Volume 47, Number 19 · November 30, 2000
On 'Party Going'
By Tim Parks
We should be familiar with the scene. A major railway station in central London. It's early on a foggy evening. The office workers are returning home; a party of England's most privileged are about to board the boat train for a continental holiday. The date must be sometime in the late 1920s. Apparently we are at the very heart of declining empire, Waugh territory. Yet no sooner have we read a paragraph of Henry Green's novel Party Going than we know that this is not the case.[1] On the contrary, we feel completely disoriented, as if we have been mysteriously spirited off to some far-flung outpost, some improbable possession we could never imagine had been annexed to the Crown. Kipling in India, Lawrence in Mexico, Joyce in Trieste, they are all and immediately more central to what has become English literature, to what we expect when we open a book, than this bizarre and beautiful comedy that is Henry Green's great masterpiece.
Feature, 4043 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |