Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000)

If you're amused by stories centred on women's breasts (David Lodge) or about compulsive masturbation (Martin Amis), if you'd be intrigued by an author's language deficit ( Malcom Lowry), i if you think writing is nothing without hard-gained metaphors and the personal touch* (example from Angela Carter biut a fair few of the stories have those qualities) , if you would welcome reminders that even the most competent woman can be a victim imprisoned by a man's sharp glance and failure to share housework (Fay Weldon's tale of elective martyrdom) and that Chinese people dress in silly clothes and are incapable of speaking English properly** (Malcolm Bradbury), well, then, this is the book for you.
,
I read at least the first few pages and far more often all of each sory but gave up on one because it was unreadable and on several others because the writing inspired no confidence in the author and/or because they bored me so. Only one of the stories seemed in any way original (and that, not by a British author), some were enjoyable, and none was memorable.

Malcom Bradbury was also the editor of this book. And as should be apparent from the quote below he obviously shares the not-uncommon casual English attitude of superiority to other peoples. Not surprising then that he he appropriates non-British authors from a formerly-occupied country for the anthology. To call Beckett, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor British is not just wrong: it's wrong and offensive.

*Of walking in a city at night: 'And I moved through these expressionist perspectives in my black dress as though I was the creator of all and of myself, too, in a black dress, in love, crying, walking through the city in the third person singular my own herione, as though the world had stretched out from my eye lke spokes from a sensitized hub that galvanized all to life when I looked at it.'

** 'The little oriental who met him stands there, in shortie pyjamas. "You must close lindow . Water coming . . . into my loom. . . Also, offplint of article for loo to lead." ' ( I must acknowledge though that 'loo' for 'you' though is admirable writersmanship,)… (més)

This one is written pleasantly enough, but it has not aged well. In "Rates of Exchange," our hero, a professor who deBy als with less-than-pressing linguistic controversies at a third-rate British university, finds himself somewhat adrift during a two-week visit to an invented but vaguely Balkan Soviet satellite. Adventures with an irresponsible Foreign Office couple, an alluring, vaguely hippie-ish dissident writer, and, inevitably, his official guide, who easily slots herself into the role of a strict-but-fond mother, follow. By the time that this one came out, I can't imagine that most of the satire here hit too hard, and the dissident writer's impassioned paean to creative spontaneity seems a trifle romantic in the second decade in the twenty-first century. One gets the idea that "Rates of Exchange" is supposed to be about one rather bored British man's reawakening after a quiet midlife crisis, but Pettworth, our protagonist, is seldom interesting enough to sustain our interest, even in that context. How he manages to attract the amorous attentions of the Eastern European women he meets is another question without any real answers, though the relationship between him and his guide is left ambiguous enough -- and drawn well enough -- to give us a reason to keep reading. "Rates of Exchange" is good enough for a plane or a beach, but only just. Thank God I read it in quarantine.… (més)