In the summer of 1974, Tom Sharpe, the author of four well-acclaimed if commercially moderately successful satirical novels, set out to write “Book Five” (Brendon 176). Provisionally titled “The Man with the Grasshopper Mind” (180), it drew on personal experience. Its protagonist Henry Wilt shares with Sharpe an ability to flit “from one idea to another, constantly seeing the world from new, unexpected and often bizarre angles” – what Sharpe called the “grasshopper mind” (13). And as Sharpe himself had done for some ten years, Wilt teaches apathetic Day-Release students at a Technical College somewhere in East Anglia. Propelled by a “sudden burst of inspiration” (146), Sharpe completed the first draft in a fortnight, with painstaking revision extending over the…
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Citation: Fachard, Alexandre. "Wilt". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 November 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41697, accessed 08 December 2024.]