The Writer and Commitment, by John Mander

[p029] The Writer and Commitment. By John Mander. Published by Secker & Warburg, 25s. This is an ambitious book, and it fails because the author has merely flirted with a subject which requires scholarly attention and_ reflection. John Mander discusses ‘commitment’ as if the debate on engagement in literature began with Sartre in the 1940s. Georg Lukacs he dismisses in a footnote and one or two cursory allusions. Marxist aesthetics, he in- forms us, is simply the substitution of sociological analysis for literary criticism; and Marxists demand that art promotes action. . Now this is a little presumptuous of Mr. Mander; had he followed the mid-19th century debates of the philosophical circles in both Ger- many and Russia on tendentiousness in literature; had he grasped Lukacs’s aesthetic system, and had he read Trotsky on Literature and Revolu- tion, he could have avoided these dilettantish generalities. And had Mr. Mander been but a little humbler, he might have clarified his concepts and saved his readers much needless wading through turgidity and confusion. ‘ The notion that good art must be party art, that it must conform to political standards, and that only Marxists are good artists, is not seriously held even by _ Stalinists today, and was never held by Marxists; and it is dishonest of Mander to imply this. Criteria of judgment are being explored by writers, literary critics and academi- cians. Marxists do not claim to have a formula, though they have made a larger contribution to the field than Mander realises. In the critical essays on Auden, Orwell, Angus Wilson and Arthur Miller, the author assesses their works in terms of an ethereal concept of commitment—a concept characterised mainly by what it is not. In the last two chapters on Thom Gunn, John Osborne and Arnold Wesker, he mercifully abandons his game of catching shadows and produces some provocative criticism; and we are temporarily willing to forget his theme. Having geared his book to defining commitment, he will not admit that if this is to mean anything at all, it implies being committed to an out- look or ideology. All that he ulti- mately says is that commitment is the sum of what he finds artistically satisfying, and this involves the integ- rity of the writer. Thus, what we come down to is that all serious writers are serious in their outlook— a statement not as trite as it would appear, but certainly little contribu- tion to the discussion on commitment. In addition to his central theme, there is a preoccupation with the irreconcilability between Marx and Freud. This he does not treat from an ideological. point of view; in fact - he feels there is no need to enter into technical details and philosophical tradition. He attempts to illustrate this incompatibility by pointing to the irrelevancy of certain - socio- logical data in some of Angus Wilson’s short stories (in ‘Such Darling Dodos’) which are written primarily on a psychological level. It is true that in the instances he cites, Wilson does fail to integrate his psychological and sociological in- sights; but on such evidence, Man- der’s thesis must remain unproven. A great deal of shallow logic domi- nates the earlier essays: thus after quoting Orwell on the probable dependence of certain virtues such as: bravery and loyalty on the social context which gave rise to them, Mander chastises Orwell for suppose- dly wishing to retain a modest degree of evil.in the world. To this Mander dazzlingly suggests that we would be better off without these evils and the “questionable virtues that go with them’—-the very point which Orwell seems to be making. It may seem surprising that a number of reviewers have referred to Mander as a Marxist (after all, isn’t he apt to describe a story as ‘being round a dialectical skelton’?). An- other appellation will however have to be found; and perhaps his com- ments on the Spanish Civil War will assist in this. He criticises Orwell’s account, and when it comes to choosing between the ‘Trotskyists’ (here he means the POUM) and the Communist Party, he leaves no doubt - as to where he stands, but adds: ‘There is not much doubt that the communists were, in a _ practical sense, correct, though whether a com- munist dictatorship in Spain would have been preferable to a Fascist one 107. is a question few people would care to answer.’ . Young men with facile talents are generally a bit of a bore; but here we have someone only moderately well- informed, posing as a_ universalist. It’s exasperating. BT. The Diggers Comrade Jacob: A Novel of the English Revolution. By David Caute. Andre Deutsch, 16s. A novel written in terms of political tendencies and with insight into these, is rare. In this book the - author examines the conftict in the period after-1649 within the ranks of those who made the English Revolu- tion. So sure is his grasp of the historical material, that from the motives and actions of the characters emerge the aspirations of the various sections within the insurgent camp: the gentry, the Presbyterian church- men and the army officers who sought - to conserve their gains, and- the craftsmen and small farmers who aimed at extending the revolution. — The novel is primarily concerned with the Diggers, a group dismissed . in most erudite works as visionaries _ and fanatics. Their attempt to estab- - lish a form of primitive communism . on a stretch of land in Surrey is depicted as the strivings of the propertyless to live with dignity by their own labour. This impassioned effort was doomed, not because com: munism is foolhardy, but because the’ - forces ranged against it were too virile. Although David Caute’s own sym- pathies permeate the book, he avoids ~ oversimplifying the motives and per- sonalities of the Diggers’ adversaries. - So too, the participants in the experi- ment are shown as rounded persons, subjected to pressures, and not as bodiless embodiments of ideals. The ‘historical novel’ is in many respects an unhappy medium. The novelist is bound to explore actual men in actual situations and in this sense both. structure and characteriza-- tion are partially pre-determined. Further, even the reader not fully steeped in the particular period may be uneasy at the author’s imaginative. reconstruction of historical figures’. inner thoughts and. personal desires. -

[p030] 108 Caute’s novel does not always escape contrivance in composition and artifi- ciality in style; but its virtues out- match the deficiencies. A largely ignored aspect of the English Revolution springs to life, and the author’s understanding of political conflicts makes this a signi- ficant study of men and women par- ticipating in, or flung into, revolu- tion. B.T. Sorel