Three cheers!
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At last! An intelligent book about the Angry Young Men containing careful assessments of the lives and work of those involved. The fact that Wilson himself was considered to be part of this movement, adds authenticity to the text. A 'must read' for any student of post-war British literature, it forms the perfect antidote to the ill-researched 'Angry Young Men: a literary comedy of the 1950's' by Humphrey Carpenter and 'Success Stories' the vitriolic tirade by Harry Ritchie.
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1956 and all that
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As you would expect, this is an accessible and entertaining account of the AYM written by someone who was actually there, unlike useless hackwork by the likes of Numpty Carpenter and the burning bush of journo-vitriol that was Ritchie's "Success Stories." These both lacked what Wilson has in spades: objectivity [after all, he's influenced by Husserl]. The forensic description of Larkin and Amis the elder's ego-driven sex lives wouldn't be out of place in Wilson's lost classic The Misfits, and like his Dreaming to Some Purpose is very evocative of the fifties. Yet like the memoir, the tale is timely, showing the roots of the culture we inhabit [in the UK anyway] now.
It vindicates Wilson's philosophical views that out of his contemporaries, he is virtually the last man standing.
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LOOK BACK IN AMAZEMENT
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There have been several books about the Angry Young Men, but this one is unique in that it is written by one of the few surviving 'Angries' who is able to skilfully recreate the literary battle-zone of the 1950s. Not only does Colin Wilson chronicle the dizzying lifestyles of some of the more successful players on the scene, like John Osborne, he also deals, sometimes hilariously, with the supporting cast of beats and rebels, writers like Ferdinand Trocchi and the phenomenally successful J.P. Donleavy, both of whom produced pornography for the Olympia Press in Paris. In time many of the writers fell out of favour, succumbed to drink and debauchery and, in Kenneth Tynan's case, regular 'spanking' sessions. All this Wilson narrates with a kind of sympathetic relish. Particularly useful and fair-minded are his literary assessments. In order to produce this book, Colin Wilson did a great deal of hard reading. Hence he is able to follow through the careers of many of the forgotten figures, comment intelligently on their later works and not merely the titles that once seized the headlines. He tends to judge these writers from his own special 'existential' viewpoint: hence he rules rather harshly on Sam Beckett but is generous and appreciative, say, of the later 'visionary' plays of Arnold Wesker. An essential, bedrock work for students of culture and literary history.
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