"Toasted English" 1949 LASKI, Marghanita
$200
LASKI, Marghanita
[212] pp.
Houghton Mifflin Company
1949
7 3/4" x 5 1/2"
VG/ VG
UPPOSE England became a centralized Tory state. Not the crude, aggressive dictatorship of a Hitler, but a socialist government in reverse—one in which a conservative bureaucracy introduced planned economy, but an economy in which it was the idle rich who were encouraged, the man-about-town who was publicly supported, and the worker and the intellectual who were frowned on and demoted. In other words, an Edwardian dream. It is this situation that Miss Laski imagines in her present novel. She is writing fantasy and comedy, but fantasy and comedy with social and political implications. Her book allies itself with the early work of Huxley, with Evelyn Waugh, with the Orwell of "Animal Farm," and if one carries it far enough, with the tradition of "Candide."
The niece of Harold Laski, Miss Laski appears to know her economic and social relationships. She also has imagination. Yet her book is a little like a game played after dinner, by witty and intelligent people, but still a game. Suppose . . . suppose . . .
What would life in such a country be like? She has created a situation, and it is an interesting one; though what it demonstrates, if it is taken seriously, is doubtful. Perhaps that all bureaucracies are evil, since they must necessarily ignore the human element of any social relationship. But one cannot take either the situation or the characters seriously. If one considers the book as having a moral, it becomes ridiculous in its attempts to demonstrate the obvious. As a game it is interesting, but like most such games of "let's suppose," whatever brilliance it has comes from a rather static ingenuity, not from the exhibition of characters or ideas through action.