Books

Andrew Varley reviews Out of the Woodshed by Reggie Oliver, Bloomsbury, £25; The Warden: a Life of John Sparrow by John Lowe HarperCollins, £19.99; and Beloved Chicago Man: Letters to Nelson Algren 1947-64 by Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Sylvie de Beauvoir LeBon, Gollancz, £25.

In a famous essay, the late Isaiah Berlin dismissed the possibility of a concept of scientific history. And quite right too. I like to think of him - in a lighter moment, perhaps, in All Souls after the port had passed - as a proponent of the cock-up theory of history. I was converted to this years ago when many contemporaries still slavishly acknowledged Marxist determinism but I had never thought of it as much more than one of those jokes which contain an obvious truth, until a friend, in an inspired piece of cod-scholarship, adumbrated its sub-divisions. An important part of the cock-up theory, she argued, lay in the answer to the question, "Who was pissed at the time?" It is a problem to which few historians have devoted appropriate attention - even those whose personal experience might have been expected to furnish them with some insight. Only a few moments thought is enough to show that the ramifications of the question touch most aspects of human endeavour: political, military, literary, romantic. The list goes on and the subject deserves closer examination than a review allows.

Three new books deal with subjects affected by the question. Stella Gibbons' biographer, her nephew Reggie Oliver, devotes some space to her father's alcoholism and its immediate consequences for the family but stops short of looking for its influence on her life and work. Nonetheless, it is clear that Stella shared many of the traits displayed by children of alcoholic parents. She was an achiever. Security and success were important to her. Perhaps Mr Oliver is correct not to labour the point but to allow the picture of his aunt's ability to cope with her background emerge from the story. Her own marriage and family life were happy and her writing, as with so many authors, provided its own therapy. Mockery can mitigate pain and we all have, lke Ada Doom, "something nasty in the woodshed." Don't we?

John Lowe, in his portrait of John Sparrow, the Warden of All Souls from 1953 until 1976, discusses his period of distressing drunkenness during retirement but does not look very far for its causes. Mr Lowe was a close friend of his subject and wants us to think the best of him. I only met Warden Sparrow once and on that occasion he lived up to the caricatured picture I already had of him. He seemed a bitter man with a tiresomely cruel tongue, though he did not use it on me. John Sparrow had an ambivalent attitude to his own homosexuality, at once despising it and giving it full rein. He had some tortured relationships and throughout his life had the greatest difficulty dealing with his emotions. Although he possessed a fine mind, he left no lasting literary memorial. It is easy to see why he looked for some oblivion in drink and good to know that he had the capacity to put this aside and enjoy a contented old age.

The case of Beloved Chicago Man is different. This is a collection of Simone de Beauvoir's letters to the American novelist, Nelson Algren. Algren is probably best remembered for his warnings-for-life, apothegms such as "Never play cards with a man named Doc." I have no idea who sat round the poker table with him, but clearly Algren did not always follow his own advice since he also said, "Never sleep with a woman who has more problems than you." The main interest of the book is, of course, the illumination it provides on a relationship which was crucially important to a writer of considerable significance. De Beauvoir is inextricably associated, intellectually and sexually, with Jean-Paul Sartre, and the fact that her long (and usually long distance) love affair with Algren has largely escaped notice will make the publication of her letters to him a matter of intense interest. Her niece, Sylvie de Beauvoir LeBon, is the editor and has done a good job. What Mlle LeBon does not discuss, however, is her aunt's chronic alcoholism (see Alert, No.1, 1998) and its inevitable influence on her relationships. Reading the letters, often moving and beautifully written, it is difficult not to receive the impression that Mlle de Beauvoir found some satisfaction in a relationship she could, at least in part, control through her imagination. In the end she alienated Algren by publishing details of their affair, as though it had been a work of fiction in which he was a character to be manipulated.

In all three cases, Gibbons at one remove, Sparrow in one period of his life, and de Beauvoir in full-scale addiction, abuse of alcohol had a major effect on them, on their creativity, and, in very different ways, on their ability to deal with emotions.