Volume 10, Number 1 · January 18, 1968
Ventriloquists
By V.S. Pritchett
No Laughing Matter
by Angus Wilson
Viking, 512 pp., $6.95
Poor Cow
by Nell Dunn
Doubleday, 144 pp., $3.95
Angus Wilson has always been the anthropologist of the older generation of the English upper middle class in those dated areas where it is either seedy, distrait, or decadent. It is a theme which has been familiar since the doctrinaire Thirties; now he has treated it more elaborately. It is a roman with adroitly muddled clefs. Decadence—how is it to be defined? Can it still be usefully thought of in terms of class divisions? Are we decadent or just fading, as the family album fades? What about the adaptations, the interplay, the imponderables? I imagine that Mr. Wilson might define decadence as the refusal to face reality, exert power, take responsibility—living at secondhand. The characters in Mr. Wilson's novel are more bizarre than decaying, but they are very brainy, very self-reliant, and, on the whole, have capitalized their injuries. He describes a whole family from youth to age in two generations and it is not surprising that two world wars have speeded the fading process.
Review, 2946 words
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