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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Duncan Campbell is crime correspondent of the Guardian. His book, The Underworld, is published by BBC Publications.
In the Marx Brothers film, Monkey Business, there’s a scene in which Groucho, a stowaway on a liner, asks a posh lady an impertinent question and is rebuffed: ‘This is outrageous! If you don’t stop, I’ll call the Captain.’ To which Groucho replies, ‘Oh, so that’s it. Infatuated with a pretty uniform! We don’t count. After we’ve given you the best years of our lives, you have to have an officer.’
There was a fashion in the 1970s for people, unwilling to commit themselves politically, to describe themselves as Groucho Marxists. It was always a bit of a cop out, but when I came across the book Why a Duck?, a collection of the Marx Brothers’ movies, I found a volume which still seems magical 20 years after it was published and contains in its pages the essential political message of never trusting anyone in authority and never eating radishes when out on a date.
But the first book that I really read and reread as opposed to pretending I did was Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar. Billy seemed to be exactly like myself and my friends at the time: full of rich fantasies about breaking away from convention, courageously confronting authority, creating utopian societies and, most importantly, being adored by women who would understand our sensitive and witty natures in a way that didn’t quite seem to be happening in real life. We would recite bits to each other and sometimes, even now, when I arrive back in London from a trip north I can still hear Billy saying, ‘A man can l-o-o-o-o-s-e himself in London.’
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene introduced me both to his wonderful spare prose and to an underworld which remains a fascination – not to mention a job.
It led me into many of his other novels, although the only time I ever saw him in person was when he came to London to a rally organised on behalf of the Nicaraguan leader, Daniel Ortega, who had just been snubbed by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. As Greene came on stage, he saw Ortega standing there and went over to him as though greeting a chum at a cocktail party in Port au Prince: ‘Daniel – how lovely to see you!’ It was wonderful stuff.
Another novelist who seems to capture the essence of Greene in both ambiance and political perception is Robert Stone. His novel, A Flag for Sunrise, is one which I took to forcing on people because I thought it was so good. (I can never tell if the reason the copies are not returned is because they have become so important to the people concerned or the recipients are too embarrassed to say that they can’t see what the fuss is about.) A terrific tale about central America and the role of the United States there, it avoids all cliches and manages to be a ripping yarn.
For some dark reason two of the non-fiction books which struck particular chords both have devil in the title: Claud Cockburn’s The Devil’s Decade, about the 1930s, has that mixture of history, information, observation and gossip that brings to life a period encompassing the rise of Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, the depression and makes it digestible.
Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary is a wonderful antidote to all hypocrisies. Bierce was a journalist and satirist and gold miner who disappeared in Mexico during the revolution in 1913 but left behind this dictionary, completed between 1881 and 1886. His definition of politics is: ‘a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.’
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