186
MARY Mc:CARTHY
palace. The question was the same as between the peasant and ·
the king: did we belong to the same species or not? The book
is
not an answer, but an experiment, an assaying.
There is an element of the private game, even of the private
joke, in this kind of writing-a secret and comic relation be–
tween the author and his character. An arcane laughter, too
infernal for the reader to hear, quietly shakes such books; the
points, the palpable hits (inspired turns of phrase,
trouvaiUes
of
vocabulary) may altogether escape the reader's notice. Indeed,
it
sometimes happens that the reader is quite unaware of what the
author is doing and complains that the style is full of cliches,
when that, precisely, is the point. Or the glee of the hidden
author may produce uncanny noises, such as the giggle or
whinny overheard sometimes in
Lolita
testifying to who-knows–
what indecorous relations between the ' author and Humbert
Humbert. Joyce salted his work with private jokes, hints, and
references that no one but he could be expected to enjoy, yet
with Joyce
it
added to the savor. Lesser writers (or at least I)
find themselves constrained by the naturalistic requirements of
the method, the duty to keep a straight face, stay in character,
speak in an assumed voice, hollow or falsetto, as though in a
game that has gone on too long and that no one knows how to
stop. There are moments when one would like to drop the pre–
tense of being Mulcahy and go on with the business of the novel.
To return to the question of character. What do we mean
when we say there are "real people" in a book?
If
you examine
the works of Jane Austen, who, everyone agrees, was a creator
of characters, you will find that the "real people" in her
books
are not so often the heroes and heroines as the minor characters:
Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr. Collins, Mr. and Mrs.
Ben–
net, Lady Bertram, poor Miss Bates, Emma's friend Harriet,
the
timorous and valetudinarian Mr. Woodhouse. These beings are
much more thoroughly and wonderfully themselves than
the
heroes and heroines are able to be; the rea&<>n for this is, I think,
that they are comic.
