THAT NOVEL BY THE TUTOR IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY RAISES AN INTRIGUING QUESTION .sx Why has this face appeared among the best-sellers ?sx .sx The BOOK PAGE- by ROBERT PITMAN .sx PERHAPS you recognise that heavy and somewhat sullen face on the left .sx If you are fond of being in the fashion you certainly ought to .sx For weeks now those thick-lidded and decidedly untwinkling eyes have stared out at the readers of a succession of heavy literary magazines and review pages .sx For weeks the owner of the face has had her name at the top of the list of best-selling novelists .sx She is Miss Iris Murdoch , tutor in moral philosophy at St. Anne's College , Oxford ; wife of Mr. John Bayley , a fellow don ; and author of A SEVERED HEAD , which was published in June amid a loud cooing of intellectual approval .sx Miss Murdoch is the author of several books .sx Yet suddenly , with her fifth novel , she has been sifted out by the priests of culture for their own honours list .sx Her name has acquired an almost visible halo .sx For those who wish to impress , it can now be plopped confidently into a conversation like French seasoning upon a salad .sx Soon those who cannot quite afford Scandinavian cutlery or furniture from Heals will have the latest Iris Murdoch in their sitting-rooms instead .sx And soon , no doubt , an interviewer from the B.B.C. programme " Monitor " will be leading TV cameras around Miss Murdoch's house at Steeple Aston outside Oxford with the awed , hushed tread appropriate to a cathedral .sx DEGENERATE .sx Yet , despite all this attention , no one has mentioned the really outstanding characteristic of Miss Murdoch's new novel .sx It is not its style , which is often pretentious and sometimes a little lame .sx It is not its characters , which are unbelievable , nor its background , which is inaccurate and unreal .sx It is the fact that this story from the Oxford Moral Philosophy Department is , by the standards of most people , utterly degenerate .sx That is an epithet I rarely use on this page .sx Even when it is justified the best criticism is usually silence .sx There are too many booksellers , not all by any means in the back streets , who gloat over condemnation of their wares with the relish with which some film distributors greet an " X " certificate .sx Yet A Severed Head has already been given its " X " by the mandarin reviewers .sx Their coy or leering references to its plot have kept it selling well for weeks on end .sx I do not feel it out of place to offer a corrective .sx PLEASED .sx A Severed Head is the story of a wine merchant named Martin Lynch-Gibbon .sx We meet him first of all watching his mistress , Georgie Hands , while " with a tense demure consciousness " of his gaze ) she draws on the peacock-blue stockings which Lynch-Gibbon has given her .sx Lynch-Gibbon is pleased with life .sx His wife Antonia , though a few years older than he is , is beautiful , intellectually stimulating- and knows nothing about Georgie .sx Then , piece by piece , Lynch-Gibbon's complacency is shattered .sx Antonia falls in love with her American psychiatrist and goes to live with him .sx The psychiatrist's ugly but mysterious half-sister , Honor Klein , also upsets Lynch-Gibbon by finding out about Georgie and telling Antonia .sx A penitent Lynch-Gibbon is severely rebuked by his wife and her psychiatrist lover for deceiving them over Georgie .sx Then Lynch-Gibbon has a fight with Honor Klein in a cellar " she came against me with both hands pushing and clawing , and endeavoured to drive her knee into my " ) .sx After this encounter , Lynch-Gibbon decides that he is fascinated with the rather repellent Miss Klein .sx He goes to her house in Cambridge , gets in through an open door , and finds her in bed with her psychiatrist half-brother .sx Before the book ends Georgie gives herself first to Lynch-Gibbon's brother , Alexander , and then to the psychiatrist .sx Antonia leaves the psychiatrist for her brother-in-law Alexander .sx And Lynch-Gibbon is left with the incestuous , slightly-moustached Miss Klein .sx I should also mention that in addition to all these humourless couplings Lynch-Gibbon suffers from a homosexual liking for the psychiatrist too .sx Such is the novel which Mr. Cyril Connolly greeted as " a heaven-sent gift " and which led Mr. Alan Pryce-Jones to exclaim " She triumphs , " and Mr. Kenneth Allsop , the " Tonight " interviewer , to give as his judgment :sx " She has the rare universal eye of the great novelist .sx " Which , I believe you will decide , is all my rare universal eye and Betty Martin .sx SO WRONG .sx True , the praise has not been unrelieved .sx Mr. Connolly himself pointed out that Miss Murdoch , having chosen a wine merchant as a hero , goes wrong over almost every detail concerning wine .sx Mr. Philip Toynbee , with some justice , wrote :sx " Though she does not wish us to admire any of the characters , except Honor , she does demand of us a credulity , a sympathy , and a concern which I have found quite impossible to give .sx " Mr. Peter Forster likened Miss Murdoch's dialogue to Ethel M. Dell .sx Yet the striking thing is that none of these critics challenged Miss Murdoch's novel on moral grounds .sx I would not ask them to denounce it as pornography .sx A Severed Head is not pornography .sx It is so stuffed with turgid and often meaningless symbolism that only an extreme masochist could drive himself to read it for the kicks .sx Nor is it propagandist as Lolita was .sx It does not enthuse over incest or homosexuality .sx It does not enthuse .sx It does worse- it merely yawns .sx It enshrines the bored and disgusted-by-nothing attitude of that shallow but influential clique which dominates the literary weeklies and the B.B.C. Brains Trust and which tries to make normal , human , shockable people feel like country cousins or like the " pi " little boys who dare to remain mute while the rest of the dormitory is giggling over dirty stories .sx The critics who praised Lolita defended the author's moral notions .sx But there was no such defence of Miss Murdoch- the critics were so sophisticated that they saw nothing which needed defending .sx The Observer wrote :sx " She is serious , Leftish , and high-minded , with a sharp brain tempered by good sense :sx an English university seems just the right background for her .sx " But is " high " the most apt word for Miss Murdoch's mind ?sx For this is not her only puzzling novel .sx In her often brilliantly funny second book , Flight from the Enchanter , Rosa , a sensible upper-middle-class young lady , befriends two Poles whom she meets in a factory .sx She teaches them English in their sordid room in Pimlico while their aged mother , lying on a mattress on the floor , looks on .sx Occasionally the brothers dance round the mother or prod her with their feet .sx One cries :sx " You old rubbish !sx You old sack !sx We soon kill you , we put you under floorboards , you not stink there worse than here !sx " WATCHING .sx One day Rosa goes to meet the brothers and finds only one of them , Stefan , waiting for her .sx He takes her to the room where he says :sx " We make love now , Rosa .sx It is time .sx " " Your mother !sx " exclaims Rosa , noticing the old lady's watching eyes .sx " She not see , not hear , " is the reply .sx The next day Rosa finds only the other brother , Jan , waiting .sx In the room at Pimlico , Rosa asks :sx " You know about Stefan ?sx " Jan replies sternly :sx " Of course .sx And now is me .sx " Of this incident one critic has written :sx - " This whole episode is a brutal commentary on the equivocal nature of pity :sx the revulsion of feeling which an unequal relationship inspires .sx " It may be , of course , that the stud-farm entanglements of Miss Murdoch's latest book are also a brutal commentary on something's equivocal nature .sx Unfortunately , if they are , even Miss Murdoch's most distinguished admirers seem unable to discover exactly what that something is .sx Miss Murdoch's publishers claim that A Severed Head " is as exciting as Treasure Island .sx " In the ultra-sophisticated society in which comparisons like that can be made and in which people like Miss Murdoch are not just the rebels but the teachers , it is little wonder that the young are occasionally more interested in yellow golliwogs than in the works of old squares like R. L. Stevenson .sx DISTURBING- THIS NOVEL ABOUT A TOP TORY .sx NOW for another disturbing novel .sx It is THE MINISTER ( Hamish Hamilton , 16s .sx ) by Maurice Edelman , the suave , culture-loving and luxuriantly good-looking M.P. who represents the car-workers of Coventry North .sx Mr. Edelman has himself made an intense study of British political novels .sx To literary societies he has lectured in languorous tones about John Galt , who wrote The Borough ( subject :sx political jobbery ) in 1832 , and about A. E. W. Mason , best-known for The Four Feathers but also the author of The Turnstile ( based on Mason's own brief career as Liberal M.P. for Coventry) .sx Now , in The Minister I believe that Edelman has produced a novel which itself deserves a very high place indeed in the roll of political fiction .sx It is certainly the novel which I have enjoyed most in 1961 .sx A reservation .sx It tells how Melville , a Tory Minister , achieves the aim of every Tory Minister .sx He becomes Tory Prime Minister .sx But his public triumph is hollow since he has simultaneously discovered that his plain but well-loved wife has also allowed herself to be well loved by his own brother and perhaps by other friends as well .sx Set against this theme is the story of how Melville , having said :sx " I want the African to be my brother , " adds in an indiscreet whisper , " but not my brother-in-law .sx " The pretty lady at whom the indiscretion is directed is the mistress of an Opposition Leader .sx Duly circulated and printed in the Press , it stirs riots in Africa and almost wrecks Melville's career .sx Why do I call the novel disturbing ?sx It is not because of Edelman's approach to morals which- unlike Miss Murdoch's- is both adult and real .sx No , the disturbing thing about The Minister is that far from being artificial , it too often rings frighteningly true .sx No malice .sx For it portrays a Tory leadership whose aim , above all , is to be free from any supposedly naive , old-fashioned notions about patriotism or Empire or national greatness .sx A leadership which thinks it oh-so-civilised and cultured to be just a little weary and cynical about everything .sx Socialist Edelman does not present this portrait with political malice .sx Indeed , it is clear that , despite his Coventry connections the Melville attitude is his attitude too .sx But I must draw attention to one fairy-tale element in this otherwise true-to-life novel .sx In avoiding any appearance of party prejudice , Edelman goes so far as to put epigrams- yes , actual epigrams- into the mouths of everyday Tory back-benchers .sx FROM A NEW BOOK , AN INTRIGUING ACCOUNT OF LIFE IN THE LAND OF MISTS .sx The sad , macabre tale of the bride they called Miss Fuegia Basket .sx THE BOOK PAGE .sx by ROBERT PITMAN .sx JUST north of the seas that surge and shriek round Cape Horn , the land mass which we call America tails away in a region of mist , sleet , and death .sx The people who live there , scratching a bare living from the rocks or wading into the ice-cold surf to collect limpets , are still among the most wretched on earth .sx Not long ago their life was even more desolate .sx In Britain today it is fashionable to discuss the problem of old age .sx During the last century it was reported that the people north of Cape Horn had solved the problem of what to do with the old folk .sx In times of famine they ate them .sx It is not surprising , therefore , that out of that sleet and mist comes one of the saddest and most macabre little stories that I have ever read .sx I take it from THE WONDERS OF LIFE ON EARTH by the Editors of Life and Lincoln Barnett ( Prentice-Hall , ) .sx You would be wrong to shudder at the price .sx For a family with a budding biologist in its midst the book is more than worth it .sx In wonderful photographs and paintings it parades the bizarre quirks of evolution- such as the dawn-flying silk moth , with its absurdly long wing-filaments which rustle while it flies .sx The filaments act like the tin-foil dropped by bombers to deceive radar .sx