|
This new edition of a work that originally appeared in 1991 is very welcome. Its inclusion in the Seren Classics series acknowledges its high quality and deserved reputation. As a piece of autobiography it is deliberately baffling: is it fish, or is it fowl? If (as the author protests) it is altogether fiction, how come its obvious relation to the author's life, his family, and the general direction of his career from curious Jewish boy in Cardiff to London surgeon? And if it does mingle fact with fiction, in what measure, where does one start, and the other end? Cary Archard in an ‘Afterword’ reflects on Dannie Abse’s interest in multiple meanings, and in the perception of a reality that is itself ambiguous and problematic; the relation of the ‘Afterword’ to the preceding narrative is uncertain, for we are not told who its author is, and we might even conclude that it was Dannie Abse himself in a different guise.
These considerations, these ambiguities, may lie at the heart of the narrative, as they do in Don Quixote, but in both cases the final success is also due to an older storytelling tradition; to the cyfarwydd exercising his spell over the members of the prince’s court, to the trick of truth withheld until the right moment is reached, to pace and rhythm, and to the uncanninesss with which place and moment are conjured.
Furthermore, as a piece of fiction it is cunningly true. Members of the author’s generation who are Glamorgan born and bred – especially those from Cardiff – hear the voices, smell the smells, recognise the familiar objects that made up our lives. Lifebuoy Soap, or the Kardomah Café, acquire an almost mystic significance. Likewise the subtle changes in things seen or felt are what jerk time forward, as we move through the different stages from boyhood to the years of retirement. This is very much a ‘Cardiff’ novel; at one stroke the city has become like Joyce’s Dublin, whose landmarks and streets, as we cross from Cathedral Road, or the A48, to the distant horizons of Cyncoed and Caerffili Mountain, are suffused with a magic haze.
This is a book written by a poet who is a doctor, or is it a doctor who is a poet? Dannie Abse stacks the cards in favour of the first interpretation. In fact, both interact in equal measure. The gift of observation that marks a good doctor is also what enables Abse to capture an Ogmore sunset, or the interior of an elderly doctor’s sanctum. The poet in him affords the ability to choose the striking (if at times, overdeliberate) adjective, whereas it is the doctor who often supplies the vocabulary, in that way enriching the literary medium.
What a great Christmas or New Year present, for the old and nostalgic, as well as for the young who want to know what life would have been like for them, had its ambiguities turned out in a different way!
Gareth Alban Davies
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
|
