extreme legibility

*The Last Boat by John Pollock (Anthony Blond, 1958)

 

Another relentlessly dark and morbid novel by John Pollock, but once again enlivingly laced with his dark humor and keen observation of human behavior at its most desperately alcholic-besodden level.

Some bureaucratic nitwits in the British foreign office decide to stage a trial evacuation of British residents on a small (fictitious) Italian island named Pizza (of course). The off-season weather on Pizza is cold and dreary and the island is populated only by about a dozen British expats (aka outcasts) and the few enterprising locals who earn a meager living housing and feeding them, and keeping them liquored up.  We're introduced to this colorful but damaged and self-destructive (madness, alcoholism, nymphomania, and homosexuality) group of characters, and watch as they attempt to pull themselves together and board the unseaworthy boat that has been commandeered for their exodus.  With the help (?) of a minor British magistrate, who sees this mission as an opportunity for advancement in the diplomatic corps, and the locals, who sense an opportunity to rid their community of these degenerates and make some money doing so, the boat is finally populated and sets out to sea, where it almost immediately sinks.  Everyone on board drowns.

I continue to be intrigued by John Pollock -- this is the third book of his I've read -- and wish I could learn something about him.  All his books share the same acidic and anti-social world view expressed with malevolent glee.  He writes unsentimentally and brutally about outcasts, those men and women who, for one reason or another, have voluntarily or forcibly stepped off the good high road we are all told to walk along, and find themselves crawling in the gutter.

The Provincial Lady in Russia (I Visit the Soviets) by E. M. Delafield (Cassandra Editions/Academy Chicago, 1985; originally published by Harper Brothers, 1937)

 

The Provincial Lady is tasked by her American publisher to spend several months in the Soviet Union and write a funny book about her visit: a brilliant idea.  Delafield accepts the challenge and acquits herself triumphantly: the resulting book is a vividly rendered and keenly observed account of (what tourists were allowed to see of) Soviet life in the 1930s, when the USSR was but twenty years old.

The PL, who had heretofore proven herself an amusing and sharp observer of English rural and urban life, now sets her gimlet eye upon a very different environment and society.  She travels (laboriously) to Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov, and Odessa, spends several weeks on a communal farm, and visits countless hospitals, factories, schools, and museums, always accompanied by official government guides who constantly spout propaganda (often blatantly contradicted by what is being observed) and are inevitably late.  The glimpses of Soviet life and the wry yet sympathetic portraits of people are fascinating, and everything is observed and recorded with Delafield's shrewd eye, intelligent mind, and empathetic heart.

 

Harper and Brothers, 1937

 

 

 

 

Is He Popenjoy? by Anthony Trollope (Oxford University Press, 1973)

 

Because I so enjoyed reading Barchester Towers, I searched abe.com and bought several Trollope novels I haven't yet read.  Among them was Is He Popenjoy? and being intrigued by the title (as mentioned elsewhere, I like titles with question marks and other punctuation) I began reading it, and was hardly able to put it down over a very few days.

Perhaps it was my mood and my current disenchantment with life, but I found that being immersed in Trollope's world was far preferable (and pleasurable) to languishing in my own.  Is He Popenjoy? is, like Barchester Towers, broader and more consistently comic than the Palliser novels, and, although it features a Dean in a primary role, it is less ecclesiastically concerned than the Barchester novels.  This Dean is quite merry, and spends as little time as possible at the Deanery or in the Cathedral, much preferring to seek social pleasure and amusements in London.

The plot -- the main plot; there are, of course, several -- concerns the Dean's daughter, Mary Lovelace, who inherits a small fortune from a wealthy Great Aunt, which allows her to marry into the aristocracy.  She weds Lord George Brotherton, a second son, who lives with his somewhat senile mother, the Marchioness, and his four pious and cheerless spinster sisters.  They are all dependent upon Mary's money, for the family's fortune belongs entirely to Lord George's older brother, Lord Brotherton, the Marquis, who lives in Italy and shuns his native land and family.  His sudden and unexpected return to Cross Manor, the family estate, with a perhaps illegitimate Italian Italian wife and correspondingly illegitimate son, not only displaces his family but causes a scandal concerning the Brotherton legacy.  The Dean, born of humble origins and socially ambitious and eager for his daughter to become a Marchioness and his (expected) grandson to one day become a Marquis, instigates and funds an investigation into the legitimacy of the present Marquis' marriage, hoping to disqualify his son (Popenjoy) from inheriting the title, which would then pass to Lord George.

This central plot is refracted in several subplots involving the difficulties of reconciling love and economic reality in terms of marriage; too often a mutual attraction is not supported by the financial means on either side to enable a prosperous (or even possible) marriage, and the resulting matches, often made on purely pecuniary grounds, destabilize the society around them.

Both Mary and her father are flawed characters, and Lord George is a rather a dreary and unlikeable man.  Despite this -- or perhaps because of it -- the book is addictively compelling and I enjoyed reading it very much.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (Literary Guild, 1945)

 

Barchester Towers is set in the upper echelons of the clerical world in Barchester, a fictitious cathedral city in England.  A spineless new Bishop arrives to the consternation of the Warden and the Archdeacon, and upsets the status quo.  He is controlled by his formidable wife, Mrs. Prudie, and his revoltingly ambitious Chaplain, Dr. Slope.  A triangularized romantic plot centering around an independent and wealthy young widow (the Archdeacon's daughter) allows happy endings for all the good characters, and appropriate come-uppences for all the bad.

Perhaps because the edition I read (published by the Literary Guild in 1945) featured several cartoonish color illustrations (by Donald McKay), this book seemed considerably less  nuanced and complex than other Trollope novels (especially the Palliser novels), and therefore less satisfying -- but entertaining and fun to read nonetheless.

illustration by Donald McKay