Said the Old Man to the Young Man

London: Jonathan Cape. Very Good/Very Good. 1943. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo Dust jacket in protective cover, unclipped. Blue cloth with bright gilt lettering. No inscription. 188 pages clean and tight. Playwright Arnold Wesker is also an accomplished writer of prose - a rare combination. Indeed when Love Letters on Blue Paper appeared in 1974, the New Statesman, finding the stories `finely sensitive' and `strongly humane', questioned whether it may be that `the kind of realism he's often sought is much more attainable through the generous particularities of prose fiction'. It is a fine point: what is clear is that Wesker's art communicates itself whatever the form, and this collection of stories can only be considered a triumph. He explores the delicacy that is exacted, the exasperation that is inevitable and the truths that emerge when youth and old age meet in `The Man Who Would Never Write Like Balzac'. He observes a young man in the throes of making the biggest decisions of his life while trying to cope with an irrepressible great-uncle who has come to town for Yom Kippur in `Said the Old Man to the Young Man'. He brings four people together at the perfect moment of their friendship - for all the discord of their lives - locked in fleeting harmony in `The Visit'. It was remarked in The Times Literary Supplement that Love Letters on Blue Paper left one `with a renewed awareness of Mr Wesker's admirable qualities as a human being'. That feeling is indistinguishably blended with one's impression of him as a gifted writer in this new collection. .