The View from Pompey's Head

Recently I read an article published several years ago in The Boston Globe about two prominent 20th Century writers who are now largely forgotten. Perhaps it says something about me that I have read both and enjoyed their work. They are Calder Willingham and Hamilton Basso. I finished Basso's "The View from Pompey's Head" just last week. It is slow moving in a pleasant, languid, distinctly Southern manner. Basso gradually develops memorable characters, crafts fine scenes and steadily hones the plot - with the ultimate Southern shocker of miscegenation! "The View From Pompey's head" spent 40 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List in the 1950s and was made into a Hollywood motion picture starring Richard Egan and the ravishing Dana Wynter. Basso published 11 books and edited The New Yorker for 20 years but is virtually forgotten today. Basso and "The View From Pompey's Head" deserve a wider audience and greater appreciation from readers in 2005.

A NYC lawyer returns home to Pompey's Head, the small southern town he grew up in, to investigate a divorce case. The novel is a leisurely, old-fashioned study of the way people lived their lives--the novel of manners. Lives are probed and some interesting (and nasty) secrets revealed: rape, incest, and miscegenation among them. Basso is a sophisticatd and compelling writer, in full command of his material. Highly recommended.

"The View from Pompey's Head" is set in a fictional small city in the early 1950s. It's reminiscent of Savannnah, GA, but is clearly not intended to be a stand-in for that city. Anson Page, a New York lawyer, must return to his hometown of Pompey's Head, South Carolina on a business trip. Much of the novel consists of flashbacks to Anson's privileged childhood and young adulthood in Pompey's Head. There are so many flashbacks, that one starts to feel impatient and wish that we could just get on with the story. This is a novel about the snobbery, class and racial prejudice. Anson left his town to get away from the snobbery and yet when he returns, he must confront the fact that Pompey's Head is where he belongs, despite the fact that it is a cultural backwater where narrow mindedness and snobbery prevail. I enjoyed "The View from Pompey's Head." The writing is finely constructed and Hamilton Basso does an excellent job of depicting the mindset of the mid-century Southern elite. Page is a character with whom it is easy to identify.