Synopses

CROSS-PURPOSES: This novel moves beyond the largely autobiographical concerns of my earlier experiments in the genre – CHANGING WORLDS and FIXED LIMITS - towards a more fictional integrity which led me by the nose, so to speak, into contexts and situations largely outside the domain of personal experience. To be sure, the subjectivity of my earlier work is in some degree still present (witness the opening chapter ... with its highly philosophical considerations), but it is now subordinated to the unfolding narrative ... as we follow the fortunes of James Kelly, a self-styled philosopher, through successive love-affairs which clash with his loyalties to friends and benefactors alike, culminating in deception and tragedy for all concerned. One would think that CROSS-PURPOSES was a philosophical-novel-turned-romance, and so, up to a point, it may well be. But it is also a tribute, in no small measure, to both Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller; though one might be forgiven for detecting an implicit condemnation of the latter in the 'Paris chapter', as I like to think of Chapter 7, where Kelly's attitude to sexual promiscuity is concerned! However, that is still my favourite chapter in what is probably my best novel.

AN INTERVIEW REVIEWED: This novel was written just after the above one and is both more complex and subtler than its stylistic precursor. Basically, the plot revolves around the efforts of Anthony Keating, a young correspondent for an arts periodical based in London's West End, to conduct a prearranged interview with a world-famous composer when, to his dismay, the person who would normally have conducted the interview had got sick at the last moment. Due to lack of experience in this field Keating fails to complete his assignment on the specified day and is obliged to accept an alternative date for later that same week, when Mr Tonks is due to return from a professional engagement in Birmingham. However, the composer is detained there an extra day and, due to a combination of unforeseen factors, Keating ends-up seducing his daughter ... with disastrous consequences for both of them! For they are discovered in flagrante delicto by Mr Tonks' elderly housekeeper, and word eventually gets back to the composer himself, causing serious allegations and misunderstandings which put not only the interview, but Keating's very career as a correspondent in jeopardy. Ultimately only Howard Tonks' daughter, Rebecca, can save Keating from additional humiliation, though not before several turns in the plot have led him into deeper trouble with his boss and colleagues and duly resulted in his dismissal. But thanks to Rebecca's influence with her father the interview eventually goes ahead, and the resulting dilemma for 'Arts Monthly' is whether to publish or shelve it in view of the surrounding circumstances and the dismissal of its principal instigator. It is the composer himself, however, who has the final say, and it comes as both a shock and a delight to Anthony Keating. - Those looking for philosophy in AN INTERVIEW REVIEWED will find much food for thought, as will those for whom humour is a sine qua non of literary entertainment.