Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [93]
‘All right, I’ll be along as soon as I can.’
Isobel was unimpressed by this call for help. There was much to be said for her view of it. Now that Bagshaw was off the line, compliance took the shape of moral weakness, rather than altruism or benevolence.
‘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