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THE CASE OF THE CONTENTED REVIEWER
THE
right way to give aa impression
of
~'THE
SKIN OF DREAMS"*
is to
quote from it, but that is difficult; the
best passages are invariably indecent.
Mr. Kaplan, moreover, has been singu–
larly felicitous in finding equivalents
in our own gutter for the sly argot of
M. Queneau.
As a novel it might be described as
a mixture of fairy tale and off-color
story. Ostensibly it records the progress
of Jacques L'Aumone, the misfit son
of a French sock manufacturer, as he
passes from one failure to another un–
til he winds up as James Charity (an
exact translation of his name), the fa–
mous Hollywood star. But this is mere
surface. Actually the story is a comic
vehicle for the author, who having been
a surrealist believes that spontaneity is
all and desires an opportunity to re–
lease his best wit and his best fancy.
M. Queneau is also a specialist in
irony. His hero moons nobly after an
unapproachable lady for a long time;
then he meets an old schoolmate who
informs him abruptly that he too has
met her and readily possessed her. And
when the hero becomes a cinematic
personage and his image is flashed on
the screen of the Parisian suburb that
saw his birth, his old home town does
not recognize him.
THE
shiftless hero spends much of
his early career in Walter Mitty
day-dreams of great personal prowess.
He plays the ponies and extra parts
in pre-sound French movies. He also
goes in for trying to improve the breed
of lice, to make them larger than they
are at present. Later a passion for
cheek-turning hits him, and although
he is an excellent boxer, he allows him-
self to
be
smacked during an encounter
in the Paris subway without returning
the blow. Of such incidents is his story
composed.
Whenever it seems to be scoring a
bullseye on a target of meaning, how–
ever, it ricochets away. Evasive sug–
gestiveness is its method, and a subtle,
complex, affectionate laugh is its re–
ward.
It
is something like a gentle,
bawdy, French popular song, accom–
panied dead-pan on the accordion.
This may not make for vast American
popularity, though I for one found
more laughs in it than in Evelyn
Waugh's recent best-seller, "The Loved
One." By comparison Queneau makes
Waugh seem overgagged and under–
graduate, and his style is tenderly un–
emphatic rather than tack-sharp and
snobbish.
Close observers will detect an indebt–
edness to James Joyce, particularly in
the Gerty MacDowell section of "Ulys–
ses,'' where romantic novels are paro–
died. There is also a Joycean cerebral–
ity and secessionism; the author seems
to be washing his hands of the trou–
ble~
of the world. Literary moralists
will wonder why an outstanding talent
has been compromised by triviality,
and straight moralists will scream dec–
adence and shocking egocentricity. Yet
it is good to have a Queneau book at
last brought to these shores, and Mr.
Kaplan's is a very fine translation. Per–
sonally, I wonder ·how
it
will make out
in Boston.
*
(The above review by Gerald Sykes
is reprinted with the permission of the
New York
TIMES.
H.
f.
Kaplan's trans–
lation of
"THE SKIN OF DREAMS"
by
Raymond Queneau is published at
$1.50
by New Directions,
500
Fifth
Avenue, New York
18,
N.
Y.)
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