The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [19]
“You’ve never found Trollope easy to read?”
“No, sir.”
He was clearly unable to credit my words. This was an unhappy situation. There was a long pause while he glared at me.
“Why not?” he asked at last.
He spoke very sternly. I tried to think of an answer. From the past, a few worn shreds of long-forgotten literary criticism were just pliant enough to be patched hurriedly together in substitute for a more suitable garment to cover the dialectic nakedness of the statement just made.
“… the style … certain repetitive tricks of phrasing … psychology often unconvincing … sometimes downright dishonest in treating of individual relationships … women don’t analyse their own predicaments as there represented … in fact, the author does more thinking than feeling … of course, possessor of enormous narrative gifts … marshalling material … all that amounting to genius … certain sense of character, even if stylised … and naturally as a picture of the times …”
“Rubbish,” said General Liddament.
He sounded very angry indeed. All the good humour brought about by the defeat of the Blue Force had been dissipated by a thoughtless expression of literary prejudice on my own part. It might have been wiser to have passed some noncommittal judgment. Possibly I should be put under arrest for holding such mutinous views. The General thought for a long time, perhaps pondering that question. Then he picked up the second chair from the floor where it had fallen on its side. He set it, carefully, quietly, at the right distance and angle in relation to himself. Once more he placed his feet on the seat. Giving a great sigh, he tilted back his own chair until its joints gave a loud crack. This physical relaxation seemed to infuse him with a greater, quite unexpected composure.
“All I can say is you miss a lot.”
He spoke mildly.
“So I’ve often been told, sir.”
“Whom do you like, if you don’t like Trollope?”
For the moment, I could not remember the name of a single novelist, good or bad, in the whole history of literature. Who was there? Then, slowly, a few admired figures came to mind – Choderlos de Laclos – Lermontov – Svevo. … Somehow these did not have quite the right sound. The impression given was altogether too recondite, too eclectic. Seeking to nominate for favour an author not too dissimilar from Trollope in material and method of handling, at the same time in contrast with him, not only in being approved by myself – in possessing great variety and range, the Comédie Humaine suddenly suggested itself.
“There’s Balzac, sir.”
“Balzac!”
General Liddament roared the name. It was impossible to know whether Balzac had been a very good answer or a very bad one. Nothing was left to be considered between. The violence of the exclamation indicated that beyond argument. The General brought the legs of the chair down level with the floor again. He thought for a moment. Fearing cross-examination, I began to try and recall the plots of all the Balzac books, by no means a large number in relation to the whole, I had ever read. However, the next question switched discussion away from the sphere of literary criticism as such.
“Read him in French?”
“I have, sir.”
“Get along all right?”
“I’m held up with occasional technical descriptions – how to run a provincial printing press economically on borrowed money, what makes the best roofing for a sheepcote in winter, that sort of thing. I usually have a fairly good grasp of the narrative.”
The General was no longer listening.
“You must be pretty bored with your present job,” he said.
He pronounced these words deliberately, as if he had given the matter much thought. I was so surprised that, before I could make any answer or comment, he had begun to speak again;