Word: pendrid
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Transatlantic Blues is about a different purgatory: that clammy conscience-ridden cell between worldly success and a proud otherworldly tradition. Stylistically, the novel is the nonstop confession of Monty (né Pendrid) Chatworth, a British-born American TV interviewer. He is something of an Anglo-American Alexander Portnoy, but with a crucial difference. Portnoy, draped over a psychiatrist's couch, complained that his lust was repugnant to his stern Hebraic morality and that his morality was repugnant to his sexual nature. Chatworth, slumped in his seat high above the Atlantic, confesses to his tape recorder ("Father Sony") that...
Chatworth's adventures in cultural schizophrenia start when he is nine. As World War II begins, his family moves to the U.S., where he enrolls in a New Jer sey boarding school. Robbed of sharing England's finest hour, young Pendrid must suffer a blitzing from unruly students who find his accent and manners fruity. His charades of Churchillian courage only complicate his humiliations. Back in postwar England, Chatworth once again finds himself a foreigner. There he plays the American with painful results. But in the U.S., Chatworth has tasted freedom from his crusty English Catholic past...
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