An Extra Grudge Against Life

A GOD AND HIS GIFTS by I. Compton-Burnett. 223 pages. Simon & Schuster. $4.50.

In Ivy Compton-Burnett's first and worst novel, Dolores (1911), the dolorous heroine sacrifices herself for everybody and is thereby ennobled. Fourteen years passed before Compton-Burnett's second novel, and by then the author had changed her mind. Pastors and Masters makes plain that self-sacrifice plays into the hands of tyrants, that there is nothing less selfish than the pursuit of self-interest. In her subsequent 17 novels, Compton-Burnett has never ceased to drive the lesson home.

"It is surprising how many people go where duty calls," says one of her characters. "I wonder if it is because they have nowhere else to go."

Sexless Incest. Compton-Burnett has created some memorable monsters.

They are often Nietzschean supermen or superwomen. They rule a small domain, the family, but here they enjoy unlimited power. These tyrants of the home commit murder, adultery and incest; but their crimes are strangely sexless, for the tyrants are interested only in power over others. Most of the time they are content with verbal beatings, needling others until their victims' pride collapses. The tyrants are never punished; they are feted.

Well before Compton-Burnett, Henry James introduced murder and mayhem into the polite world of the drawing room. But James used all the literary devices at his disposal to create an atmosphere of genteel horror. Compton-Burnett uses only dialogue; there are scarcely 20 sentences of description in any one of her novels.

An Orgy of Forgiveness. Hereward, the hero of A God and His Gifts, is a true-to-form Compton-Burnett tyrant. "I am what I am," he tells a friend. "I know I am a man of full nature. I know I am built on a large scale. I am not afraid to say it." A famous British novelist, Hereward likes the people around him to be on a small scale. He keeps wife and family (a Compton-Burnett family is about the size of a regiment) in a state of abject, adoring obedience. Hereward's three sons are cynical, stunted little fellows. But one day Son Merton has the temerity to revolt.

Merton announces that he, too, plans to be a writer, but he does not care to write books like father's. He will write for more discriminating readers. Father is not pleased. He seduces Merlon's fiancee, who bears his illegitimate child. Without letting on that he is the father, Hereward persuades Merton to marry the girl. Then Hereward magnanimously adopts his own child.

In time, Hereward cannot resist revealing his coup. When God bestows gifts, he explains to his dumfounded family, the bad must be accepted with the good. Merton is crushed. The family unites in fawning on the great man and calling it forgiveness, though one member has plaintively protested: "I am not sure that it is great to forgive. It seems to me rather humble."

No Help from Life. Despite the technical difficulty of writing almost entirely in dialogue, Compton-Burnett rarely wearies or falters. One biting epigram follows another with machine-tooled precision; one rude remark is followed by the perfect rejoinder. Occasionally irony fails, and the conversation becomes merely cute--and exasperating.

Such densely packed dialogue puts off many readers who are looking for more realism. Compton-Burnett, however, is not interested in describing life but in commenting on it, and any means is fair. "Real life seems to have no plots," this retiring London spinster once said. "And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life."

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