Fortnight Publications Ltd.

The Black Book by Lawrence DurrellReview by: Douglas MarshallFortnight, No. 148 (May 27, 1977), p. 16Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25546281 .

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16/Fortnight

Joe Orion

THE COMPLETE PLAYS (Methuen Paperback, ?1.50)

In 1948 at the age of fifteen Joe Orton left school semi-literate, unable to spell or string a sentence together. In 1967 he was beaten

to death with a hammer by his lover.

Between times he wrote the seven plays in

this collection on which his reputation

stands, and the foundation is firm.

Ambition can overcome many an obstacle

and stage-struck Orton managed to lose his

lisp sufficiently to enter RADA. There he

met Kenneth Halliwell who guided his

reading to the classics. Together they lived

in tatty bliss and concocted unpublishable novels. But, for Orton, the spark only

jumped when each was sentenced to six

months imprisonment for defacing library books. After that indignity he had little to

lose: "Being in the nick brought detachment

to my writing. I wasn't involved any more

and it suddenly worked."

Within a year The Ruffian on the Stair

was accepted by the BBC and Entertaining Mr Sloane followed not long after*- each of

these taking the familiar Pinter theme of an

intruder on an apparently settled

homescape. The Good and Faithful Servant

is a merciless attack on the rites of man as

performed on the shop floor. Careful

construction allows six characters to convey

all the usual cliches and more. Each is

damned by his own utterance but the

charade rolls on; only the voyeur is

enlightened: a clue to the source and

strength of Joe Orton's ambition.

His brilliant witty style, always evident,

flowers in the remaining four plays. One can

choose quotable quotes with a blindfold and

pin. "If I ever hear you accuse the police of

using violence on a prisoner in custody

again, I'll take you down to the station and

beat the eyes out of your head." Loot.

"Before I came to you I was Ringmaster for Flanegan's Travelling Circus. We did

every port in Eire. When we played before

the Brothers of St Vincent of Paul a Papal Medal was struck. (Pause) You'll not find a

harder audience than monks." The

Erpingham Camp "The actual burial was done by the

National Coal Board. She's under a ton of

smokeless. I got it at the reduced summer

rate." Funeral Games.

"His body has a mind of its own". What

the Butler Saw.

Law, religion, sexual prohibitions,

bureaucracy; all fall to his outlaw pen. Nor

are his sallies the shallow cleverness

prevalent in the sixties. Had he been less

gifted he might have written celebrated

tragedies and be better thought of. Interest

ingly he complained more than once of

"being played for laughs", Loot flopped

abysmally on its first outing with a cast of

first-rate comics. Stylish lines require stylish

acting. What the Butler Saw is a masterpiece of

farce, with flight of fancy and stageability held together, but only just. The climax,

concerning the dimensions of Mr Churchill's

cigar has in fact been bowdlerised for

performance. Joe Orton kicked where it

hurts mosj, and the shock will be a long time

wearing off.

Seven plays, any one of which could

stand alone, and a sympathetic and

revealing introduction by John Lahr whose

biography is to follow. A volume of value.

Derek Simpson

Lawrence Durrell

THE BLACK BOOK (Faber Paperbacks, ?1.95)

Sitting in a cafe in a somnolent quarter of

Barcelona, having just arrived to spend a

year in the city, 1 was taken aback by the

question, from a stranger with a broad

Belfast accent, "What part of the town are

you from then?" He was referring to the

place I was sure I'd just left, though from his

aggressive manner I was half-expecting an

invitation to settle our similarities outside. In

time I met two more emigres and on each

occasion the conversation got bogged down

in Belfast, our mutual acquaintance. Lawrence Durrell, or rather The

Alexandria Quartet, which I was reading then?was in some ways a more stimulating

companion. Not only was it in

English ?along with the weekly newspaper but this one-sided conversation seemed to

be leading in new directions, painting Alexandria as poetically as it does (a city similar in many ways to that in which I'd

found myself) and the web of relationships that a group of exiles have with the place and with each other?criminals, language

teachers, artists, diplomats?people who, for one reason or another, inhabit every

Mediterranean city and who have a sort of

double life there: the present, which they

share, and the past which often catches up with each of them ?separate and usually unwelcome.

The Black Book is disappointing by comparison. Durrell himseif makes no great claims for it:

"I had no thought of publication; in fact I

sent the only typescript of the novel to

Henry Miller, asking for his opinion on it, and telling him to pitch the text into the

Seine when he had read it ... Of course, the book is only a savage charcoal sketch

of spiritual and sexual etiolation, but it is

not lacking in a certain authority of its

own despite the violence of its execution!'

Miller did not take the advice, and it was

due to his encouragement that the book was

eventually published in Paris in 1938. Durrell

had written it when he was 24 and the

general impression is more of a private exercise than a public offering, the stream of

consciousness following its own illogical, and often incomprehensible path. Some

lines are provoking or amusing ?"In God is

my hope, though the Devil will have scope" ?but more often the college wit becomes

tedious ?"The vermillion postman fights his

way through drifts of snow to bring me a

letter from the white lady, yclept Pat."

I fought my way through a maze of

unlikely characters: Gregory, Tarquin, Lobo,

Juanita, Ohm and Madame About, who

spend most of the time exploring and

exhausting their sexual possibilities, somewhere in London. Durrell must have

written the book before he became

interested in the 'spirit of place', a deep

knowledge of the settings for his Pater

novels (and travel books) give them

dimensions which are lacking in The Black

Book:

"I am in a kind of fanatical imagery now,

unreal, moving through this aquarium of

feeling, conscious of nothing . . ."

At the same time, Durrell claims to have

found his own private voice and vision in

writing it, to have broken free from the

'cultural swaddling clothes' symbolised here

as the 'English Death'. It seems to have been a painful process, and as the authentic

forerunner to his later work The Black Book

is worth a look

Douglas Marshall

NETWORK I was quite prepared to be disappointed by

Network for, although it got a lot of notice

and the best actor Oscar for Peter Finch (the

first posthumous one), some critics this side

of the pond seemed to have reservations

that it was over-literary and that the style went over the top.

Just before I saw it at the New Vic last

week there was a trailer by Transamerica

Corporation (United Artists) for the thrice

Oscarised Rocky. The voice-over was one of

those spine-chillingly mellow American

drools that swaddle you in epic, patronising

sincerity. 'Sylvester Stallone, You'll see him

again. But you'll always remember him as . .

(crescendo of violins). . . Rocky.' You know

the sort of thing. Network, also a Transamerica Corp.

product, also began with the same drooling voice-over. Things 'ooked bad. They looked

worse as the first scene creaked into action, with Finch and William Holden, the two old

buddies, pretending rather unconvincingly to be drunk.

Oddly, this was the only point where the

acting wasn't convincing and vibrant with

intelligence and energy. And it soon became

obvious that the voice-over was part of a

clever and powerful, but often subtle satire.

Paddy Chayefsky's (original) screenplay is

certainly very literary. I was always

conscious, and suspect Chayefsky was too,

of the verbal highjinks?a dense mixture of

media jargon, brutal expletives and latinate

circumlocution. It isn't how people talk ? not

quite?just as it isn't quite how they behave.

But the satire is often so near to authenticity that the two rub together and sparks fly.

The story's about a declining news

announcer, Howard Beale (Peter Finch), in

an ailing TV company who, after getting his

cards, announces on the news that he's

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