The Angry Young Men

by Humphrey Carpenter

A first edition, first printing. Some minimal marking on the front dust jacket. Plastic covering over the jacket. The jacket is not price clipped. The book contains photogrpahs within the middle of the main body; all text and photos are clean. GE

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inklings. He won a Mythopoeic Award for his book The Inklings in 1982.

Reviews

[Graham Power · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Angry Young Men: polo neck sweaters, duffel coats, trad jazz, ban the bomb, and it’s grim up North. Something along those lines, anyway. Carpenter’s book is informative and sometimes perceptive, though his plodding biographical approach tends to obscure the bigger picture. He also gets himself unnecessarily worked up over whether the AYM was a movement or not - it was just a shorthand term, wasn’t it?- and concludes the whole thing was essentially a media invention. Up to a point, Lord Copper. It’s true that none of the AYM regarded themselves as part of a group and, with the exception of John Osborne, they don’t seem to have been particularly angry (even Osborne was more dyspeptically ranting than angry in any politically coherent sense). They were, nonetheless, emblematic of a sea change in British cultural life that started in the mid-fifties and continued through the sixties; one that saw the emergence of new writers, sometimes from working-class backgrounds, and that brought about a revitalisation of British theatre in particular. Why this change happened and what it might tell us about the wider society are interesting questions; unfortunately, Carpenter doesn’t bother to ask them. At best he seems to regard the AYM as a prelude to the satire boom of the sixties. He clearly thinks that the early sixties satirical TV show TW3 was more important, apparently agreeing with the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath that it brought about ‘the death of deference’ (you could have fooled me). Bit odd that, I thought: Amis, Osborne and co. as a warm-up act for the wit and wisdom of David Frost.

The book is subtitled ‘A Literary Comedy of the 1950s’. Most of the comedy, although it’s entirely of the unintended variety, is provided by the extraordinary Colin Wilson. Wilson - who evidently regarded himself as a combination of Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Sartre, but without any of their faults - had an unfortunate habit of loudly declaring his own genius: ‘The day must come when I’m hailed as a major prophet. I am the major literary genius of our century… the most serious man of our age’. There was lots more in that self-deprecating vein plus the odd bouquet tossed in the direction of the egregious Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, whom Wilson thought ‘rather a decent chap’. He went from being heralded as a major writer to being ridiculed as a publicity-seeking buffoon within the space of twelve months.

The AYM might not have been a movement, but they certainly constituted a cultural moment, and one that was, I think, more significant than Carpenter acknowledges. Still, this is an enjoyable book, and it was nice to be reminded of a time when Kingsley Amis could be described as ‘a literary Teddy boy’ without anyone collapsing in hysterical laughter.

[N N · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful overview, perhaps, but emphatically not what it bills itself as, a comedy. As one of its protagonists, Kingsley Amis, kept saying about other people's work, just not funny enough - or at all, in this case. Written in journalese and shaped as more or less a chronicle of relevant literary events, it is largely a paraphrase of the dozen or so autobiographies that the people involved had left behind. Most conspicuously missing is any colouring in the protagonists' portraits, any hints at the private personalities behind the public figures. Does anyone really care whether the AYMs actually represented a group or movement? Not totally devoid of interest - particularly as regards the contemporary critical reception of the various Angries - the book's main achievement is unintentional, in its implied but overwhelming suggestion of the drabness of mainstream literary life, and even, on a larger scale, the demeaning and fatuous obsessions which are at the core of British public life and national character. Curiously, in the final pages the author hits by pure chance on a couple of points that stress the futility of literature taken as politics: John Braine's metaphor of the Vodi as the expression of 'life's essential unfairness', or Amis's observation that key human problems cannot be cured politically and any attempts at such cures are disastrous. These would have been the framing considerations for a worthwhile approach to the subject - and then both the private characters and the (tragi)comedy would have emerged. Count this as a missed opportunity, then.

[The Armchair Nihilist · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was always something peculiarly ill-fitting about the term “angry young men” (AYM). Most denied being angry, a few weren’t particularly young and some weren’t even men. They didn’t particularly like each other either but despite this they still formed a loose cultural scene in the closing years of the 1950s and this is what Humphrey Carpenter explores in this comprehensive and readable survey.

It opens at Oxford University in the 1940s with Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin making their first faltering attempts to write in between swapping smutty stories. These student japes are amusing enough but the connection with later events seems tenuous. It’s not till the fifties that the party really gets going with the arrival of John Osborne, John Wain, Colin Wilson and John Braine. Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch aren’t quite sure what they’re doing there and Alan Sillitoe trails in just as everybody else is leaving. There are a handful of other guests, obscure even at the time and largely forgotten now.

Early on somebody invented the term “angry young men” for this mismatched crew and the name stuck even if it didn’t suit most of them. If they had anything in common it was not so much anger as exasperation at being trapped in a dreary post-war world of ration books, hand-me-downs, National Service and stifling small-town provincialism. They also chafed against an ossified British Establishment that had somehow survived two world wars and remained determined to keep everyone in their place. The AYM vented their frustration in a clutch of books, plays and films that caused a bit of a stir at the time and if much of it is now inevitably dated or forgotten the best of it still survives.

This brings us to the question of how to assess the cultural legacy of the AYM but unfortunately Carpenter doesn’t really address this. Instead, he takes us on a romp through the main events that’s attentive to surface detail but devoid of deeper analysis. This irreverence was shared by most of the AYM themselves and is not the least of the reasons why the scene never cohered into something more significant and long-lasting.

Consequently the AYM movement, insofar as it existed at all, ended with the fifties and since then has been largely forgotten or treated as a period curiosity. The closing pages offer brief sketches of the later lives of the main characters and while a few went on to make literary careers for themselves there is a frustrating sense of unfulfilled promise with most of them. It’s possible to take another view that discerns within the AYM the earliest volcanic rumblings of a youthful discontent that would erupt with far more fire and energy in the sixties. This aspect of the story would be worth investigating further, but instead the book fizzles out to a rather disappointing and unresolved end, a bit like the AYM themselves.

Despite this, there’s still much to recommend here. For a literary phenomenon the AYM have attracted surprisingly few written treatments over the years and for that reason alone Carpenter’s book, even with its flaws, deserves the attention of anyone who is interested in this era.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting, and related in Carpenter's straightforward style so that it's easy to read and very enjoyable. Essential reading for anyone interested in the writers he talks about.

[Cheryl]

I want to read this but can't find it anywhere for under $130 used.