COCKSHIES AND ACTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 654, 18 January 1952, Page 15

COCKSHIES AND ACTION

THE CLOWN, by E. J. Oliver; Jonathan Cape. price, /6. | NO MUSIC FOR GENERALS, by. Frederick Howard; Wingate. English price, 12/6. THE WORLD CANNOT HEAR YOU, by Gwyn Thomas; Victor Gollancz. English | price, 10/6. ‘THE tragedy at the heart of the comic is the preconception on which The Clown was built. This does not prevent its being a good novel. Tommy Seldon is a natural music-hall clown, but he marries en actress whose greatest role is Lady Macbeth and who in real life likes to act-but only to act-the part of Roxana. That’s the hell of it. Would the publisher please note-p. 120-that it is Polonius Tommy plays. at the university, not Laertes as per ons jacket? Time was when the rushed reviewer needed to look no further than the blurb. But if its facts are unreliable, there’s nothing for it but to read the books. Frederick Howard throws a few good half-bricks at a number of well-chosen targets. He creates an excellent American political general who has to "plan operations against United States .Senators as well as the Japanese" in a lastwar eastern campaign and does it by any means to his hand, from phoney publicity to British and Australian lives. The latter-day British Empire, from the Fabian governor coaching leaders of the independence movement, to decent old General Hinch, winning battles by accident, gives some good targets for satire in a lively novel which provides both cockshies and action. Gwyn Thomas illuminates the South Welsh scene with a spotlight changing from red to green all through a thronged and confused performance;, there are flashes of blue, too, as sex must rear its ugly. head, no matter where. The comedy verges .always. on farce. The idiom in which the novel is written, if wearisome, is also distinctive. The good fellowship of the Welsh group who sing and jibe on evesy page is well done; one feels the rest is mere sauce for the Saxon. |

David

Hall