MOTHER'S BOY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 391, 20 December 1946, Page 22

MOTHER'S BOY

PRATER VIOLET, by Christopher Isherwood. Methuen, London. $$ OU are a typical mother’s son," says Bergmann, the only living character in this book, to the author of it (who is perhaps half alive, until smothered by his own creation). "It is the English tragedy." "Quite a lot of Englishmen do get married, you know," Isherwood parries. "They marry their mothers. It is a disaster. It will lead to the destruccion of Europe." ERGMANN, the film director brought from Vienna by Imperial Bulldog to make "Prater Violet" into an English box-office hit, is a not unworthy successor to Mr. Norris, who changed trains so impulsively in the most finished sentimental comedy published in England since Zuleika Dobson. But if this 100page novel about the gestation and birth-pangs of a second-rate "screen entertainment" in a London studio in 1934 had been by anybody else, no reviewer would be likely to linger over it. It

could be _ briefly recommended as pleasant, sensitive writing about a surface theme that is always dramatic (How a Film is Made-the Great Director at Work)-a little better than Vicki Baum, not half as workmanlike as C. S. Forester. And that would be that. Since Prater Violet is the first postwar novel by one who 10 years ago was regarded as the white hope of English fiction in. our time, it cannot be dismissed quite so lightly. Christopher Isherwood, let us admit from the start, has all the writer’s gifts. "Encased in talent like a uniform," he plunges without delay or false modesty into the heart of his subject. "Mr, Isherwood?" "Speaking." "Mr. Christopher Isherwood?" "That’s me." So Prater Violet opens; everybody knows the author; he is doing an act, and watching himself doing it. Lightly the background is sketched, a few subsidiary characters are indicated with deft, economical strokes, Then the spotlight swings firmly on to Bergmann, and stays there. Everyone else is in the flat; no one else comes alive-

except perhaps Chatsworth, the Mogul of this Fulham studio, for a few brief moments. But Bergmann is drawn in the round, with loving care. He is immense -end vital and full of symbolic, nostalgic, even political significance. "Of course we knew each other. The name, the voice, the features were inessential; I knew that face. It was the face of a political situation, an epoch,

The face of Central Europe." Between Bergmann and the young Englishman engaged by Imperial Bulldog Studio to write his script (this is Isherwood, in propria persona) an immediate sympathy is born. Isherwood is @ European; he can talk German, his uneasy loyalty to his director is almost embarrassing until at last the horrid truth is revealed — he is Stephen Daedalus, the Son in search of a Father. So the story runs its light and never very animated course, to a lame and mildly ironical conclusion. "Prater Violet’ is kitsch; Bergmann and Isherwood are alone in a desert of philistines and soulless technicians, But they make some progress until the crisis (there is no catastrophe) arrives with the events of February, 1934, in Austria. Bergmann torn as a man by anxiety for wife and child left in Vienna, as the conscience of Europe is by deep premonition of impending disaster, is thrown off his stroke as a director, and box-office is threatened, But Chatsworth, or Colonel Blimp, rallies the ranks; Bergmann the maestro tekes charge again, and box-office triumphs, On the success of "Prater Violet’ Bergmann gets a contract in Hollywood. Isherwood, left to weep alone the wrongs of wounded Europe, will. follow soon after. If it seems unfair to discuss what is supposed to be fiction in such personal terms, one must retort that the author invites it. Prater Violet is in

effect an apologia. It is the cri-de-coeur of an intellectual who has refused to grow up, of a liberal humanitarian whose final comment on the world is "On, dear!" There is much delicate obsérvation, some humour, and a good deal of clean, firm writing in Prater Violet; and Bergmann is a genuine creation. But there is an awful lot of self-pity, and much of it is out of date. All thé wtiter’s gifts but one. And the one that is lacking is not love; for theré is tenderness, at léast, in the curious relationship finally réached between "mother’s boy" and the "comic foreigner with the funny accent." There is subtlety, too often tinged with malice; there is honesty-an absolute honesty, worthy of the Oxford Group. There is even the sense of glory, that salutes Wallisch across the mountains, that is aware of true greatness in Bergmann, the old Jewish Socrates, "the head of a Roman emperof, with dark old Asiatic eyes." All the writers gifts but onecourage. Surely Mr. Isherwood has had time to make up his mind about the world we live in, that he sees with such engaging clarity? Prater Violet has been hailed in América as a modern masterpiece; most English reviews have been less enthusiastic. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" may be in order; but not "Portrait of the Artist getting younger and younger." One is grateful, as always, for good Writing. One is gtateful for Bergmann. But outraged feeling that leads nowhere ean be a bore, even in 100 pages. It is about time that mother’s boy grew up.

J.

B.