Books: Perfumed Lament

BRIGHT DAY (286 pp.)—J. B. Priesfley —Harper ($2.50).

Writes Author Priestley: “Quite definitely it is my own favorite among all the novels I have done, and it is the one I would choose to be judged by as a novelist.”

Most readers will have a hard time finding any appreciable difference between the new Bright Day and such earlier efforts as The Good Companions and Angel Pavement. Changeless Author Priestley is still his typically British ‘arf-an’-‘arf self —half an able, warmhearted craftsman whose values rest on beef and decency, half a left-of-center propagandist, who views bureaucratic Laborites and heartless boosters of free enterprise with the same beady eye.

Bright Day is a disenchanted view of 1946-style life, and a lament for the good old days when life struck a harmonious balance between work and play. Hero Gregory Dawson is a successful movie-script writer of about Priestley’s own age (55); he divides his time between feverishly churning out a perfumed movie story and feverishly recalling the days when rich Yorkshire wool merchants went home to play Schubert of an evening. By the time he has written finis to his tawdry script, Dawson has also decided to write finis to his tawdry career. Henceforth, with trade union assistance, he will make films that show “how real people [behave] in a real world.”

Bright Day is jampacked with contempt for the unreal life of Hollywood. Nevertheless, Author Priestley manages to fit into his story a stirring boy-meets-girl romance, a stunning film star, and a gang of hearty Yorkshiremen that any Hollywood director would love to get his hands on.