SAD BICYCLING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 501, 28 January 1949, Page 11

SAD BICYCLING

DIRTY EDDIE. By Ludwig Bemelmans. Hamish Hamilton, London. BEMELMANS, riding the bicycle of his prose, proceeds without effort. There are ne wheel squeaks, the cotter pin is tight in its socket, the chain is oiled. Feet can be seen on the pedals, the knees go up and down, but effort is not apparent. On this occasion he freewheels smoothly about Hollywood, carrying in one hand a flashlight with which he picks out chromium facades, intelligent pig actors, people fearfully scrabbling for a foothold, and a terrible lot of emptiness. He does a very competent job, so competent that one is tempted to compare Dirty Eddie with Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, but after a little thought one realises that the two men have worked on different planes. Bemelmans is the sad clown on a bicycle; he doesn’t like Hollywood, but he doesn’t hate it. He is a humanist. Waugh is not a humanist; he is very conscious of original sin, and of the death and damnation that, he thinks, come to those who are not redeemed. Redemption and the good life are uncommon in Hollywood, and Waugh is repelled and fascinated ‘by the death customs of the natives there, by which perhaps they hope to redeem themselves. He writes about them beautifully and bitterly. In neither book is there any happiness or love, nor for ‘that matter is there in any easily recollected book about Hollywood. Dr. Gallup, who doesn’t freewheel so easily as Bemelmans, might forget the horrors of the last presidential election by counting up the number of happy people in Hollywood. Shouldn’t take him long.

G. leF.

Y.