Hugh Barnes

The first novels of Lewis Nkosi and Catharine Arnold raise issues that have been in the news of late: racist oppression in South Africa and the ugly behaviour of the smart set at England’s oldest universities. Neither phenomenon is new, but that is not all they have in common: both can be regarded as symptoms of madness, which is always making news – this, at any rate, is the diagnosis favoured by Nkosi and Arnold. They discount the talk of journalists and are at pains to show how states of emergency or of madness come about, and how adversity in the world modifies concern for the self. Much emphasis is laid on the unconscious activity of the mind, which for Sibiya in Mating Birds as well as for Francesca in Lost Time means horrid imaginings, displacement and a fear of poltergeists. Capitulation is charted: Sibiya awaits execution in a Durban jail, although the Government is about to fall and from his cell he can hear street-singers announcing ‘the near-dawn of freedom’. Francesca, a famous concert cellist, suffers private madness – as opposed to the collective variety accountable for apartheid – in the form of a nervous breakdown. At the same time taboos are flouted by the characters and invoked by the authors as if they were the unconscious of society. Sibiya’s crime was to sleep with a white woman, while a revelation of incest, for which a neglectful father is held to be responsible, contributes to Lost Time. In each case the novelist has recourse to psychoanalytic theory, and a meaningful relationship would seem to be implied between free societies and the free association of ideas.’

At the height of Punk I was still at school, which always seemed to me a rather melancholy fact – not least because one’s authority as a rebel was brought into question by having to attend lessons and the like. Out of hours, we worked hard to make good our sense of disadvantage, and a competition, which was incidental to following our favourite groups around London, started up among my circle of friends. At the end of each night out, we used to run amok, hoping to catch a glimpse of our idols. Fashions in idolatry change, whenever a purge takes place or the latest style is jettisoned, but even so I doubt whether the way we brushed with greatness will ever ‘come back’: we were surly and obnoxious, and we practised curling the lip. (The curled lip, rather like a masonic handshake, doubled as a greeting between initiates and a message in code.) We also vied with each other to incur our heroes’ displeasure, which was measured in rebukes. The practice of behaving discourteously towards people one actually looked up to derived, I suppose, from a misconceived notion of the egalitarian spirit of Punk, its élan vital. The best I ever managed was a warning not to be such a nuisance from someone who, for a brief period, played drums with The Clash: however hard I tried to be outlandish, I was generally ignored. But there was one lad who stood outside a recording studio for an afternoon in the rain because the Sex Pistols were known to be inside. At last Sid Vicious emerged, and our friend launched into his adoring volley of abuse. Sid took one look, snarled and told him to fuck off. Back at school the boy became an instant celebrity.’

The instruments agree that Britain is running down, getting seedy or seedier. The novels under review pay tribute to our decline. They also find evidence of it in unlikely places. The most likely place, of course, is Whitehall and William Camp discovers rot setting in there or already set in: the unions hold the country to ransom, a handful of businessmen make a profit out of hard times, and politicians fall over backwards, sometimes literally, to disgrace themselves. Hooliganism masquerades as authority. Such a discovery, however, doesn’t surprise us any more. It wasn’t even surprising thirty years ago when made by a novelist who had no sense of humour. C.P. Snow’s Corridors of Power is a chore to read now, at least as far as the young are concerned. They don’t care very much that it struck a chord among a mandarin élite which was rapidly becoming disillusioned. Nevertheless, in the course of that novel Snow has Lewis Eliot observe usefully: ‘Countries, when their power is slipping away, are always liable to do idiotic things. So are social classes.’

It has become fashionable to think sagely about Elvis, and to deliver such thoughts in mawkish turns of phrase. His biographers, who set the trend, promote it in order to make sense of themselves. Team spirit is otherwise uncharacteristic of them, and they quarrel passionately about everything except the music, which, for the most part, they ignore. Disagreements are harmless, of course, tokens of scholarship, and it would be churlish to complain. But with each new venture into the field Elvis undergoes modification and change. While his supporters, smarting at unsavoury rumours, maintain he stayed smart to the end, the rest speculate about unsocial behaviour and a diet which consisted primarily of pretzels and pills. So business booms, and eight years after his death Presley has been launched on a fresh and exciting career as the avatar of the good and the not-so-good, still travelling in the wake of Little Richard.

Briefly during the second act Michael Frayn’s stage-play, Make and Break, transcends its setting, a Frankfurt trade fair, touching on a general gloom. Mrs Rogers is treating Garrard, a goatish sales rep, to the fruits of Buddhism. It is late in the day. Elsewhere assignations are arranged, faces stuffed, drinks swilled. Mrs Rogers’s seducer is impatient of nirvana; besides his hand rests all ready on her knee. Although she cannot recall the ‘proper technical term’ for suffering, she’s certain it stems from desire. The exchange is heady and brief – more like a business opportunity than a seminar. Revels intrude. It’s a good example of the way Frayn makes us laugh, and of the absence of privacy that distinguishes farce and provides these two novels now reissued with a common theme.’