Unlucky Jim

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30396, 21 March 1964, Page 4

Unlucky Jim

Yea, Yea, Yea. By Angus McGill. Seeker and Warburg. 288 pp. “Dudley. There is No Tomorrow!” “Then How About This Afternoon?” By Shepherd Mead. Macdonald. 287 pp. The (Little) Pot Boiler. By Spike Milligan. Dennis Dobson. 90 pp.

“Yea, Yea, Yea,” a lighthearted story of a bumbling, small-town newspaper reporter, is really immensely entertaining, and one is not necessarily knocking it by calling it trivia, Arthur Shields is the most muddling non-hero since Lucky Jim. But unlike Lucky Jim, who got himself into all his scrapes by having the courage of his incompetence. Shields becomes the worst newspaper reporter in recent fiction because the eccentric owner of a small town newspaper mistakes his father for someone else. The day after the appearance of Shields’s first news story (four paragraphs in all) the “East Stone Gazette” carries one apology and three corrections. A few more gaffes by Shields involve the Labour majority on the local town council and please Major Bury, the paper’s owner, to the extent of a promotion for Shields to “municipal and political correspondent.” There is an election campaign involving the mad major, a socialist aiderman, a “retired” actress and several “rock 'n’ roll” singers but there is little point in detailing the plot. It is so much more enjoyable simply to read it; and. where else but in a bright young English novel would the hero finish up with the least attractive girl? It may be of interest that the first newspaper by which the author, a Fleet street journalist, was employed was the “Shields Gazette,” at 13s a week. The novel costs a little more but is probably worth it. In contrast, Mr Mead’s novel is something of a hack job. Shepherd Mead, the author of three poplar novels and a “hit” Broadway musical comedy, has been trying, according to the publisher’s back-cover encomium, to write an unsuccessful novel since he was 22 years old. This time, for one reader at least, he has succeeded. The rather vague plot appears to involve a murder, but it is difficult to be sure. The one passage which saves the novel from complete oblivion occurs fairly near the start. The victim died when he forgot to alight from his car before driving it over a cliff. Two maiden aunts are discussing it. “It is odd,” says one “that Tom should drive into Long Island Sound.” “Just seems like a waste of a Cadillac,” replies the other. And, one is tempted to add, a novel. Mr Milligan’s zany collection is, like all good humour, reviewer-proof. Milligan admirers and other readers with illogical minds will find it wildly funny; the rest will merely be confused by it That is as it should be.

Smithsonian Report The 241-page annual report of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington for 1962 is for the most part a recital of projects carried out and objects acquired. But the 349-page general appendix to the report contains a wide variety of articles of broad scientific interest on subjects ranging from the history of the bow and arrow to rocketpropulsion.