GEORGE BONE AGONISTES: PATRICK HAMILTON’S HANGOVER SQUARE

Hangover Square

By Patrick Hamilton

Patrick Hamilton is a mid-century British author who was for a period a successful novelist and playwright. By the time of his death of cirrhosis of the liver, he was neglected. He had succumbed not just to alcoholism but to bitterness brought on by the failure of Marxism to deliver a revolution, hatred of capitalism and the modern world and weariness with life. His final novels were too nihilistic for the reading public but their reputation has benefited by renewed interest. He wrote the successful plays Rope and Gaslight, both of which were made into movies. His work has also been produced for television. In his obscurity he joins (in my mind anyway) other mid-century British novelists like James Hanley, Henry Green and Anna Kavan. Like Hanley he is a realist but like Kavan he writes from the extreme viewpoint of marginal, insane, criminal and intoxicated people. 

Hangover Square is considered to be his best work. The protagonist, George Bone, is a tragic stooge, too good for the brutal exploitive world he lives in. That is, the George Bone that is connected to reality. The other George Bone experiences periodic breaks with reality, described as schizophrenic (a literary, not psychological diagnosis), what his drinking companions call his dumb moods. The break is presaged by a click, or a crack, and the novel opens with such a click:

‘Click!…Here it is again!….

‘It was a noise inside his head, and yet it was not a noise. It was the sound which a noise makes when it abruptly ceases; it had a temporarily deafening effect. It was as though one had blown one’s nose too hard and the outer world had suddenly become dim and dead.’

In the bright, feeling world of color and being George is a sad but sweet alcoholic, infatuated with Netta, a beautiful, cold-hearted drunk who plays him for money. In the twilight world of his dumb moods he is plotting her murder.

Netta seems to have crawled onto the page from the world of Zola, transferred to Earl’s Court in London and updated to the eve of World War 2. I frankly was rooting for George to kill Netta, she is so vicious. Hamilton describes her face and body as having the qualities of ‘pensiveness, grace, warmth, agility, beauty.’

‘Her thoughts, however, resembled those of a fish—something seen floating in  a tank, brooding, self-absorbed, frigid, moving solemnly forward to its object or veering slowly sideways without fully conscious motivation.’

Netta hangs out with Peter and Mickey, two moronic, fascistic barflies. Together they mock George but tolerate him for his money. George is a bit like Obama trying to woo Republicans: every time he thinks he has a chance with Netta, every time she is nice to him, he discovers that he has been used, and falls a little farther, a little harder into self-recrimination and despair. Here he is in a cab pleading with her to treat him decently:

‘“No, Netta, listen.” He put his hand on her arm and pleaded with her. “Do listen for God’s sake. You must be human somewhere. I know I’m a fool. I know you don’t care a damn about me. But if you agree to come out with me, can’t you even be civil? You just treat me like dirt—as though I’d done something wrong. I haven’t done you any harm, Netta. The only harm I’ve done is being in love with you…” His voice began to break, and tears came into his eyes as he went on…“What’s wrong with that? You’re civil to other people. Why can’t you be civil to me? Oh, Netta, do be kind to me. I can’t go on unless you’re kind to me. It’s all getting too much. Say something civil to me, Netta. Can’t you say something civil? I’m worn out. I’ve spent what I’ve got on you—I’ve tried to please you…Can’t you be civil? Can’t you look at me and say something civil?”

‘There was a pause. He looked at her and she looked out of the window. He waited for her to speak but she did not. In the faint hope that his tears and eloquence were moving her, he went on:

‘“What have you got against me, Netta—what harm have I done? If anyone else took you out, you’d be nice enough to them, but just because it’s me you treat me like dirt. You don’t treat the others like dirt—you wouldn’t treat Peter or Mickey like this. What have I done?—That’s all I want to know. I love you, Netta—but I don’t interfere with you. I only hang about. I’m harmless, aren’t I? Aren’t I harmless?”

‘“No,” she said, still looking out of the window. “You’re not at the moment—if you want the truth.”

‘”What do you mean, Netta? What am I doing?”

‘”You’re being a bloody, insufferable bore. And the more you go on the more boring you’re being. So won’t you shut up? I’m likely to be much more civil, as you put it, if you do.”’

He resolves to quit drinking and leave London, abandoning Netta forever. He knows she uses him, he knows she despises him, but he is helpless. So he bargains. He will quit drinking. He won’t call her. He starts to feel good and thinks, why not lord it over her? One last time! Each chapter records an episode more desperate than the last. And then there are those dumb moods which come upon him.

George is not friendless, and he has some money. One friend, Bob Barton, was a partner in a wireless business venture that fell apart. He leaves George and goes to America, never to be heard of again. They have a mutual friend, Johnny, who is an accountant with a major show business agency. Johnny recognizes George in a pub one afternoon and they renew their friendship. Johnny is a decent man who treats George well, but can’t stand the scheming Netta, who is infatuated with Johnny’s boss, a theatrical agent.

George comes close to escaping Earl’s Court a number of times, and almost goes to live with Johnny, after suffering a bout of flu. While ill Johnny visits him and they form a plan to move into a flat together in another part of town. But escape is not in the cards for George, no. The reader knows, even as the hope of escape is tantalizingly close, that George will eventually crack into a dumb mood and find the opportunity to kill his tormentors.

It is hard to place Hangover Square. It reads like a hardboiled noir book in many ways. I can imagine Jim Thompson writing the story but then it would lack the subtlety and depth of Hamilton’s prose, which plumbs the minds of his characters and fits a foul world around their empty, drunken souls. James Cain might also have written it, but George is more innocent than Walter Neff or Frank Chambers, who are driven by lust and greed. Chandler’s George Bone would have been sentimentalized, Moose Malloy with golf-ball sized buttons on his coat. And Hammett would have been too cruel. He would have hated his stooge.

Hangover Square is an unflinching character study. It renders the world through the red, sleepless eyes of a ‘schizophrenic’ drunk, whose excesses lead to regret and failed resolution. Suspense builds with George’s haphazard alternation of mood and proceeds by delay as George plans and forgets the murder of Peter and Netta. Pulsing in the background is the menace of war and Fascism. Hamilton, a Communist (though never a party member), explicitly shows that the resentments and violence of Netta and her friends are fueled by Fascism and, finally, a form of Fascism itself, with its love of empty spectacle and worship of war and hatred. Netta has no real feelings at all but she is attracted to Peter because he has been to jail twice, once for killing someone in a drunk driving accident and the other for assaulting a Communist during a pro-fascist rally.

One of the pleasures of reading mid-century fiction is the absence of academic, writerly technique. These writers had not yet heard of the fatwa against adverbs. They have no problem objectifying the thoughts and feelings of their characters, or triangulating viewpoints in the free indirect method.

The book is not without a certain grim humor, but the only irony is the irony of perspective, that George sees the world through two different minds, and can’t reconcile the two, except with a golf club. I saw the end coming, I hoped it would be different, but it was a steel trap that started to close on page one. However, I won’t give away the final 6 words, which are funny indeed. Hangover Square is a nasty piece of work, relentless, sad and true.