Fowlers End (London Writing) [Paperback]

This novel is now available in a new edition with a foreword by no less than Michael Moorcock, who finds it a work of outstanding humour, a view that enjoys the eminent endorsement of Anthony Burgess. I can see what they mean, but it's not my own kind of humour. I thought I was never going to laugh until near the end, when I managed a wan smile at the description of the waiters in the restaurant, and then, to my own surprise, a genuine laugh during the fight in the pub that takes place on the last few pages.

The book was first published in 1958, and I infer from the references to unrest in Cyprus that the setting must have been around then. The locale has an imaginary name, but it's not some imaginary place, nor is it any `furthest corner of London' as the blurb has it. It is the area adjacent to King's Cross, within walking distance of Mayfair and Belgravia, still exceedingly seedy when I last saw it several years ago. I gladly concede that Fowlers End is a very skilful piece of work. It captures the run-down feel of the area and parodies its sleazy denizens very well indeed. The plot in general is well held together, with a couple of nice surprises to round it off. The characters are memorable and up to a point original, and the writing is polished and has a general feel of `quality'. What gets up my nose is the author's attitude, which is more than slightly patronising and superior.

The book seems to me to improve sharply somewhere around the half-way point, which is precisely where the author stops trying to be so self-consciously funny. At the same point he begins to develop the persona of his narrator, something that the story was beginning to need rather badly as the other characters are all stereotypes and the action is more a string of episodes than a fully architected plot. Too much of the book, particularly the first half of it, consists of Kersh showing us how clever he is. On top of that, he doesn't always seem to me to know how much of a good thing is enough. Even the sharp and witty description of the stately but decrepit waiters goes on just a little too long. What I find downright objectionable is the portrayal of Sam Yudenow - Kersh captures the accent extremely well, and the typical speech-solecisms, but he overdoes it more than somewhat. It all has the feel of an educated man mocking an uneducated one for his lack of education, and Kersh keeps at it with tasteless and tedious persistence over the first couple of chapters. This is the worst instance, but there is a slightly unpleasant atmosphere of de haut en bas that runs through the novel as a whole. I'm not looking for `human sympathy' by any means - that would ruin Swift or Juvenal. What I feel is that if Kersh wants to pose as being as superior as this he needs to actually be a bit more superior in the first place. His narrator doesn't have the real personality or distinctiveness of, say, Kingsley Amis's Jim Dixon or Maurice Allington (to say nothing of, say, Horace Rumpole), and one real oddity is that his alleged facial ugliness is neither here nor there in the plot - nothing in particular is made of it. Kersh's cynicism is rather average too, and in general his phrases and apercus are not as good as he evidently thinks they are. My recollection kept reverting to how that sort of thing is better done elsewhere, and when I came to the bit about the Eccles-cakes it was simply painful to recall the sermon in The Way of All Flesh.

It's a fluent and easy read, although I reached the end without regret. I didn't roll in any aisles but remained slumped with a feeling of slight distaste in my armchair. However the weight of more distinguished opinion is against me, and if you can find the first half of the book more tolerable than I did - particularly if you think it's funny - this may be a book you will enjoy. Have a good second half. If you were beginning to wonder why there is a glossary of rhyming slang at the start, it is needed for one solitary song near the end and nowhere else at all in the entire 300-odd pages.

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