Psychology novel, or essay?

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 18

Psychology novel, or essay?

The Department. By Wayne Innes. Linden Publishing, 1983. 203 pp. $12.95. (Reviewed by Ken Strongman) Although Wayne Innes has written four previous books, locally published, this is his first novel. In spite of having its moments, it seems like a first novel; rough round the edges, unpolished and inconsistent. It has the feel of a work produced by a rather raw writer, but squashed within the covers there is a talent that occasionally drips out of the pages. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that “The Department” has the frustrating air of a creation by a naif. “The Department” is supposed to be a psychology department in a university in Sydney. It is staffed by the usual fictionalised crew of motley stereotypes. These include: The head of department who has been working on a grand theory of man which more reflects his own advanced lunacy than any truths about life; the effete, drunken, bisexual cynic; the quiet power-hungry manipulator, the dedicated, but hopelessly inadequate scientist; the middle-aged, latter-day, semi-hippy touchie-feely drop-out; and of course the eminently sensible, plausible, feet-on-the-ground narrator without whom the book would be impossible and whom we must believe

represents the author, as he would like to see himself. Into this mock ivory tower there climbs Valkyr, a female Swedish/ American professor, a sexologist who will use any means to gain fame by changing people’s sexual habits and by transforming the world into one of lesbian domination. Needless to say, the one thing which binds together the inadequate cosseted buffoons that surround Valkyr is their cosseted inadequacy. But they are so inadequate that they do not recognise that they are being duped. And so it grinds on, with the narrator, true-blue heterosexuality among his many sterling qualities, the only possible hope for them all. 'ln some ways, Wayne Innes has written a book that, if better conceived, would be reminiscent of Tom Sharpe's novels. It does have its funny moments but there are not enough to sustain. Nor has the author Set developed his own distinctive style, t is the sort of book that one wants to encourage the author for having written, but at the same time send it back for revision. The temptation to mark it, as one would an essay, is almost overpowering; it simply has an unfinished, quickly written, last-thing-at-night, undergraduate air about it.