Two Up for America

Henry James once observed that “the only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.” Among other mixed pleasures, the past month has brought a clutch of novels by writers who have been thought, by different people and for different reasons, interesting: Françoise Sagan from France, Colin Wilson and John Braine from England, Terry Southern and Flannery O’Connor from America. Of the five, two (as it turns out, the Americans) have written very interesting novels indeed.

Miss Sagan has not. For her fourth novel, Aimez-vous Brahms (Dutton, $2.95), she has called out the regulars: the Older (than Miss Sagan) Woman, the Older (than that) Man, and the Younger (than anybody) Man. The woman and her younger lover brood upon their affair (so “Parisian, so common”), while the older man dallies, understandably, with less pensive women and foregoes brooding to run his trucking business, an aberration regarded by Miss Sagan and her heroine as evidence of distinct mental cruelty, if not clear perversion. This interesting plot-line is developed in its totality in 127 pages, each containing such observations as “ash trays break only in novels and films,” or “she leaned against him, slid her hand under his shirt, felt the warmth of his skin against her palm. He was alive.” (Neither he, she, nor Miss Sagan ever present any convincing excuse for his being so.)

JD

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Joan Didion

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Henry James once observed that “the only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.” Among other mixed pleasures, the past month has brought a clutch of novels by writers who have been thought, by different people and for different reasons, interesting: Françoise Sagan from France, Colin Wilson and John Braine from England, Terry Southern and Flannery O’Connor from America. Of the five, two (as it turns out, the Americans) have written very interesting novels indeed.

Miss Sagan has not. For her fourth novel, Aimez-vous Brahms (Dutton, $2.95), she has called out the regulars: the Older (than Miss Sagan) Woman, the Older (than that) Man, and the Younger (than anybody) Man. The woman and her younger lover brood upon their affair (so “Parisian, so common”), while the older man dallies, understandably, with less pensive women and foregoes brooding to run his trucking business, an aberration regarded by Miss Sagan and her heroine as evidence of distinct mental cruelty, if not clear perversion. This interesting plot-line is developed in its totality in 127 pages, each containing such observations as “ash trays break only in novels and films,” or “she leaned against him, slid her hand under his shirt, felt the warmth of his skin against her palm. He was alive.” (Neither he, she, nor Miss Sagan ever present any convincing excuse for his being so.)