Colin Wilson, The Angry Years: the rise and fall of the Angry Young Men

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In 2002, a book entitled

The Angry Young Men

by Humphrey Carpenter (London: Allen Lane) appeared in UK bookshops. Sub-titled:

a literary comedy of the 1950s

, it treated the “movement”, and many of those involved in it—with the exception of Kingsley Amis and, strangely, Philip Larkin (who was never, in fact, associated with this group)—as little more than a farcical tableau. In Chapter Nine: “I Hadn”t the Faintest Doubt of my Genius”, he dismissed Wilson and his work, openly basing his opinion on the journalist Harry Ritchie’s vehement (at times vitriolic) attack on Wilson in the book

Success Stories

(London: Faber & Faber, 1988). Wilson claimed that this chapter had already been written before Carpenter’s interview with him and, indeed, there is some justification for…

2620 words

Citation: Stanley, Colin. "The Angry Years: the rise and fall of the Angry Young Men". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 March 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24026, accessed 19 March 2024.]

24026 The Angry Years: the rise and fall of the Angry Young Men 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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