside of Dublin about a strange group of nastily inter-related people: Michael Glynn, a middle-aged, closeted homosexual, bedridden with rheumatoid arthritis; Stephen,  a creepy  (mostly) homosexual young man who cares for Michael; and Julia, Michael's wife, who married him for comfort and security (he's rich) but is  having a passionate affair with Jim Glynn, Michael's handsome nephew who also happens to be his doctor.  Father Victor, the ever-tippling parish priest, hovers around them all, mooching whiskey and planning a trip for them to Lourdes, to seek a miracle cure for Michael.

Early in the book Jim abruptly ends his affair with Julia to marry a girl from a good family, and Julia immediately starts an affair with Stephen, who has been blackmailing her about her affair with Jim.  Their affair gets off to an awkward start when Stephen rapes her.  Two young homosexual men in Dublin also appear in the book, and neither of them is happy: one kills himself and the other attempts suicide.

This is all rather sordid and unpleasant, but Broderick is a good writer, and the characters, despite their damp and dark lives, are vivid and engaging.  Especially Julia, who's an odd heroine to find a mid-century novel: she enjoys and values sex, and does not hesitate to use men to satisfy and occupy her.   She pursues her eventful sex life without guilt or misgivings, which makes her an unusual and refreshing character.

 

The illustration is a portrait of John Broderick by Sean O’Sullivan

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Delacourt Press [Seymour Lawrence], 1969)

 

I was underwhelmed and disappointed in Slaughterhouse-Five, which I had been led to believe was a classic of anti-war and counter-culture literature.

Like so much auto-fiction being published today, Vonnegut writes himself into the story of Billy Pilgrim, his stand-in; in fact, Vonnegut acknowledges himself as author as narrator, and includes his own stories from the war alongside and often conflated with Billy's.  For a book purportedly about the bombing of Dresden, the tragedy itself is barely acknowledged and quickly dispatched.   A few incidents about the war are alarming and affecting, but much of the book, especially the sections about Billy's post-war life as an optometrist in a small town in upstate New York which involves ceaseless time travel and a stint being displayed in a zoo on a distant planet after being abducted by aliens -- all of this, which is much of the book, just seems silly and childish, neither funny nor chilling.

And Vonnegut's inability to write ten sentences without including "so it goes" is maddening; you just want to get away from this storyteller with a relentless tic.    Perhaps I'm missing something, but Slaughterhouse-Five  seems like an inferior book that has not aged well.

 

 

 

Scented Gardens for the Blind by Janet Frame (George Braziller, 1964)

 

I read this book because I had so admired and enjoyed Frame's Owls Do Cry, but I was very disappointed.  The three characters here are all crazy in different unbelievable ways, and Frame attempts to capture, or convey, their craziness by unconventionally using language, which makes the writing seems self-indulgent, and doesn't have anywhere near the effect and brilliance of Owls Do Cry.

Even worse than being a book about three crazy people, it is ultimately revealed that this is a book about one crazy woman who thinks she is three crazy people.