(2 of 2)
"Poisoning," his doctor at home briskly diagnoses. Despite some lingering fears that he was the victim of an electronic trick by a BBC man called Angel (who may or may not have worn a beard), or had become the subject of diabolic possession, Pinfold settles back happily to a quiet novelist's life.
Inner Reality. This, probably the most offbeat novel of the season, and certainly Waugh's strangest, gains much of its quality from Waugh's rare knack of creating character and situation with the flick of a few words of dialogue. His ability to give airy nothings a local habitation and a name is untouched by the delusory subject matter. There is reality amid the hallucinations. Many standard Waugh phobias, e.g., journalists, book reviewers, evangelical clergymen, may be identified. In a prefatory note, the publishers state: "Three years ago Mr. Waugh suffered a brief bout of hallucination closely resembling what is here described . . . Mr. Waugh does not deny that 'Mr. Pinfold' is largely based on himself . . . Since his disconcerting voyage he has learned that a great number of people suffer in this way from time to time. He believes this record may amuse them."
The story has a happy ending, with Pinfold cured of his voices and setting about making a narrative of his odd delusions. He resolves to return later to the unfinished novel on which he had been working. Devoted Waugh-mongers can only hope that this is really autobiographical. It is almost 16 years now since Waugh published a portion of My Father's House in the defunct highbrow review Horizon.
That sample gave promise of being up to the level of early-vintage Waugh. For all its high curiosity value, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is hardly that. It may even remind some readers of the story of the man who complained to his doctor not so much because he had the habit of talking to himself, but that he was such a damned bore. Fortunately, Pinfold's voices were scripted by a novelist who may be many things, but never a bore.
*Waugh, 53, is a member of exclusive White's as well as Pratt's and St. James'. His school: Lancing.