The View From Pompey's Head

THE VIEW FROM POMPEY’S HEAD

by Hamilton Basso

 

Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955

 

Date Read: February 19, 2022

 

Basso has created a world in Pompey’s Head, a fictional southern town, where he explores the uniqueness of southern values and the “Shintoism” of the South, a somewhat flawed but compelling analogy. Anson, having escaped Pompey’s Head some 15 years prior, arguing heartbreak and humiliation, is forced to return to resolve a rather complicated client matter. With his long absence, he is able to see the social mores, taxing relationships and social climbing with fresh eyes.

 

Anson has created a comfortable life for himself in New York. He has is an up-and-coming young attorney, has a wife Meg and the requisite two children. He often counts himself lucky to have escaped the insularity of Pompey’s Head when he did. So many of his old friends were not as lucky.

 

One uneventful day, Anson is summoned to a partner’s conference where he is made aware that one of the authors at the publishers they represent, Garvin Wales, now a blind recluse in declining health has had his wife contact their firm accusing them of embezzlement. The editor that managed him throughout his career, Phil Greene, now deceased, is accused of embezzling exactly $20,000 over the course of Mr. Wales’ career. Lucy Wales, Garvin’s wife, known to be no-nonsense and somewhat of a pain in the ass, is threatening a lawsuit.

 

All of this doesn’t wash with any of the partners, they having known Phil Green for his entire career and can attest to his honesty and moral character. The Wales now live on an island just outside of Pompey’s Head and since Anson hails from that region, he is the obvious choice to go and attempt to settle this delicate matter.

 

This is the pretext for Anson to return to his younger haunts and relive much of his youth through older, wiser eyes. He realizes that his previous analogy of southern Shintoism is still alive and well – in a nutshell the growing of rice and the worship of ancestors, which southerners leverage for social standing. The ancestor worship is particularly apparent at the Light Infantry Club, where you have to have an ancestor that (I think) fought in the war to gain membership.

 

Overall, I loved this glimpse into the south and I found the retrospectives from Anson’s youth, the demands of his present, the lure of the past all very compelling. I loved experiencing his world for a while and it makes me excited to read The Light Infantry Ball.

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