A HA'P'ORTH OF TAR


David Storey's Saville is a novel that combines fine psychology, genuine good writing and uncanny sensitivity to time and place with a spectacular carelessness.

Storey's major error, repeated scores of times during the course of the five hundred and fifty pages, is the negligent use of the pronoun 'he' together with its derivatives 'him' and 'his'. To avoid misleading the reader, the pronoun should refer to the male most recently mentioned in the text; where this is not done, it's not a grammatical error but one against common sense. In this novel the 'he' often signifies the protagonist Saville. Yet, when the author introduces another character x, the following pronoun frequently represents Saville and not this x; and we waste valuable time determining who is intended. A mathematician would undergo the same confusion if a variable were to change its value in the middle of an equation. But, as we know, this cannot happen in algebra.

An example or two:

The Italian bowed; he examined his father . . . [Here the he’ is the Italian and not Saville.]

and

. . .when he hesitated he thrust it to his hand again. [The first 'he' is Saville, the second a certain Stafford, and the 'his' is Saville's again: the head begins to spin.]

and again

Stafford, his jacket fastened, his collar up, with one glove on and the other in his hand, followed him down the passage, turning then, his hand out, as his mother appeared at the foot of the stairs. [The first three 'his' refer to Stafford and the fourth to Saville; however, by page 255 we're quite skilful at second-guessing Storey, so this causes us only minor irritation.]



Could this confusion result from a well-meaning effort to avoid repetition? This is doubtful: Saville has a first name, Colin, which could be and sometimes is used as a substitute. Moreover, while we're concentrating on the protagonist, there's no cause for ambiguity. But invariably when Storey brings in another male character, he forgets to indicate who he's writing about.

This weakness is surprising. It has nothing to do with style, still less with grammar in a formal sense, but everything to do with misdirecting the reader. Yet this brings us to a remarkable conclusion. One imagines that in 1976 Jonathan Cape had editors familiar with the English language or that at least the Booker Prize judges had some discrimination. This leads me to draw the unpleasant inference that clarity doesn't matter at all.

And why does it matter to me and not to the average literary professional? It must be that the latter is a speed-reader while I am not, and as his eye skims down the medial axis of the page, everything to its left and right is blurred: he or she will follow the story line but ignore the detailed structure of the flying sentences. How else could the monstrous quota of novels be read by these judges in the time available?

My suggestion is this - that novelists in future write only in this central area of the page, leaving the peripheral text to be conjectured. It would save many gallons of printer's ink.

As for Storey, he's an exceptionally talented writer: perhaps I owe it to him to learn speed-reading myself.