A Passage to Egypt

THE PICNIC AT SAKKARA (239 pp.)--P. H. Newby--Knopf ($1.25).

All civilized nations have a problem--how to be civilized without losing their primitive gusto. Novelists face the same problem. They must be fine craftsmen, but if they are not impelled also by cruder, tougher impulses, their novels will be all polish.

Good novelists find ways of solving this problem. E. M. Forster is one of the most civilized writers alive, but his heart (and his reader's) goes out to characters who are more primitive than he is himself. In neatness and suavity, Novelist Evelyn Waugh has no rival, but he uses his well-kept lawns solely for the purpose of exercising tigers. Somewhere in between Waugh and Forster lies Britain's P. H. (for Percy Howard) Newby.

Chastity or Unity? Professor Edgar Perry, hero of Newby's latest novel, is a man-of-Waugh who gets bent by Forster circumstances. Like most Waugh heroes, Edgar is a born fall guy--a nice fellow who cannot see anything when he loses his spectacles and still less when he finds them. Newby's Forster setting is not India but Egypt under King Farouk, where anything can happen, just so long as it is the opposite of what ought to happen. Edgar, for instance, gives English lessons to a wealthy Pasha. But the lessons are spent discussing perpetual motion in French. Edgar lectures to Egyptian students on the chastity of Othello's Desdemona; a political demonstration develops and a student gets up and says firmly: "Sir, we demand the unity of the Nile Valley and the immediate withdrawal of all British troops." Edgar amorously welcomes his wife, newly arrived from England, but she has only come to ask him for a divorce.

Edgar moves from one fiasco to another with undaunted astigmatism. He is urged by the Pasha to report on student housing conditions. He does so. Grateful students hoist Edgar shoulder-high, parade him down the street. Up dash the cops, toss Edgar into jail. The Pasha says sadly: "Monsieur Perry is a fanatic. I can see that he is the sort of man who prepares a report and then thinks it ought to be carried out." Meanwhile, Edgar is being taught by a fellow prisoner "how to remove a gold ring from a man's finger while pretending to shake hands with him." "And . . . here is your wallet," adds the teacher.

Martyr or Invader? Edgar's problems raise universal questions, e.g., should a human being be judged purely on his own merits, or is he bound to be judged as the representative of a particular nation with a particular history? What, for instance, is Edgar to an Egyptian nationalist? Is he a martyr who has gone to jail for the sake of Egyptian youth? Or is he a Briton who has invaded Egypt?

One of Edgar's favorite students decides that Edgar is both. Personally loyal, the student gets Edgar out of jail. Nationally loyal, he then tries to shoot Edgar through the head. When Edgar's wife sees her husband's face scorched with powder burns, she believes he has attempted suicide out of love for her, promptly falls madly in love with him.

Author Newby does the neatest possible job with his plot. His comic characters, such as the Pasha and his wife, are all the more comic because they are described affectionately, tolerantly, almost respectfully. The blurb's comment that The Picnic "might have been called a comic Passage to Egypt" proves to be at least half true, because Author Newby knows to perfection the Forster art of speaking softly. Unlike his master, however, he has not the brute strength to carry a big stick.

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