Aerodromes and Aspidistras: the Worlds of Thirties Fiction

Abstract

Ours has been a century of self-conscious ideologies or ‘isms’. As traditional values have seemingly crumbled, various intellectual edifices, from the tawdry to the imposing, have been erected in their stead. The Thirties saw a general scramble to get one such roof or other over one’s head. Two systems in particular tower above the fray. According to Arena, a Catholic journal of the time (quoted by Richard Johnstone), Marxism and Roman Catholicism were ‘the only two views of life which count in the modern world’. This claim was characteristically portentous. But it was also the plain truth about the educated young. These gentry are Mr Johnstone’s prime concern, above all as revealed in their fiction. His subjects are Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene (Catholic converts), Edward Upward (Communist), Rex Warner and Christopher Isherwood (fellow travellers, then defectors), and George Orwell (George Orwell). His book is sometimes a little colourless, but no more so than his texts. Nevertheless it stands out from the usual run of academic publications by being clear, informative, sensible, unpretentious, and short.