Frank and Maisie, by Wilfrid Sheed (Simon & Schuster, 297 pp., $17.95)
Somewhere, Auberon Waugh wrote that he did not himself undertake to write a book about his father, or to edit his father’s letters and journals, because he could not surmount the first and operative obstacle, namely, What to call him? “Mr. Waugh” might just have pleased the old man, who in one of his letters revealed that he countenanced intimacy and formality, despising only informality. But only if Mr. Waughs breed little Mr. Waughs is that contrivance congenial both to the dead father and the live son. To whom, as also to the deceased subject of such a book, the use of “Dad,” or even “Father,” would have rankled; and if he had referred to him simply as “Evelyn,” Auberon wrote, the clouds above would verily part, and his dead father would smite him down for the sin of informality. Accordingly, he turned the job over to someone else to do. Wilfrid Sheed only just succeeds in getting us used to “Frank” and “Maisie,” but leaves us overwhelmingly grateful that he did not turn the job over to anyone else.
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