The Columbia History of the British Novel

experimental fiction. As he said in the London Magazine in 1954,

Most of the English novelists (perhaps all) who have arrived since the war have reflected the predominant, politically detached, social concerns of the community. This has led to a revival of traditional, nineteenth-century forms. It has told against experiments in technique and against exploration of personal sensitivity. I belong to this reaction myself and I believe that it has been a valuable one that has revitalized and restored the novel form.

Wilson was particularly in tune with the reaction against the Bloomsbury Group that was gaining momentum in the 1950s. Like some of the other writers of that period, he attacked Virginia Woolf as much for her social attitudes as for her writing style: -911-

The first and most obvious limitation in Virginia Woolf's novels lies in her failure to extend her sympathies outside a narrow class range… Unfortunately, she is not content to leave the subject of class outside her range- apart from the gallant old servants and the intimate flashes of understanding with shop assistants that are part of the armory of charm with which Mrs. Ramsay or Clarissa Dalloway or Elinor Pargiter surround themselves-aspects of the patronage which is revealed in a more deadly form in their dealings with their families and friends-apart from these Virginia Woolf is constantly feeling the need to face more tragic aspects of social inequality.

It is worth noting that in the same essay Wilson was careful to acknowledge that Joyce's works were free of the class animus that characterized Woolf's: 'It is surely because of Joyce's real faith in the intellect that he was able to allow full scope to his contact with humanity and to distil from Leopold and Molly Bloom the essence of the tragedy of modern life, from which Virginia Woolf had always to protect herself.' Wilson's argument, in contrast to those of Amis and Snow, is never overstated; moreover, it demonstrates that he has a good deal of familiarity with the works of Woolf and Joyce.

A number of years later Wilson developed a new appreciation for Woolf. As he said in a letter to me in 1967, 'I feel that I underestimated Virginia Woolf as a writer… Though her influence in England is spent, she is an important figure for the novel generally.' In another letter Wilson had more to say on this subject:

Perhaps the most striking change has been my conviction that the class sympathies I disliked in Virginia Woolf are superficial and unimportant. I have learned to estimate Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, and Between the Acts as among the finest novels in the twentieth century, although, perhaps, by their superb achievement barring that particular poetic road to later English novelists. As for Joyce, my admiration has increased as I have come to appreciate the plays and novels of Beckett.

A similar change marked Wilson's development as a novelist. His earliest short stories and novels were written in a realistic style that reflected the influence of the nineteenth-century writers he admired. The stories he published in two early collections, The Wrong Set (1949) and Those Darling Dodos (1951), are typically social satire flavored by the influence of Dickens, Trollope, Austen, and later writers like Huxley, Waugh, and Ivy Compton- Burnett. Here Wilson mainly examined -912- the tensions that arise from class differences-a topic also favored by the writers who influenced him.

In Wilson's first novel, Hemlock and After (1952), the protagonist is Bernard Sands, a writer engaged in establishing a retreat for artists and poets. Sands is decent, kind, intelligent, but also vulnerable: he is a homosexual living in pre-Wolfenden Commission England, a time when homosexual activity was was punishable by law. A foil to Sands is Vera Curry, a ruthless antagonist who seems almost Dickensian in the way she personifies evil.

Dickensian characters proliferate in Wilson's next novel, AngloSaxon Attitudes (1956; the title is from Lewis Carroll). Drawing on his experience as a librarian and administrator at the British Museum, Wilson describes a scholarly scandal loosely based on the Piltdown Man hoax. His panoramic book is concerned with social and moral questions; drawing on a large cast of characters Wilson offers a farranging picture of contemporary English society. Deliberate in his employment of nineteenth-century techniques, Wilson is one of the few novelists whose work gains in vitality and color because of its return to a traditional style. Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is one of Wilson's finest books and also one of the best British novels of the 1950s.

The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot (1959), narrower in scope than its predecessor, is about a widow, Meg Eliot, and the readjustment she undergoes after her husband's death. Here Wilson's writing shows (appropriately enough) the influence of George Eliot; there are also borrowings from Jane Austen, Trollope, and Henry James. Providing readers with a clue to his novel's origins, Wilson includes a list of his heroine's favorite books: Emma, The Mill on the Floss, The Small House at Allington, The Portrait of a Lady.

The Old Men at the Zoo (1961) marks another of the shifts in approach that attest to Wilson's inventiveness. Armageddon-the third world war-has come and gone; surprisingly, it has caused little destruction. The main problem in postwar England is hunger, and this leads the protagonist, another of Wilson's essentially decent figures, to a moral dilemma. A naturalist who studies badgers, he comes to prefer them even to humans; but now, if he is to survive, he must trap them and eat their flesh. Evident here is Wilson's larger concern: the way war leads to dehumanization. -913-

Late Call (1961) is set in one of England's New Towns-the towns built to house a population displaced by World War II bombing and urban development. Wilson's middle-aged heroine is driven to learn about her childhood, and this provides Wilson with a means for contrasting her New Town environment with the English communities of an earlier time. Like some other writers of the period, Wilson uses a New Town setting as a vehicle for depicting the disillusionment that came in the wake of the Labour government's welfare-state policies: first a glittering promise of a suburban utopia and then the insipid fulfillment-a community deficient in the attractions of city and country life alike.

In the 1960s, around the time that Wilson began to describe his growing appreciation for the modernist writers, he himself adopted some experimental techniques in his fiction. No Laughing Matter (1967), a family saga partly based on Wilson's own life, has as its backdrop a panorama of some fifty years of English social life. Its style is more adventurous than that of Wilson's earlier novels: he makes use of inner monologues, symbolism, and allegory, and even parodies such writers as Beckett. As Wilson told me in 1967, 'I think that my position has been greatly modified, even strongly changed by my own development as a novelist-my feeling that the traditional form was inhibiting me from saying all that I wanted to say. To some extent I tried to move out of it in The Old Men at the Zoo, and I do more so in my new novel.'

These experimental devices add an interesting texture to Wilson's novel, and many critics saw them as another indication of Wilson's inventiveness and imaginative breadth. In some quarters, however, he was dismissed with the kind of attack that was commonplace in the 1950s: his perceived failures as a writer were attributed to his use of experimental methods.

Wilson has from time to time written travel pieces, and the same interest is reflected in As If by Magic (1973), a novel that ranges over a broad geographical area. The central figure in the book is one of Wilson's decent humanists, a geneticist who develops new strains of rice and travels to different countries visiting plant-breeding installations where the rice is being tested. Also explored in this novel is the theme of the separation of the generations as exemplified in the protagonist's relationship with his university-student goddaughter.

Setting the World on Fire (1980) represents still another shift in subject matter: here Wilson concerns himself with the world of the Eng-914- lish upper classes. Wilson's protagonists-two brothers-receive elite educations, have ample opportunities to develop their talents, and enjoy the privileges of wealth. As foils, Wilson presents a group of terrorists, the enemies of the world represented by his protagonists.

In sum, a number of traits recur in most of Wilson's works: a precision in conveying details, a willingness to explore new directions, and a moral outlook informed by generous humanistic principles. These qualities help to explain why Wilson's response to the antimodernist movement was finally so different from Snow's or Amis's. Reluctant to repeat himself, Wilson was open to trying new techniques and willing to reconsider his earlier rejection of experimental writing. When he did attack Woolf, his remarks were characterized by fairness and an intelligent understanding of her work. One of the best novelists of his generation, Wilson has also proved himself a