This week, chill February, back in the early/mid twentieth century: I am Jonathan Scrivener by Claude Houghton. Penguin Book number 54. My copy, bought in 1976, Second Impression 1937, came with an embedded receipt from Kingston's Ltd. Smart Wear For Men & Boys, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, Upr. O'Connell St, 10, South Great George's Street and 109 Grafton Street DUBLIN.
I like these extras. Reminds me of Mabel, my french teacher at school, who said she didn't like taking books out of the town library because you might find things in them. Hairs, she said, shuddering.
By the stove on a winter's afternoon, Jonathan Scrivener is just the thing. Dated and ignorable if you like. Repetitive. Such consistent withholding, teasing. Who's telling the truth and how many reassurances do we need? Cubist, recessive, coming at human mysteries from all sides. London in the 1920s. Surfaces and mysteries. The idea of the modern. After every large war there's a new modern. Jonathan Scrivener embodies all that and more.
This could be source material for Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night, a traveller. I haven't ever wanted to re-read Calvino. Jonathan Scrivener has been on my shelves for forty-five years and I haven't re-read him either.
An expansive graze over 1920s London and a need to be clever, to be ordinary and garrulous and then retreat to a library. An elastic book, to be read in bursts. Characterizations. Elements. This portion or that of London venues, London society. Through many pages we fail to meet Scrivener through the chat and occasional reflection of a small crowd of people. Claude Houghton's youth laid bare. Let's suppose.
Earliest Penguin Books did not have blurbs or authors' lives or photographs. You enter via the Penguin on the title page, a perky version in the 1930s, then the printing history on the verso and then Part One. You're in. By halfway so far in you feel impatient and would read the last few pages in short order. If Scrivener turns up, he's not going to be Godot.
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