Review by Bill Kirton
I like and am grateful for books that make me laugh. The extremes of
the early Tom Sharpe novels, Riotous
Assembly and Indecent Exposure
(much funnier than the Wilt novels for me), the glory that is Catch 22, the continuing inventiveness
and wit of Carl Hiaasen, the over-the-top characters of Janet
Evanovich – they’re uplifting, life affirming, even when (as in Hiaasen and
Heller’s case) they’re frequently conveying a serious underlying message. The Mortdecai Trilogy, a hit when it
first appeared back in the 70s,. is long – 519 pages of smallish print covering
three connected novels: Don’t point that
thing at me, After you with the
pistol and Something nasty in the
woodshed. It belongs unmistakably in the Humour section of bookshops and
libraries and it should have been an extended delight.
I won’t bother with a ‘but’ because the ‘should have been’ indicates
that it didn’t live up to the hype. Oh it’s funny alright, very funny in lots
of places, and it’s brilliantly crafted as Bonfiglioli prepares and delivers
his gags, observations, asides and other jeux
de mots with careful precision. The writing, in fact, is immaculate. He
also shows great respect for the reader, often addressing him/her directly and,
as he sprays quotations and references about – in French, Italian and Latin –
there’s an implicit assumption that you (i.e. the reader) share his elevated
cultural space, understand his terms of reference, and feel as comfortable as
he and his protagonist do in a context of luxury and sophistication.
That protagonist is The Honourable Charlie Mortdecai and he’s obviously
a character in the Wodehouse comic tradition, a louche art dealer caught up in
some very dark and dubious activities, pursued by various nasty people and yet
surviving through his wits and an indomitable insistence on enjoying the better
things in life, many of which are delivered through the good offices of his …
er … assistant, Jock Strapp. The plots are convoluted but, in a way, that
doesn’t matter because they’re all vehicles to enable Charlie, who’s the first
person narrator, to shine. And shine he does. He’s erudite, cultured, witty,
highly intelligent and supremely articulate. Bonfiglioli was himself an art
dealer and Charlie draws on the fine detail of his knowledge of the business to
justify his elevated position in the world of aesthetics and its corrupt
underbelly.
Why, then, with all these positives, do I have reservations about the
book? Well, it’s actually because Charlie is so relentlessly funny, so
concerned to turn his phrases with such care, so persistent with his
self-deprecation that, after the first book, he begins to lose his impact.
There’s only Charlie, Charlie’s judgements of other people, Charlie’s measured,
carefree approach to situations which actually threaten his life, Charlie’s bons mots and one-liners, Charlie being
resolutely Charlie. And we know him so well by then that the jokes become
predictable, in a way repetitive. And, in fact, his solipsistic view of and
approach to everything becomes slightly tiresome. It’s all about Charlie. He’s
never boring but it’s easy to see that he could be. Perhaps that’s what’s
behind Julian Barnes’s opinion that Bonfiglioli was ‘a writer capable of a rare
mixture of wit and imaginative unpleasantness’.
I’m not trying to dissuade you from reading it – far from it, it’s an
object lesson in crafting linguistic effects. The humour can be clichéd but
Bonfiglioli always adds something to enhance it. When Charlie meets a Chinaman,
we hear the following exchange:
"Harrow ,"
he said civilly. I glanced at his tie.
"Surely you mean Clifton ? Oh, yes, sorry, I see; harro to you
too."
It’s the old, Chinese velly solly joke, but here it’s more. As the
conversation continues, we see the words ‘colonels’ and ‘bereave’, but it’s
nothing to do with the army or death because they mean ‘coroners’ and
‘believe’.
There’s the classic approach to Britishness:
A muscle in his face twitched, almost as
though he were a British cavalry officer who is trying to puzzle out whether
someone has made a joke and, if so, whether or not it would be good form to
smile.
If you want a good tuck-in in Oxford you have to go to
places like Pembroke, Trinity or St Edmund Hall, where they play rugger and
hockey and things like that and, if you're spotted reading a book, someone
takes you aside and has a chat with you.
And there are lots of gems which are very satisfying for people who
appreciate words manipulated with self-conscious care:
The coffee having arrived (how hard it is
to write without the ablative absolute), we guzzled genteelly for a while.
It all started – or at any rate the
narrative I have to offer all started – at Easter last year: that season when
we remind each other of the judicial murder of a Jewish revolutionary 2000
years ago by distributing chocolate eggs to the children of people we dislike.’
It seems perverse of me to lavish praise on this and yet, in the end,
express dissatisfaction. At first, I settled into enjoying this character and
his insights, his attitudes to life and luxury and, above all, his facility
with words. But the books need something else – nothing necessarily heavy or
serious but something to still now and again, the discreet stridency (yes,
that’s deliberate) of his overwhelming presence.
The books are classics, they’re great fun and many reviewers have
written of reading and re-reading them again and again. So it’s my own fault. I
should have stopped after the first novel and not come back to the others until
I’d read something completely different. With so many books in the TBR pile,
519 pages is quite a commitment.
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