[Ornamiviant]

Superior to 1984 and Brave New World wot? Totally forgotten buried masterpiece of 20th century English lit wot? So as I looked at the cover quotes on this one (published in 1941, and, as Anthony Burgess says in his introduction - which one shouldn?t read unless one likes major plot details given away - a book that needs to be "periodically resurrected") I?m thinking, Wow, certainly this seems worth a go.

Who is Rex Warner? I had a vague recognition and then later found out that he was an early translator of George Seferis into English (so likely the Seferis quote on the first page of Stephen King?s Needful Things [was it?] was from a Warner translation). What is this book? Should we put it in the dystopian future category? Not sure, as the author never bothers to give us any context to that effect. It may as well be some parallel world, and I don?t think it concerns Warner one way or another. Sights aren?t set on "realism, " as it would be unlikely that the book?s village-boy narrator would have the capacity to conjure up such a richly descriptive account. It is also about England, but only insofar as "the Village" is given distinctively English characteristics, like the pub - no nationalities or city or country names are ever mentioned, and half the characters have titles rather than names: the Rector, the Squire, the Flight-Lieutenant, the Vice Air-Marshall. It is, certainly, about the allure of fascism, but, to return to Burgess, it is an "ambiguous" book, and an examination of fascism is not it?s raison d?etre - there?s lovely detail given to character and descriptions of the Village (the latter are frequently grotesque). It also is a black comedy so dark that almost the only chuckles it elicits are nervous ones. Bloody unusual, this duck. Burgess mentions that he?s read it several times and I can see why: this is a strange and mysterious book, and one that I have no doubt rewards a revisiting



The Flight-Lieutenant told us that he had accidentally used live instead of blank ammunition in the machine-gun whose performance he had been demonstrating. "The old boy took it right in the face, " he said, "and went over like a ninepin." He smiled as he recalled the scene to his memory, then added in a more serious voice: "It was a really bad show."