Mixed Fiction

THE RIGHT TO AN ANSWER, by Anthony Burgess (255 pp.; Norton: $3.95), is a fictional sermon written in the form of a comic novel. It reveals that at 20, the question is apt to be: "What does it all mean?" At 30, it is more likely: "Is this all there is?" If at 40 or so, the questioner still has received no reply, he usually provides his own answers--to the first question a smile, to the second a nod. But British Author Burgess is neither a smiler nor a nodder. At 43 he is still banging noisily on God's door, insisting on cosmic answers.

The hero is a middle-aged Englishman named Denham who represents a trading firm in the Far East, and who spends a few months' home leave every other year. England, he feels, is decaying, and the trouble is too much freedom, too little stability, widespread amorality brought on by "the great democratic mess in which there's no hierarchy, no scale of values, everything's as good--and therefore as bad--as everything else." This dour viewpoint may be valid, as cocktail-hour philosophizing goes, but its polemical exposition in the first chapter damps the chemical process that produces satire. Burgess writes comically enough about TV-induced catatonia. the god-awfulness of roast mutton, and the entanglements of adultery, but the reader feels compelled to check each incident with the solemn preamble--is such and such really putrid or merely pathetic, is it cause or merely effect? Despite such shortcomings, the author's prose is graceful and precise, his wit is sharp, and he can complicate a comic situation to the point of inspired silliness.

A KIND OF LOVING, by Stan Barstow (309 pp.; Doubleday: $3.95), is the work of a Yorkshire coal miner's son who seems to think that it is still possible to write a novel about ordinary people who do what they have to do. Nowadays, the idea seems almost revolutionary; but Novelist Barstow makes it stick.

There is little story to speak of. Like the author, the book's hero is the son of a Yorkshire coal miner. At 21, Vic Brown is so innocent and wholesome that England's angry young men wouldn't be caught taking a pint of bitter with him in a pub. Vic's trouble is, quite simply, sex and one particular girl. She is a "bint" who works in his office--legs right, figure right, fresh and sweet-smelling at 18. After a few bashful fumbles, Vic finds that he has "compromised" a nice but very ordinary girl who, on closer acquaintance, does not remotely resemble his dream woman. There is a hasty marriage, a miscarriage, family quarrels. Surprisingly for a novel in 1961. Vic decides to make a go of a marriage that he never wanted, to see if a mistake that may last 40 years cannot be turned into a kind of loving that transcends romantic love.

This may be one of the oldest marriage stories in the world. Then why read it? Because Author Barstow often makes the human situation quiver on the page. Vic tells the story in the first person--and in rich, casual slang--with a kind of boyish innocence that is no mere storytelling contrivance. Everything from inexperienced sex to the showdown with mother-in-law has the edge of simple truth on it. In the end, the fact that Vic's story has been played out so often before wherever boy met girl does no damage; on the contrary, it seems to be the best reason for telling it again.

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