A Review: Smut by Alan Bennett

10:07 am - January 3, 2012: 2 notes

A Review: Smut by Alan Bennett

In reading the two stories contained in Smut—”The Greening of Mrs Donaldson” and “The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes”—most Americans will probably concur that Bennett’s writing is “very British.” What characteristics do I think of as traditionally British? A certain detachment and concern with propriety. These elements are obvious throughout the stories, even in more affecting passages:

Mrs Donaldson had been coming to the medical school for a month or so now and to the hospital for much longer. It was here that Mr Donaldson had slowly and not unpainfully died, visited daily by his uncomplaining wife in a routine she had begun by finding irksome but to which she had grown inured and even attached so that his eventual death came as a double deprivation.

Appearing on the fourth page of “The Greening of Mrs Donaldson,” this passage quickly establishes Bennett’s leading lady as rather cold, detached. “Where does smut belong in the life of such a woman?” seems to be the question.

Yet, smut fits in quite naturally, and the author composes two surprising stories about the subtlety of very smutty sex in otherwise quite unsexy lives. The stronger of the two stories, “The Greening of Mrs Donaldson,” follows the title character’s proper life and the development of her improper one. In the former, she is a respectable middle-aged widow who volunteers as an actor in medical school simulations. The program director quietly pursues her, advances that she demurely resists for most of the story. In the second, she is a respectable middle-aged widow who, expecting to earn some extra pocket money, welcomes two young lodgers into her home. Instead of extra money, she finds herself the host to an entirely unrespectable arrangement of rent payment.

In the second, slimmer story, another cast of characters—the Forbes, their son Graham, and Graham’s newly-wedded wife—find themselves similarly balancing between the proper and improper, compelled both by their desires to behave rightly and by their lustful needs that must be satisfied. As in a classic comic romp, sexual partners dance around each other, switch pairings, and try their best not to be discovered.

Now, aloof British smut might not seem the most appealing subject. But readers who are expecting raunch à la Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes will be surprised—pleasantly, I hope. The stories are less about the literal smut—do not expect words like “moist” or “throbbing” to appear—than about the natural role smut assumes in a typical life. And therein lies Bennett’s achievement: he easily demonstrates that smut does have a role in everyone’s life, from the sweet older lady who fixes us cups of chamomile tea to our bosses, from the seemingly chaste bank teller to (the dreaded one) our parents. With the aid of admirably strong dialogue—the author’s primary role as a dramatist lends the stories an air of naturalness—Bennett offers up a slight but delightful tribute to the smutty lives that we try to leave in the bedroom… and that inevitably escape.

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BONUS: This beautifully designed Picador paperback makes an excellent accessory.

DOUBLE BONUS: Here’s an amazing video of Mr Bennett reading from The Greening of Mrs Donaldson. Spoiler alert. But, really, it’s amazing.