A Bit Off the Map

by Angus Wilson

Wilson, Angus

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century

168 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 1978

About the author

Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson, KBE (11 August 1913 – 31 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.

Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to an English father and South African mother. He was educated at Westminster School and Merton College, Oxford, and in 1937 became a librarian in the British Museum's Department of Printed Books, working on the new General Catalogue. During World War II, he worked in the Naval section Hut 8 at the code-breaking establishment, Bletchley Park, translating Italian Naval codes.

The work situation was stressful and led to a nervous breakdown, for which he was treated by Rolf-Werner Kosterlitz. He returned to the Museum after the end of the War, and it was there that he met Tony Garrett (born 1929), who was to be his companion for the rest of his life.

Wilson's first publication was a collection of short stories, The Wrong Set (1949), followed quickly by the daring novel Hemlock and After, which was a great success, prompting invitations to lecture in Europe.

He worked as a reviewer, and in 1955 he resigned from the British Museum to write full-time (although his financial situation did not justify doing so) and moved to Suffolk.

From 1957 he gave lectures further afield, in Japan, Switzerland, Australia, and the USA. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1968, and received many literary honours in succeeding years. He was knighted in 1980, and was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 1983 to 1988. His remaining years were affected by ill health, and he died of a stroke at a nursing home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on 31 May 1991, aged 77.

His writing, which has a strongly satirical vein, expresses his concern with preserving a liberal humanistic outlook in the face of fashionable doctrinaire temptations. Several of his works were adapted for television. He was Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia from 1966 to 1978, and jointly helped to establish their creative writing course at masters level in 1970, which was then a groundbreaking initiative in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Angus Wilson, I imagine I am really getting a sense of what it was like to live in England in the late 50s - his turf is comparable enough to Osborne, Amis, the later Patrick Hamilton et al. so I feel that a coherent picture has emerged.
Wilson is fond of evoking the Angry Young Men movement, sometimes satirically. His characters are typically outsiders of one sort or another - slight social misfits, gay hustlers, social climbers from working-class backgrounds desperate to shuck their origins.
In the title story, he creates a group called The Crowd, distinct from "the Angries" (and perhaps poking a bit of fun at John Wain, Philip Larkin and "the Movement"), saying "the Crowd's not the same as the Angry young men which you read about...[who] believe in democracy and freedom and a lot of stuff that...just gets in the way of real thinking." In another story, he has a character surnamed Galt, so you get the picture of the philosophical milieu in which his characters operate.
All of these subtly different subcultures seem not unlike the current "hipster", where everyone's always quick to produce a definition but no one will ever admit to being one.

[Konstantin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe i just didn't like this book because I didn't understand it - but then probably noone who has not lived in the UK in the 50s will like this book. I sometimes have a tough time with short stories in general because it is hard to really form a connection with the action and characters on only a couple of pages, but even more so here because it feels like they are written very much for people who "just understand the characters" without much proper description being given about them.

Or maybe they are just boring characters...

[Castor fiber · Rating 3 out of 5]

To specyficzna, momentami wręcz obrzydliwa lektura, której inność jest jednocześnie najbardziej intrygująca. Pełna napięć i nieprzyjemnych bohaterów, wciąga swoją duszną atmosferą i psychologiczną przenikliwością. Podobnie jak u Czechowa, nie fabuła jest tu najważniejsza, lecz subtelne napięcia i emocjonalna niejednoznaczność.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really rather boring.