Dead End Kids

THE WORLD IS A WEDDING by Bernard Kops. 261 pages. Coward-McCann. $5.

SWEETLY SINGS THE DONKEY by Shelagh Delaney. 186 pages. Putnam. $4.

Each year brings evidence that the lower orders of Britain have acquired another caste mark of the old upper crust. Now it is autobiographies, hitherto the prerogative of retired generals, statesmen, colonial officials and men of letters who are willing to design their own public monuments.

Shelagh Delaney, 24, and Bernard Kops, 37, are none of these things. They graduated into the welfare state from two of the most ferocious slums in Brit ain: she from one of the uglier neighborhoods around Manchester, and he from the ghetto of London's Stepney and Bethnal Green. In the nature of things, the stories of their own brief lives are more manifesto than reminiscence. Delaney pokes out her pert proletarian tongue at the Establishment; Kops throws a whole coster's barrowful of dead haddock. Both have produced fascinating documents and useful items for those who like to plot the course of British society now that the imperial ballast is gone, and the old class compass is out of whack. Both work in the theater; Delaney's A Taste of Honey was a hit play when she was 19, and Kops is resident dramatist at the Bristol Old Vic. Both are virtuosos at the art of self-dramatization.

"This Girl is a Liar." Great dollops of sensitivity and rebellion may be expected in reminiscences of childhood, and poor little Shelagh Delaney is no exception, though the tough, sullen delinquent pose she adopted to protect her secret soul is fairly new in this genre. She is adept at putting the false comic nose on the face of authority, and all get a good laugh from the schoolmaster who told her she was "a long streak of nothing," from Mum, and from the dear silly nuns who had her in charge for a while. We learn without astonishment that they were more pious but not so clever as little Shelagh. But did she really believe that they slept at night hanging upside down from the rafters? And did she really win all the arguments about sexual morals with welfare officers? A school report she claims to remember is enlightening: "Unwilling to accept discipline. Has some originality of thought. A likable girl. Inclined to sullenness. Uncommunicative. Overimaginative. Has difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction. This girl is a liar. Expect improvement next term."

This is the most honest thing in an autobiography that breaks the rules by offering no one quite credible except the subject. But the last we see of Shelagh, in "gintears" and alone among the eyeless houses of a condemned slum, is vivid enough.

Giggle at First. The British are famous for their toleration of eccentrics, but this can be intolerable to the eccentric himself if he is a dedicated exhibitionist. Bernard Kops has been a poor Jewish evacuee from the blitzed East End of London, a waiter, an actor in terrible road companies, a book peddler, a songwriter, a bum in London and Paris and tout for a brothel in Tangier. He has told all in a sort of breathless antistyle that can be the most irritating of all styles. Every frightful thing that happened to him (and the rare pleasant event) is told in exactly the same tone of voice as if his book were being read by a court attendant. Sample day from Bernard Kops's non stop diary: "Near my home one night I was attacked. I didn't feel the blows. It was like fists thudding into dead flesh. I saw stars. On the floor I could see it was a policeman hitting me ... The next day I decided to turn over a new leaf and enter the world of the living dead." And he does.

Kops hates himself, and he has reasons, as he drifts "up and down, delirious or sad, exhibitionistic and intense" among the assorted spivs and queers of Soho and London's wide bohemian fringelands. "I was a member of a new minority where my Jewish neurosis suddenly became an attribute. So I became a permanent fixture and at first it was a giggle."

The Coping of Kops. Along the line the reader gets a rare insider's view of the outsiders. There is a prevalence of "pornmerchants" (peddlers of pornographic literature). "Kinks" are those with highly specialized sexual aberrations. The fad for Zen among U.S. beatniks is a London import (1950). Drugs in London are mostly run by what in New York are called "scratch bums," i.e.. bums so crawling with lice that they are immune from police search. Dimly in Kops's background, public events take place: the Jews of the East End defeat Mosley's blackshirts in pitched battle, but it is all a dream. Kops alone is real to Kops. What is anyone to make of a man so self-absorbed that when he briefly becomes "converted," he seems to think he cannot belong to the Christian religion without becoming the Principal Person? Kops goes barefoot about London, later is seen carrying a big wooden crucifix he has carved himself. It seems like a hopeless case. Kops, as he says himself, "cannot cope with the human race." Inevitably the crackup comes. First it is "greengage" (marijuana), then "the loony-bin" at Belmont.

The reader will agree with Kops that it is a miracle he ever got out, kicked the habit, and lived to tell his terrible tall tale. The secret seems to be that in the end Kops found and loved someone so hopeless that she had to lean on him. Thus, at last Kops learned to cope.

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