spotted from the world” he writes innstill another piece in this collection. Henfelt that in order to see one must stepnback, and for a man who prized in hisnown work its quality of detachment,nthe isolation of being a foreignernabroad, an Englishman in an Americannhemisphere, and a Catholic (howevernsemilapsed) in a pagan world, wasnall part of the appeal.nKatherine Dalton is the managingneditor of Chronicles.nCrusoe’s Islandnby Geoffrey WagnernBritish Literature Since 1945nby George WatsonnNew York: St. Martin’s Press;n208 pp., $39.95nBecause William York Tindall’snForces in Modern British Literaturenextends itself only to 1946, andnbecause there has been nothing asnwide-ranging published since, I lookednforward to George Watson’s book repairingnthe omission. Watson, a Cambridgendon, is also the author of ansplendid study of English criticismnfrom Dryden to Eliot, which I havenpraised elsewhere.nWhat is more, I once studied atnOxford with many of the men hendiscusses in his new book. Alas, I findnin it a new Watson who thinks Eliotn”perverse,” Spender “flatulent,” andnJohn Betjeman to have “triumphantnlucidity.” True, he devotes space to thenChristian revival of Tolkien and C.S.nLewis, but Tolkien, my Anglo-Saxonntutor and just about the most boringnman in the world in his day, hated Eliotnand indeed almost everything writtennsince the Middle Ages; while portlynC.S. Lewis, whose lectures I attendednwith Kenneth Tynan, was enraged bynEliot to the point of writing a poornparody of The Waste Land.nUnfortunately, these useless donnishnprejudices are infectious. Watson’snopinions stand in for critical rigor.nEven the period under survey in hisnbook is vague. Watson comparesnGeorge Orwell with Evelyn Waughn(whom I used to meet in the inebriatedncompany of Randolph Churchill), butn34/CHRONICLESnOrwell died in 1950, and DylannThomas three years later. “I believe,”nWatson claims, “the age of the secondnElizabeth to have been one of the greatnages of the British arts,” but its intellectualnlife as laid out here seems pitifullynfeeble. Besides its American equivalents,nor even a British successor writtennby Keith Waterhouse, KingsleynAmis’s Lucky Jim seems second-rate;nwhile his Stanley and the Womenn(1984), frequently alluded to by Watson,nranks as one of the worst novels Inhave ever read, excepting some ofnGraham Greene’s later works. Amisnhas now been knighted, while Greenenreceived the Order of Merit. Iris Murdoch,na wartime communist and ancharming lady, annually churns outnnovels that George Stade, chairman ofnColumbia University’s English department,nhas described as pretentiousnHarlequin romances; her latest booksnconsist of trivial conversational matternthat never ends, but only stops. Nevertheless,nIris Murdoch is now DamenIris. Watson advances William Goldingnto support the contention that, “Innliterature, if in little else, Britain wasnagain a world power.” Golding has gotna Nobel Prize. Pearl Buck had one too.nPoet Laureate John Betjeman wrotenwhat John Wain, in a Sunday newspapernreview, identified as locally successfulndoggerel; Wain, who has sincentried tactfully to bury this opinion, hasnbeen elected Professor of Poetry atnOxford. The ofEcial English literarynestablishment seems thin beer indeed,nby comparison with the stronger brewnof its academic critics, such as Kermode,nCranston, Davie, Ricks, andnAlvarez. As the knighted and damednpass before our glazing eyes, writers ofnthe rank of Amis, Braine, MurielnSpark, Colin Wilson, C.P. Snow, MargaretnDrabble, Beryl Bainbridge, andnBarbara Pym appear to fall sadly shortnof Dickens and Defoe.nBut Watson has this curious notionnthat English has become “the linguanfranca of the world—the first mankindnhas ever known — and more than halfnof the world’s mail, it is said, is now innEnglish.” Most of that half surelynoriginates outside the British Isles,nwhile the claim that “Britain annuallynpublishes three times as many titles,nrelative to population, as the UnitednStates” is spurious in view of Americanncontrol of the British publishing indusÂÂnnntry. I recall the late Bennett Cerf ofnRandom House telling me that by thenend of the century there would be onlynseven book publishers left in Manhattan,nand that he intended to make surenhe was one of them. There are only anhandful of independent book publishersnleft in England today; even its oncenflourishing paperback firms are all appendagesnof some American conglomerate.nThe penalty for this industrializationnof what was formerly a gentleman’snavocation (Meredith’s Richard Feverelnis casually asked by his father if henintends to “publish” when he goes tonLondon) is that writers leave few footprints,nor lasting ones, behind. In theirnday, there was enormous acclaim fornthe following authors, not one ofnwhom rates a mention in Watson’snpages: Lawrence Durrell, HenrynGreen (Yorke), Thomas Hinde, RexnWarner, H.E. Bates, Rosamond Lehmann,nWilliam Sansom, V.S. Pritchett,nNigel Dennis, Gabriel Fielding. (Inmerely glance along my shelves as Inwrite.) Doris Lessing and L.P. Hartleynreceive one non-evaluative mentionneach, Anthony Burgess little more.nSuch, too, is the fate of John Le Carre,nwho brilliantly refined a genre; while anthriller writer of extreme sophistication,nNorman Lewis, is not mentionednat all. (I fail to find my erstwhile literarynagent, Paul Scott, a very stimulatingnsubstitute.) No one in England in thisnperiod has altered the course of fiction.nAs Watson lets drop, “Proust and Joycenwere not Englishmen.” Indeed.nWhen he tackles poetry, Watson isnequally hard to follow with sympathy.n”The aging W.B. Yeats” apparentlyn”tried to be influenced by Pound.”nDid he? Where? Yeats’ last poems,nnotably the Byzantium pair, are amongnthe finest in the English language.nWhen Yeats died in 1939, “he wasntreated,” Watson writes, “with onlyndistant and qualified admiration bynW.H. Auden.” But that poet’s “InnMemory of W.B. Yeats” was amongnthe most moving eulogies written in hisntime. Baffled bv Betjeman, conned bynConnolly (notably over The Outsider),nwhat can one say? Instead, one turns tonBritish drama.nI was lucky enough to attend annearly performance of John Osborne’snseminal Look Back in Anger—whichnWatson nicely terms “a kitchen-sinkn
January 1975July 26, 2022By The Archive
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