Books: Cheerful Protestant

• Share

(7 of 8)

In 1941 Gary published Herself Surprised, the first book of a trilogy that should make his place in English literature secure. Each of the three novels, Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth, is written in the first person; each, therefore, is written in a different style. The attempt sounds like a stunt or a forlorn hope; the extraordinary thing is that it was successful. Herself Surprised is Sara Monday, her book. Sara is Every woman (as much as or more than James Joyce's Molly Bloom) but very much herself as well: a maddeningly complaisant, maddeningly wise, maddeningly female creature. The second volume is the record of Tom Wilcher, one of Sara's employers and lovers, an uncomfortable, comfortably off lawyer with a lust for life and an itch for salvation. The last word, The Horse's Mouth, is Gulley Jimson's, a rascally painter, an immoral man of character. Jimson is the only one who has ever been a real match for Sara: at times, in his roaring picaresque progress downhill, he seems an even bigger figure. The really last word, however, is an echo of Sara—as Pritchett calls her, this "genial, boozing, humbugging and thieving old tart, lost in the raucous mythology of her memories and affections."

At Work in the Attic. At 63, Gary is a thin, lively, garrulous man with a richly seamed face, a sharp, inquisitive nose and a thin cirrus of unruly grey hair. Since the death of his wife in 1949 he has been a lonely man who sometimes eats pork pie for breakfast, lunch & dinner in the kitchen of his Oxford house where (his sons off on their own) he now lives alone. With all his ailments, Gary is tough and wiry, and likes to take long walks every day. During a lengthy conversation he is as apt as not to chin himself on a door. As a talker, he is occasionally overwhelming. His mind is crowded with stored-up memories, like the attic of an old house; there is no telling what will turn up. Says Humorist A. P. Herbert: "He rather terrifies me. There is nothing he is not prepared to discuss. He even talks at breakfast." Almost any day he may be seen in the park opposite his house churning along at a rapid pace, his lips moving as he tries out a new bit of dialogue. But England, and especially Oxford, is used to mad people.

Gary's house is packed with books, furniture, works of art, musical instruments —the accumulated treasures of a full life. His tousled study on the top floor under the eaves is lined with bookcases and filing boxes. Clamp boards holding notes and exhortations to himself are braced against the wall, and specially built slots in his old-fashioned desk hold sections of whatever book he is working on, folders with scraps of dialogue and random ideas. He writes his books in bits & pieces, may drop one section to tackle another, and sometimes drops the whole thing to work on something else. It is a seemingly wasteful method (he always throws away thousands of words), but it is one that suits him. By the time he is ready to write, he has dossiers on each of his characters, the looks of the locale, studies of the historical background, even plans of houses. He has schemes for at least eight more novels.