Journey Without Ending. The Journals of WilliamSoutar
2001. 288 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-10-7; ISBN-10 3-901993-10-X
£18.00 (+ 3.00 p&p), €18.00 (+ 3.00 p&p), US$23.00 (+ 4.00 p&p)
Journey Without Ending is a fascinating and entertaining workwhich productively transgresses most of the seemingly relevant boundariesof genre. Prüger elucidates key areas of Soutar's thought on a rangeof topics - from love to symbolism, politics to sex. Her methods, however,are not merely the conventional academic ones. The whole book involvesa kind of heightened self-consciousness of the very act of its being written.There are fictional (necessarily!) letters from Soutar to Prüger;there are sustained stretches of ventriloquism when Soutar comments onthe evolving book 'in his own voice'. Frequently the author addresses herreaders directly, almost in the manner of, say, Fielding addressing thereader of Tom Jones. At one point the text incorporates a letterfrom Prince Charles! At times all this may seem arch or merely whimsical,but for the most part it proves effective, reminding the reader (and perhapsthe author) that this 'report' is necessarily partial and incomplete, thatit could have been (and should be) done in other ways too, with differentpatterns of emphasis, different principles of selection. There is muchinsight here, much entertainment. For anyone interested in Soutar, or inthe development of Scottish poetry and thought in the first half of thetwentieth century, this is surely essential reading.