STRIKE THE FATHER DEAD

I have been reading Strike the Father Dead by John Wain. It was first published in 1962 and came to us at 199 High Road Knighton as the monthly selection from World Books in, probably, the July of 1963. I have no recollection of its contents, no memory of actually reading it in those days. That happened from time to time. My professional engagements came in fits and starts. Perhaps the book arrived during one of those gluts.

I picked it up again now because I’d often seen its title among those pointed out as part of the new wave of postwar writers collectively known as the Angry Young Men. Just how Angry and different it was, was something I wanted to find out for myself.

It is by way of being the autobiographical memoirs of three people. Alfred is a Professor of Classics at a not very well endowed provincial university. He is a widower. Eleanor is his younger sister, foster-mother to Alfred’s son Jeremy. I am immediately impressed by the very high quality of the writing. Each of the characters has an individuality which comes out quite splendidly with each of their contributions to the narrative. Albert is a survivor of the battle of Vimy Ridge. He writes with the academic precision of a man schooled in Edwardian times. Eleanor is almost a twittery type, of an era when the man was the breadwinner and the woman prepared the meals and kept the house in order. Jeremy rebels against his father’s claustrophobic regime, runs away from school, survives as a jazz pianist in wartime London. The year is 1943. The worst of the blitz is over. Flying bombs are not yet ready for their unmanned assault. Jeremy spends most of his time playing in jazz clubs. He develops a personal style leaving Trad behind but avoiding the seduction of the avowedly Modern. After the war he escapes to Paris and has considerable success along with Percy Brett, a jazz virtuoso partnering on the valve trombone. There’s more to come, but I’ll not spoil things for those who choose to engage with the book for themselves.

Observations? I did not find the kitchen sink drama I had expected. This is a cracking good tale, jam-packed with verisimilitude. No frothy lightweight entertainment by a Noël Coward or an Ivor Novello. The recesses of my mind say Balzac or even Bizet. A polished account of real people living everyday lives. If anything, I become aware of the turning of the page as generation succeeds generation. Alfred’s father enjoyed the comfortable assurance of a Victorian clergyman. Alfred himself is part of that lost generation whose mental outlook was ever conditioned by those too elderly to take up arms in 1914. Jeremy is part of the generation which rejected Winston Churchill in 1945. Harbingers, in their turn, of massive social change. And that’s about it. I must look along my shelves and see whether I still have other exemplars of that particular ambitus. I must admit, I do tend to look back (not ‘in anger’) and compare my memories with those who committed their thoughts to paper as new flowers grew from the ashes of austerity.

© francis cameron
oxford, 18 january 2009