David Jones, Artist and Writer:

Extract

After reading David Blamires’ book, with digressions into similar essays and a re-reading of much of David Jones’s own work, I am as one who has just finished a long journey through familiar and cherished country with a companion who, though congenial, talkative and interesting, has some distressing peculiarities of speech and temper: so that, when we return to our starting point, I am pleased to be relieved for a while of his company, and yet anxious to meet him again and renew the conversation. A fastidious reader will not make his way through more than a few pages of David Blamires’ book, for he will find too much that is objectionable in the style: and yet it would be ungenerous to quote from the many examples of pompous jargon covering poverty of thought, of vagueness which assumes the air of profundity, of worn-out cliches which slip from the pen of the careless or hurried writer. Ungenerous for two reasons: in the first place, because such writing has become so common that I do in truth believe that were one now to write with the clarity and economy of a Newman there would be many readers who would be unwilling and even unable to make the effort that should correspond to Newman’s. In the second place, Blamires writes about things which are difficult to pin down and define, and all of us—all who have had to make a similar attempt, particularly in connexion with David Jones—know but too well how great is the temptation to grope for clarity by adding one vague approximation to another. It will not do, therefore, to be over-fastidious: there may be a core of gold beneath this slovenly exterior.