BOOKS in review

THE TRUTH ABOUT GEOFFREY

THE NAME OF GREENE by Jocelyn Brooke. New York: Vanguard. 1961. 192 pp. $3.95. Reviewed by Noel I. Garde.

The author of this entertaining British novel (it was called "Conventional Weapons" in England) has been fairly well known in the British postwar literary world, both for some minor novels and short stories and as the editor of the Journals of Denton Welch (a sort of British Proust who died in 1948 at the age of 33). One of the most unique things about this novel is that it is in the form of a firstperson narrative by a homosexual writer, who has no name-in the story and all of whose biographical details coincide with those of

the author.

The novel is described appropriately as a comedy of manners and there's not too much plot. The narrator, while on vacation in Malta in the late 1950s, happens to share a table in a restaurant with an aggressive-type middle-aged Englishman whom he had seen shortly before and tried in vain to "place." Only after the Britisher dashed off does he at last remember, and most of the book is a flashback. Although it's been almost 20 years since he last saw the person, named Greene, it's hard to see how anyone could ever fail to recognize instantly someone he's known so well..

The aggressive Englishman is Geoffrey Tufnell-Greene, scion of an extremely wealthy but irrepressibly vulgar and common clan to which the narrator is related distantly. For years the Greene family was actually a neighbor of his own family, the lives of both groups having been interlocked for a period of almost twenty years between the time the narrator was eight and in his mid-twenties. Most of the time the domineering Geoffrey is found reacting in various ways to his father, his mother, his fiancee and later wife Madge, and most of all, to his younger brother Nigel (about the same age as the narrator). In striking contrast to Geoffrey, Nigel is effeminate, precious and torn between a fierce hatred and a masochistic love for his athletic brother. Nigel is bent on proving himself as an artist, either a painter or a composer, but he happens to be completely lacking in any talent.

While Nigel is obliged by his family to work in a London office, he comes to meet quite often the narrator, who is apparently fairly well established sexually. Nigel gets taken to bars and parties, esmattachine REVIEW

pecially parties given by a social-minded, bisexual woman named Frankie who has a succession of husbands, all deeply-troubled men who need "rescuing" by her. Nigel takes the narrator to see a choir boy with whom he's infatuated, and subsequently, after he's been able to abandon the business world for painting, he takes the narrator to his grubby abode where he's found living with a physically and otherwise repulsive ex-con named Reg to whom he's become a a sort of masochistic slave (and of course by whom he's subsequent ly beaten, robbed and deserted).

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Geoffrey's increasing suspicions about Nigel come to a head when he discovers some of the books Nigel's been reading (most appar ently acquired from the narrator). Aside from The Well of Loneliness, there's a book about homosexual doings in public schools called Tenants of the House. When Geoffrey confronts the narrator (with whom he's continued to enjoy fairly friendly relations) with these facts, he goes off into the usual spiel about rather seeing his brother dead than homosexual. All those people ought to be killed, not just killed but castrated-he'd be glad to do it himself, etc. Gedffrey is somewhat shaken, however, when informed that the author of Tenants of the House is none other than the virile, athletic Rugby hero whom Geoff has always admired so much.

With the coming of the war, practically everyone is in one service or another and the narrator loses track of the Greenes for the most part However, while in southern France with Frankie, he does come across Nigel beaten up badly by sailors. Frankie of course cares for him.

With the flashback now more or less over, the narrator can com plete the story of the Greenes by his current research. He is able to get most of the story from John Causton, his rather swishy host on an English "Capri" near Malta called Gozo, and since Geoffrey himself lives on Gozo, Geoffrey is able to fill in the final missing pieces It seems that Nigel was badly wounded by an air attack (a victim of paraplegia), and being married to Frankie, is nursed by her the remaining four years of his life. While in this Proustian state, he has written an agonizingly personal novel, mostly involving his love-hate relationship with Geoffrey and also a brutally frank revelation of what a complete fraud he has been in everything-bis music, his painting, and supposedly even his homosexuality. The novel becomes a best-seller after Nigel's death and posthumously he has at last achieved artistic distinction.

But for the final surprise twists, Geoffrey is found to be divorced from Madge, married to Frankie and a complete and genuine homosexual, in contrast to his supposedly phony brother. It seemed that his Rugger hero was a homosexual was what really did it. He is, however, filled with remorse about each of his many adventures with servicemen, etc., and is found mostly drunk. This soon leads to his. death.