92
PARTISAN REVIEW
French reaction to the onslaught of American advertising ... a cold war
to the death ... between the Ecole Normale Superieure and the Institut
de France on' the one side and B. B. D.
&
0.,
Hill and Knowlton on the
other." But the "erudite" riffs aren't nearly as amusing as the Judy–
Margo-Truman-Windsor wisecracks spiked with venom.
Of course
Time Remaining,
with its melancholy bass notes and mali–
cious cackling, is not a novel, though who knows what the right word
might be for such an uncorseted, unstoppable romp through the pre–
AIDS years of camp culture. It's McCourt's intermittently brilliant, often
boring performance of the "melodrama of remembering," as he captures
the sadness of lost friends, of happier days gone by, of the vanished fun–
and-games, in what Odette dryly describes as "the Jackson Pollock ab–
stract expressionist drip method of storytelling." Though the book is shot
through with incandescent moments of hilarity and sorrow, reading
Odette's wildly free-associating ramble is like sitting next to a rambunc–
tious drunk on a crowded train. At first his giddy exuberance is wonder–
fully entertaining, but after a while you wish he would just shut up.
David Leavitt has concentrated so relentlessly in his novels and stories
on the one subject of homosexuality that he has become more of a pro–
fessional spokesman for the gay world than a writer. As a result, his fiction
doesn't arouse more than sociological interest in most readers and critics.
But his new novel,
While England Sleeps ,
though of no intrinsic value as
literature, has acquired notoriety that raises questions about literary ethics,
and for that reason alone is worth some attention. This issue is one of fact
and fiction - or fiction borrowed from previous fact - in short, plagiarism.
The time is the 1930s, the place is England, and the story is primarily
about the homosexual love affair of Brian, an upper-class would-be
novelist, and Edwin, a ticket-puncher on the London Underground.
There's an erection on every other page, and a lot of strenuous buggering.
Various Communists have tried to recruit both men into the Party, espe–
cially after civil war breaks out in Spain, and Edwin runs off to join the
International Brigade. Soon disillusioned, and horrified by the bloodshed
of battle, he is imprisoned by the Loyalists for desertion. He summons
Brian to Spain, and the two of them escape on a boat bound for Bristol.
But Edwin dies of typhoid en route, and is buried at sea. Brian emigrates
to America, where he becomes a successful screenwriter, finds true happi–
ness with another gay lover, and so on. But none of this comes to life, in
large part because Leavitt's prose is so flat and sententious.
What is arresting, however, is not the story but its source, for as
Bernard Knox revealed in a devastating review in
The Washington Post,
the characters and plot of
While England Sleeps
were blatantly lifted from
