Product Description

There may be more important literary movements than the Angry Young Men but there can be few as consciously (or unconsciously) entertaining. The Angry Young Men were an absurdly diverse group, often wildly at odds and, indeed, often wholly unacquainted with each other. This cavalcade of misunderstandings, wild statements, mediocrity and genuine achievement can now be seen as the first and most perfect example of how the media both helps and ruins literature. Humphrey Carpenter's extremely funny new book celebrates the strange group of varying talents who at different times were believed to be Angry Young Men.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #278310 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

About the Author
Humphrey Carpenter's books include biographies of Benjamin Britten, Dennis Potter and J R R Tolkein as well as the hugely successful Mr Majeika children's books. He lives in Oxford.

Customer Reviews

The Missing Angry Young Men
You feel as if you are on shaky ground from the very first page of this book when the author asserts that Colin Wilson is the "last surviving Angry Young Man". He is not and it is incredible that such a mistake should have crept into a mainstream book (and indeed be reprinted in the paperback edition). Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd - both major characters in this book - are still very much alive and well! Indeed, Holroyd has recently written a Postscript to Tom Greenwell's play about the AYM 'Chepstow Road', published in January 2003. In 1989, they both wrote essays for my book 'Colin Wilson, a celebration' which contained their's and others' recollections of the time. A goldmine for someone researching a book such as this, you would think...and still in print. But no: it does not even appear in Carpenter's bibliography! He seems to have relied heavily (and freely admits this in his Acknowledgements) on Harry Ritchie's book 'Success Stories'. Ritchie's views on Wilson's work in particular are spectacularly spiteful and Carpenter, obviously lacking the ability to assess Wilson as an existential philosopher, follows a little more politely in his wake. And he is clearly out of his depth when he attempts to dismiss Wilson's 'The Outsider' as "rarely rising above the level of an undergraduate essay".
Finally, anyone who has studied the AYM will know that Philip Larkin was never considered to be part of the 'movement'. So the question must be asked: why was so much space devoted to him?
There is a very good book to be written about the AYM - in particular about Wilson, Holroyd and Hopkins - this tame effort has barely scratched the surface.

Best account so far of AYM
Humphrey Carpenter is the literary biographer par excellence for this modern, media-driven age, and the Angry Young Men, the first (as Carpenter points out) media-created literary phenomenon, are his perfect target. This is a very well-written account, and it is appropriately subtitled as a literary comedy : the spectacle of this disparate group of writers being hyped as a movement is indeed funny, as is Carpenter's telling of it - the account of Colin Wilson's megalomanic conviction that he is the best writer of the 20th Century is enough to make you split your sides, for example. Carpenter does fail in his attempt to shoehorn Philip Larkin into this group: he was not associated with them in the popular hype and still isn't, really; conversely, he also misses a few connections that did exist, such as Larkin backing John Wain for his successful Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, for example. But this is a highly recommended book, and one which will probably be the definitive account of the AYM phenomenon for years.