Theroux, Alexander (Louis) - Miles Donald
MILES DONALD
Three Wogs by Alexander Theroux apparently consists of three separate vignettes of racial prejudice in England. I say 'apparently' because the actual subject matter of the stories hardly counts; their real concern is Mr. Theroux's unrequited love affair with his own prose style. Since my accusation is of the kind which has been levelled by most philistines against most great stylists, let me quote one of the many sentences in which Mr. Theroux convicts himself of being drunk in charge of a thesaurus:
It was high tea: the perfervid ritual in England which daily sweetens the ambiance of the discriminately invited and that nothing short of barratry, a provoked shaft of lightning, the King's own enemies, or an act of God could ever hope to bring to an end.
That of course has nothing to do with high tea, or the English; it merely reflects Mr. Theroux's narcissistic pleasure in his own powers of observation....
[The entire page is 351 words long]
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