Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

‘Looking after Trapnel’s becoming monotonous. Is Mrs Widmerpool still his true-love?’

‘She’s what the trouble’s about.’

The pub turned out to be another of Bagshaw’s obscure, characterless drinking places, this time off the Edgware Road. It was fairly empty. Bagshaw and Trapnel were at a table in the corner, both perfectly well behaved. Closer investigation showed Bagshaw as drunk in his own very personal manner, that is to say he would become no drunker however much consumed. There was never any question of going under completely, or being unable to find his way home. Trapnel, on the other hand, did not at first show any sign of being drunk at all. He had abandoned his dark lenses. Possibly he only wore them in hard winters. He was sitting, quietly smiling to himself, hunched over the death’s-head stick.

‘Hullo, Nick. I’ve just been talking to Books about a critical work I’m planning. It’s to be called The Heresy of Naturalism . People can’t get it right about Naturalism. They think if a writer like me writes the sort of books I do, it’s because that’s easier, or necessary nowadays. You just look round at what’s happening and shove it all down. They can’t understand that’s not in the least the case. It’s just as selective, just as artificial, as if the characters were kings and queens speaking in blank verse.’

‘Some of them are queens,’ said Bagshaw.

‘Do listen, Books. You’ll profit by it. What I’m getting at is that if you took a tape-recording of two people having a grind it might truly be called Naturalism, it might be funny, it might be sexually exciting, it might even be beautiful, it wouldn’t be art. It would just be two people having a grind.’

‘But, look here, Trappy — ’

‘All right, they don’t have to be revelling in bed. Suppose you took a tape-recording of the most passionate, most moving love scene, a couple who’d — oh, God, I don’t know — something very moving about their love and its circumstances. The incident, their words, the whole thing, it gets accidentally taped. Unknown to them the machine’s been left on by mistake. Anything you like. Some wonderful objet trouvé of that sort. Do you suppose it would come out as it should? Of course it wouldn’t. There are certain forms of human behaviour no actor can really play, no matter how good he is. It’s the same in life. Human beings aren’t subtle enough to play their part. That’s where art comes in.’

‘All I said was that Tolstoy —’

‘Do keep quiet, Books. You’ve missed the point. What I mean is that if, as a novelist, you put over something that hasn’t been put over before, you’ve done the trick. A novelist’s like a fortune-teller, who can impart certain information, but not necessarily what the reader wants to hear. It may be disagreeable or extraneous. The novelist just has to dispense it. He can’t choose.’

‘All I said was, Trappy, that personally I preferred Realism — Naturalism, if you wish — just as I’ve a taste for political content. That’s how Tolstoy came in. It’s like life.’

‘But Naturalism’s only “like” life, if the novelist himself is any good. If he isn’t any good, it doesn’t matter whether he writes naturalistically or any other way. What could be less “like” life than most of the naturalistic novels that appear? If he’s any good, it doesn’t matter if his characters talk like Disraeli’s, or incidents occur like Vautrin, smoking a cigar and dressed up as a Spanish abbé, persuades Lucien de Rubempré not to drown himself. Is Oliver Twist a failure as a novel because Oliver, a workhouse boy, always speaks with exquisite refinement? As for politics, who cares which way Trimalchio voted, or that he was a bit temperamental towards his slaves?’

‘Trappy — no, wait, let me speak — all this started by my saying that, just as masochism’s only sadism towards yourself, revolutions only reconcentrate the centre of gravity of authority, and, if you wish, of oppression. The people who feel they suffer from authority and oppression want to be authoritative and oppressive. I was just illustrating that by something or other I thought came in Tolstoy.’

‘But, Books, you said Tolstoy wrote “like” life, because he was naturalistic. I contend that his characters aren’t any more “like” — in fact aren’t as “like” — as, say, Dostoevsky’s at their craziest. Of course Tolstoy’s inordinately brilliant. In spite of all the sentimentality and moralizing, he’s never boring — at least never in one sense. The material’s inconceivably well arranged as a rule, the dialogue’s never less than convincing. The fact remains, Anna Karenin ’s a glorified magazine story, a magazine story of the highest genius, but still a magazine story in that it tells the reader what he wants to hear, never what he doesn’t want to hear.’

‘Trappy, I won’t have you say that sort of thing about Tolstoy, though of course Dostoevsky’s more explicit when it comes to exhibiting the Marxist contention that any action’s justified—’

‘Do stop about Marxism, Books. Marxism has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Naturalism. I’m in favour of Naturalism. I write that way myself. All I want to make clear is that it’s just a way of writing a novel like any other, just as contrived, just as selective. Do you call Hemingway’s impotent good guy naturalistic? Think what Dostoevsky would have made of him. After all, Dostoevsky did deal with an impotent good guy in love with a bitch, when he wrote The Idiot .’

Bagshaw was silenced for the moment. Trapnel was undoubtedly in an exceptionally excited state, unable to stop pouring out his views. He took a gulp of beer. The pause made comment possible.

‘We don’t know for certain that Myshkin was impotent.’

‘Myshkin was as near impotent as doesn’t matter, Nick. In any case Hemingway would never allow a hero of his to be made a fool of. To that extent he’s not naturalistic. Most forms of naturalistic happening are expressed in grotesque irrational trivialities, not tight-lipped heroisms. Hemingway’s is only one special form of Naturalism. The same goes for Scott Fitzgerald’s romantic-hearted gangster. Henry James would have done an equally good job on him in non-naturalistic terms. Most of the gangsters of the classic vintage were queer anyway. James might have delicately conveyed that as an additional complication to Gatsby’s love.’

Before literary values could be finally hammered out in a manner satisfactory to all parties, the pub closed. We moved from the table, Trapnel still talking. In the street his incoherent, distracted state of mind was much more apparent. He was certainly in a bad way. All the talk about writing, its flow not greatly different from the termination of any evening in his company, was just a question of putting off the evil hour of having to face his own personal problems. No doubt he had gone into these to some extent with Bagshaw earlier. They had then started up the politico-literary imbroglio in progress when I arrived at the pub. Now, even if nothing were said about Pamela, the problem of getting him home was posed. He was, as Bagshaw so positively believed, perfectly able to walk. There was no difficulty about that. His manner was the disturbing element. An air of dreadful nervousness had descended on him. Now that he had ceased to argue about writing, he seemed to have lost all powers of decision in other matters. He stood there shaking, as if he were afraid. This could have been the consequence of lack of proper food, drinking, pills, or the mere fact of being emotionally upset. Burton had noticed such a condition. ‘Cousin-german to sorrow is fear, or rather sister, fidus Achates , and continual companion.’ That was just how Trapnel looked, a man weighed down by sorrow and fear. Suddenly he reeled. Bagshaw stepped towards him.