There is a nasty, perhaps Freudian moment in Ford Madox Ford's novel Some Do Not, in which, in the middle of a conversation, something occurs to the hero Tietjens: 'Suddenly he thought that he didn't know for certain that he was the father of his child, and he groaned.' Tietjens, Ford continues, 'proved his reputation for sanity' by carrying on the conversation he was ostensibly having without reference to his daunting thought. Sanity for this Englishman is about appearing to be undisturbed by his most disturbing thoughts: it is exactly and exactingly about what he is able not to say. Keeping to the topic, keeping the conversation going is the kind of sanity for which one could have a reputation. 'But it gave him a nasty turn,' Ford writes. 'He hadn't been able to pigeonhole and padlock his disagreeable reflections. He had been as good as talking to himself.'

LRB 6 March 2003 | PDF Download