322
WILLIAM H. PRITCHARD
<That's not allowed. That is not in the rules.'
'Who makes the rules?'
'I do.' Theodorescu poured Hillier a wonderful chill tumbler of
frothing Blanquette.... 'How about some apple tart normande
with Calvados?' asked Theodorescu. But Hillier had an apoc–
.alyptical vision of his insides-all that churned mess of slop
and fibre, cream sluggishingly oozing along the pipes, the fla–
vouring liqueurs ready to self-ignite, a frothing inner sea of
souring wine. A small Indian townS'hip could have been nour–
ished for a day on it all. This was the West that Roper had
deserted. 'I give up,' he gasped. 'You win.'
And the secret agent proceeds to vomit it all up into the ocean, "that
traditional vomitorium." Talk about the "apocalyptical vision" of one's
insides seems wholly appropriate; the world exists to be thrown up, but
in the process of demonS'tration by example Burgess gives us perhaps the
most richly labeled social event since the wedding of Miss Fir Conifer
in
Ulysses.
No other contemporary novelist comes close to this kind of
superb comic realization, which, like Dickens and Joyce, should be read
aloud in high heroic style. Yet, later on in the novel, after Clara's
brother Alan killS' an enemy, he too is sick, and the narrator adds, "His
shoulders heaved as he tried to throw up the modern world." A perfect
metaphorical fit, but also a sudden inadvertent smugness as if the novel–
ist were suddenly congratulating himself on how neatly he'd turned
things out.
Near the beginning of the novel Hillier's friend Roper writes a
youthful letter about losing his faith: "I seem to have come very close
to England S'ince I stopped believing in Catholicism, close to the heart
or essential nature of England I mean. What I find there is a sublime
kind of innocence. England would take neither Catholicism nor Puritan–
ism for very long-those faiths built on sin just rolled off like water
from a duck's back." Sophomoric yearnings perhaps, and seemingly con–
tradicted by Hillier's reappearance as a priest at the novel's end; yet as
the book ends Father Hillier falls into depression, thinks about his "cold
and lonely" bed, wonders whether there is anything behind the "cosmic
imposture." Only the promise of a good dinner with champagne staves
off deeper inanition. In an analogous way, the values testified to by
Burgess' prose refuse to be modified by or enlarged into any higher
(eschatological, if you will) values.
Tremor of Intent,
like Burgess' other
novels is' only as solid and satisfying on the whole as it is page by page.
But page by page it is very satisfying indeed, asking to be reread and
reexperienced, rather than pondered and then abstracted into a pungent
message for our time.
