In 1966, a proud Tom Stoppard went to Foyles’, where to his delighted surprise 12 copies of his first novel were on display. Two weeks later, he checked up on how many had been sold: there were now 13, which led him to the paranoid conclusion that ‘people were leaving my book at bookshops’.
Nearly 40 years later, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon is still Stoppard’s only novel and its rank in his complete works is low. Published almost concurrently with the first airing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Edinburgh festival, it is a piece that belongs to the earliest period of embryonic Stoppard: lots of clever little references for the educated, and a facility with words that runs away and trips over itself. Luckily we know that this very clever boy, showing off so hard with this piece of amiable juvenilia, will produce dazzling work later. But if ignorant of that, we might not be so sure.
On the eve of Churchill’s funeral, Lord Malquist, an affected and tiresome man who thinks he represents style (‘I think to drink crème de menthe in a pale blue cravat would be the abandonment of everything I stand for’) is giving his pensées (‘the House of Lords … responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages,’) to Moon, an incompetent professional Boswell, who considers he represents substance, or at least peace of mind, control and proportion.
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