Now that we have Argentina

Now that Argentina has restored

herself to our google map, it's

possible to hope that we might 

move on from American politics,

and get about the serious bus-

iness of play at this page, in

lamentably short supply since

the medical distractions of late

winter. How splendid it is, of

Argentina to return on the heels

of Quixote and of Ishmael, yet

so Brucefully Patagonian at the

same time.

Now, can you stand it, there

are people who will say, there

is not the slightest excuse for

anything in this posting: not

one shred of contribution to

the vitality of the mind, much

less of any nobler organ of op-

inion. But there you are: we

who argue, for a fact-based im-

pression of the world, are well

advised to project one without

remorse, and let the Edict of

Aunts try to find us. So, allow

me to level with you, and drive

you completely nuts in the bar-

gain.

There is a satirist named Edward

St Aubyn, who is the likelier son

of the writer of Lucky Jim and

Girl, 20 than the massively bril-

liant Brooklynite who surely is.

Mr St Aubyn is dangerously funny,

in almost the only way funny ever

can be, whose latest venture caps

a quintet of novels chronicling a

gloriously extended Tory boyhood,

At Last to the death of his parent

of great financial hope.

If, in short, we are to lay aside 

the cudgels of political fratricide

in favour of delight, St Aubyn's

substitution of failed infanticide,

suicide, and gladder sides of beef

can not have come into print for a

higher purpose, or reached America

at a timelier moment. I realise, 

too, there are Argentines who've

not laughed since the last Waugh,  

and I celebrate their elating re-

turn with a probitive turn of our

laughter's priceless estate. 

Edward St Aubyn

The Patrick Melrose Novels

  Never Mind, Bad News,

  Some Hope, Mother's Milk

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

  Picador Press, 2012©

At Last

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011©