Misplaced Pages

#826173

63-494: Following the success of the Osborne play, the label "angry young men" was later applied by British media to describe young writers who were characterised by a disillusionment with traditional British society. The term, always imprecise, began to have less meaning over the years as the writers to whom it was originally applied became more divergent, and many of them dismissed the label as useless. Literary critic Terry Eagleton noted that

126-450: A Roman Catholic grammar school in Pendleton , Salford . In 1961, he went to read English at Trinity College, Cambridge , whence he graduated with first-class honours. He later described his undergraduate experience as a "waste of time". In 1964, he moved to Jesus College, Cambridge , where as a junior research fellow and doctoral student, he became the youngest fellow at the college since

189-417: A book Towards a New Left Theology . A major turning point was his Criticism & Ideology (1976) in which Eagleton discusses various theorists and critics from F. R. Leavis and (his tutor) Raymond Williams to Pierre Macherey . This earliest response to Theory is critical and substantive with Eagleton supplying a dense web of categories for "a materialist criticism" which situates the author as well as

252-561: A huge dereliction on their part. Eagleton criticised Amis and expressed surprise as to its source, stating: "[these are] not the ramblings of a British National Party thug ... but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." He drew a connection between Amis and his father (the novelist Kingsley Amis ). Eagleton went on to write that Martin Amis had learned more from his father – whom Eagleton described as

315-636: A lack of maturity in his statements, and fuelled a debate about his politics and those of the "movement". Osborne also had consistent and often sarcastic criticism of the British Left . In 1961, he made public headlines with "Letter to my Fellow Countrymen" that represented a "damn you, England" mentality. and protested against Britain's decision to join the arms race. Osborne strongly expressed anger at what Britain had become at that time, but also at what he felt it had failed to become. Osborne's play Look Back in Anger

378-495: A large, incoherently defined group, and was rejected by most of the writers to whom it was applied: see, for example, "Answer to a Letter from Joe" by Wain ( Essays on Literature and Ideas , 1963). Publisher Tom Maschler , who edited a collection of political-literary essays by the 'Angries' ( Declaration , 1957), commented: "(T)hey do not belong to a united movement. Far from it; they attack one another directly or indirectly in these pages. Some were even reluctant to appear between

441-522: A male "movement", but Shelagh Delaney , author of A Taste of Honey (1958), was described as an "angry young woman"; other female members included Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing . In the song "Where Are They Now" from the 1973 album Preservation Act 1 by The Kinks , the following lines appear: "Where have all the angry young men gone?/ Barstow and Osborne, Waterhouse and Sillitoe/ Where on earth did they all go?" Terry Eagleton Terence Francis Eagleton FBA (born 22 February 1943)

504-487: A new opium of the people distracting ordinary people from more serious, important social concerns. Eagleton is pessimistic as to whether this distraction can be ended: For the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine . Its icon is the impeccably Tory , slavishly conformist Beckham . The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks . Nobody serious about political change can shirk

567-591: A political perspective. Peter Barry has said of the book that it "greatly contributed to the 'consolidation' of literary theory and helped to establish it firmly on the undergraduate curriculum". Eagleton's approach to literary criticism is one firmly rooted in the Marxist tradition, though he has also incorporated techniques and ideas from more recent modes of thought as structuralism , Lacanian analysis and deconstruction . As his memoir The Gatekeeper recounts, Eagleton's Marxism has never been solely an academic pursuit. He

630-431: A reactionary "racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals" – than merely "how to turn a shapely phrase." Eagleton added there was "something rather stomach-churning at the sight of those such as Amis and his political allies, champions of a civilisation that for centuries has wreaked untold carnage throughout the world, shrieking for illegal measures when they find themselves for

693-551: A reprimand for some of his promotional interviews, he subsequently went on to join Allen Lane's Penguin Books as an assistant fiction editor. He went on to head Jonathan Cape , after the death of its founder. One of Maschler's first assignments at Cape was to work with Mary Hemingway on papers that her husband Ernest Hemingway had left behind. These would be published as A Moveable Feast (1964). As head of Jonathan Cape, Maschler

SECTION 10

#1732852425827

756-567: A scholarship to spend the summer in an Israeli kibbutz . It is mentioned that he had written a letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion , who intervened to arrange a passage for Maschler from Marseille to Haifa . Maschler went on to spend the next three years travelling across the US, working in a tuna cannery, and assorted construction jobs, while writing for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times . He returned home and worked as

819-421: A sort of rhetorical straw man : Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to 'sophisticated' religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like

882-426: A state of pre-Theory innocence about the transparency of language or the ideological neutrality of interpretation ... But like all fashions it was bound to have a limited life of novelty and vitality, and we are now living through its decadence without any clear indication of what will supersede it. Theory has, in short, become boringly predictable to many people who were once enthusiastic about it, and that After Theory

945-528: A tour guide, and did national service as a part of the Russian Corps of the Royal Air Force . Maschler started his publishing career in 1955, as a production assistant at André Deutsch , followed by a stint at MacGibbon & Kee between 1956 and 1958. It was here that he published his first anthology of essays, Declaration , in 1957. The collection had essays from leading writers of the time. Earning

1008-717: A weak-tasting dessert, a combination of lime jelly and milk, and called it "Maschler pudding". After Pym's death, Maschler appeared in the 1992 television film Miss Pym's Day Out recounting his decision to reject the novel (which was posthumously published in 1982). In 1970, Maschler married his first wife Fay Coventry , who went on to be a restaurant critic for the Evening Standard , and they had three children. The couple divorced in 1987, and he married his second wife, Regina Kulinicz, in 1988. He lived and travelled between his houses in London, France and Mexico. Maschler died at

1071-632: A well-known seminar on Marxist literary theory which, in the 1980s, metamorphosed into the radical pressure group Oxford English Limited and its journal News from Nowhere: Journal of the Oxford English Faculty Opposition , to which he contributed several pieces. In 2001, Eagleton left Oxford to become the John Edward Taylor Professor of English at the University of Manchester . Eagleton began his literary studies with

1134-427: A whole, criticising certain behaviours or groups in different ways. On television, their writings were often expressed in plays in anthology drama series such as Armchair Theatre ( ITV , 1956–68) and The Wednesday Play ( BBC , 1964–70); this leads to a confusion with the kitchen sink drama category of the early 1960s. Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the "Angries" often met at or were nurtured by

1197-522: A working-class Catholic family of Irish descent in Salford , with roots in County Galway . His mother's side of the family had strong Irish republican sympathies. He served as an altar boy at a local Carmelite convent where he was responsible for escorting novice nuns taking their vows, a role referred to in the title of his memoir The Gatekeeper (2002). Eagleton was educated at De La Salle College ,

1260-441: Is an English philosopher , literary theorist , critic , and public intellectual . He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University . Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), which has sold over 750,000 copies. The work elucidated the emerging literary theory of the period, as well as arguing that all literary theory

1323-400: Is considered one of the great literary friendships of the 20th century). However, the writers in each group tended to view the other groups with bewilderment and incomprehension. Observers and critics could find no common thread between them all. They were contemporaries by age. They were not of the upper-class establishment, nor were they protégés of existing literary circles. It was essentially

SECTION 20

#1732852425827

1386-510: Is most interesting when its focus is furthest from its nominal subject is perhaps evidence that Terry Eagleton is now bored by it too. Jonathan Bate stressed the importance of Eagleton's Roman Catholic background in "Saint Terence", a 1991 review-essay in the London Review of Books before the overt religious turn in Eagleton's later works. Eagleton has been married twice. His first marriage

1449-474: Is necessarily political. He has also been a prominent critic of postmodernism , publishing works such as The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996) and After Theory (2003). He argues that, influenced by postmodernism, cultural theory has wrongly devalued objectivity and ethics . His thinking is influenced by Marxism and Christianity . Formerly the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at

1512-489: Is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens – a couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the solitary signifier Ditchkins  – is talking out of the back of his neck." An expanded version of these lectures was published in 2009 as Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate . Eagleton sees football as

1575-681: The Royal Shakespeare Company , and through this venue other such emerging playwrights as Edward Bond and Wole Soyinka were exposed to the AYM movement directly. The New University Wits (a term applied by William Van O'Connor in his 1963 study The New University Wits and the End of Modernism ) refers to Oxbridge malcontents who explored the contrast between their upper-class university privilege and their middle-class upbringings. These included Amis, Philip Larkin , and Wain, all of whom were also part of

1638-447: The University of Oxford (1992–2001) and John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester (2001–2008), Eagleton has held visiting appointments at universities around the world including Cornell, Duke, Iowa, Melbourne, Trinity College Dublin, and Yale. Eagleton delivered Yale University 's 2008 Terry Lectures and the University of Edinburgh 's 2010 Gifford Lecture entitled The God Debate . He gave

1701-754: The protagonist Archie Rice. Osborne became a successful entrepreneur, partnering with Tony Richardson to form the film production company Woodfall . In addition to being seen as archetypal, Osborne was claimed to be one of the leading literary figures of the Angry Young Men "movement". This "movement" was identified after the Second World War as some British intellectuals began to question orthodox mores. Osborne expressed his own concerns through his plays and could be relied upon to provide controversial "angry" pronouncements, delivered with an immaturity compared to impatient youth. Some critics ridiculed Osborne for

1764-463: The 18th century. He was supervised by Raymond Williams . It was during this period that his socialist convictions began to take hold, and he edited a radical Catholic leftist periodical called Slant . In 1969, he moved to the University of Oxford where he became a fellow and tutor of Wadham College (1969–1989), Linacre College (1989–1993) and St Catherine's College , becoming Thomas Warton Professor of English in 1992. At Wadham, Eagleton ran

1827-565: The 19th and 20th centuries, then conformed to the stringent academic Marxism of the 1970s. He then published an attack on his mentor Williams's relation to the Marxist tradition in the pages of the New Left Review , in the mode of the French critic Louis Althusser . In the 1960s, he became involved with the left-wing Catholic group Slant , authoring a number of theological articles (including A Marxist Interpretation of Benediction ), as well as

1890-490: The 2010 Richard Price Memorial Lecture at Newington Green Unitarian Church , speaking on "The New Atheism and the War on Terror". In 2009, he published a book which accompanied his lectures on religion, entitled Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate . Eagleton was born in Salford , Lancashire , England, on 22 February 1943, to Francis Paul Eagleton and his wife, Rosaleen (née Riley) Eagleton. He grew up in

1953-511: The British theatre and enable it to act as a "harbinger of the New Left ". Not all members of the movement were angry, young, or male, but all disliked the title "Angry Young Men". Life in 1958 wrote that "the most common prevailing attitude among them is of wry irritation", and named Osborne, Kingsley Amis , John Wain , and John Braine as the best-known. As a catchphrase, the term was applied to

Angry young men - Misplaced Pages Continue

2016-608: The Works (1965), based on John Lennon 's doodles. He also published Salman Rushdie 's Midnight's Children (1981). Maschler was one of the key figures responsible for creating the Booker Prize in 1969. The award was envisioned as a British Commonwealth version of the French Prix Goncourt . Having seen the success of the French award, and the related sales uplift, Mascher approached Jock Campbell and Charles Tyrrell from

2079-403: The company was sold to Si Newhouse 's Random House Publishing . The company had been losing money for a few years prior, necessitating the deal. He was diagnosed with manic depression shortly after the deal went through. His autobiography, Publisher , was published by Picador in 2005. Maschler was sometimes criticised for his forceful approach to publishing, with a charge that while he

2142-402: The decades prior to Osborne and other authors, less attention had been given to literature that illuminated the treatment and living circumstances experienced by the lower classes. As the Angry Young Men movement began to articulate these themes, the acceptance of related issues was more widespread. Osborne depicted these issues within his play through the eyes of his protagonist, Jimmy. Throughout

2205-484: The early-model Angry Young Man, though Cambridge -educated, was a "provincial" writer in his frankness and material and is included in this group. A few are friends, but for the most part they know one another slightly if at all, and they are continually writing unfriendly essays about each other in the literary magazines. Friendships, rivalries, and acknowledgments of common literary aims within each of these groups could be intense (the relationship between Amis and Larkin

2268-506: The fact that humans exist in neediness and dependency on others, their freedom bounded by the common fact of death. Eagleton has become a vocal critic of what has been called the New Atheism . In October 2006, he published a review of Richard Dawkins 's The God Delusion in the London Review of Books . Eagleton begins by questioning Dawkins's methodology and understanding: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of

2331-661: The fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey . In late 2007, a critique of Martin Amis included in the introduction to a 2007 edition of Eagleton's book Ideology was widely reprinted in the British press. In it, Eagleton took issue with Amis' widely quoted writings on " Islamism ", directing particular attention to one specific passage from an interview with Ginny Dougary published in The Times on 9 September 2006. What can we do to raise

2394-450: The firm. Cape had published all of Pym's previous novels (although before Maschler had joined), and she expressed a belief that she was being unfairly treated, but was told that her novels were no longer attractive to readers. It would be 14 years until Pym had another novel published. The novelist never fully forgave Maschler. When she was rediscovered in 1977, she refused to let Cape publish her new novels. Pym and her sister Hilary invented

2457-465: The first time on the sticky end of the same treatment." The essay became a cause célèbre in British literary circles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown , a commentator for The Independent , wrote an article about the affair, to which Amis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton "an ideological relict ... unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx." Amis said

2520-421: The great achievements of Theory were the expansion of objects of study (to include gender, sexuality, popular culture, post-colonialism, etc.), and the wide-ranging self-reflective criticism of traditional assumptions. But in Eagleton's estimation there were also many serious mistakes, for instance: the assault on the normative and the insistence on the relativity of truth leaves us powerless to criticize oppression;

2583-514: The group "weren't exactly a clique since they scarcely knew each other, and apart from being young they shared almost nothing in common, least of all anger." The playwright John Osborne was the archetypal example, and his signature play Look Back in Anger (1956) attracted attention to a style of drama contrasting strongly with the genteel and understated works of Terence Rattigan that had been in fashion. Osborne's The Entertainer (1957) secured his reputation, with Laurence Olivier playing

Angry young men - Misplaced Pages Continue

2646-399: The history of theoretical approaches to literature, from its beginnings with Matthew Arnold, through formalism, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, to post-structuralism. In the process, he demonstrates what is the thesis of the book: that theory is necessarily political. Theory is always presented as if it is unstained by point of view and is neutral, but in fact it is impossible to avoid having

2709-580: The main bone of contention – the substance of Amis' remarks and views – had been lost amid the media furore. William Deresiewicz wrote of After Theory , Eagleton's book, as follows... : [I]s it that hard to explain what Eagleton's up to? The prolificness, the self-plagiarism, the snappy, highly consumable prose and, of course, the sales figures: Eagleton wishes for capitalism's demise, but as long as it's here, he plans to do as well as he can out of it. Someone who owns three homes shouldn't be preaching self-sacrifice, and someone whose careerism at Oxbridge

2772-406: The major difference between classes. Alison remarks on this issue while she, Jimmy and Cliff are sharing an apartment, stating how "she felt she had been placed into a jungle". Jimmy was represented as an embodiment of the young, rebellious post-war generation that questioned the state and its actions. Look Back in Anger provided some of its audience with the hope that Osborne's work would revitalise

2835-485: The play, Jimmy was seeing "the wrong people go hungry, the wrong people be loved, the wrong people dying". In Britain, following the Second World War, the quality of life for lower-class citizens was still poor; Osborne used this theme to demonstrate how the state of Britain was guilty of neglect towards those who needed assistance the most. In the play there are comparisons of educated people with savages, illuminating

2898-640: The poetic circle known as " The Movement ". Also included among the Angry Young Men was a small group of young existentialist philosophers, led by Colin Wilson and also including Stuart Holroyd and Bill Hopkins . Outside of these subgroupings, the 'Angries' included writers mostly of lower-class origin concerned with their political and economic aspirations. Apart from Osborne, these included Harold Pinter , Braine, Arnold Wesker , and Alan Sillitoe . Some of these (e.g., Pinter) were left-wing and some (e.g., Braine) later became right-wing. William Cooper ,

2961-527: The price of them doing this? There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children ... It's

3024-573: The rejection of objectivity and (excessively) of all forms of essentialism bespeak an unrecognized idealism, or at least a blindness to our human materiality, ultimately born of an unconscious fear of death; and cultural studies has wrongly avoided consideration of ethics, which for Eagleton is inextricably tied to a proper politics. It is virtue and politics and how they may be realized, among other things, that Eagleton offers as new avenues needing to be explored by cultural studies. After Theory fleshes out this political aspect, tied to ethics, growing out of

3087-618: The same covers with others whose views they violently oppose". AYM preferred realism, rejecting the experimental literature of the 1920s and 1930s. Life observed that "They hate the 'phony' in any form and mistrust anything that seems precious or preposterous. they are literary conservatives. They would find the Beat Generation preposterous". Their politics were radical, usually left but sometimes right, sometimes anarchistic , and they described social alienation of different kinds. They also often expressed their critical views on society as

3150-514: The subject is the Book of British Birds , and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology." Eagleton further writes, "Nor does [Dawkins] understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us." He concludes by suggesting Dawkins has not been attacking organised faith so much as

3213-542: The sugar trading firm Booker–McConnell to set up an equivalent for British books. P. H. Newby was the first winner of the prize for Something to Answer For , in 1969. The prize was sponsored by the Booker–McConnell group from 1969 to 2001, the Man Group from 2002 to 2019, and subsequently by the charitable foundation Crankstart . In 1991, he stepped down from his position as the chairman of Jonathan Cape, when

SECTION 50

#1732852425827

3276-474: The text in the general mode of production, the literary mode of production and particular ideologies. In chapter 4 he gives a thorough overview of one theme in the English context – "organicist concepts of society" or "community" – as worked by petty-bourgeois Victorian writers, from George Eliot to D. H. Lawrence , and how this determines textual form in each instance. In Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983, revised 1996), Eagleton surveys

3339-659: The theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals. In April 2008 Eagleton delivered Yale University 's Terry Lectures , with the title Faith and Fundamentalism: Is belief in Richard Dawkins necessary for salvation? , constituting a continuation of the critique he had begun in The London Review of Books . Introducing his first lecture with an admission of ignorance of both theology and science, Eagleton goes on to affirm: "All I can claim in this respect, alas,

3402-418: The views Eagleton attributed to him as his considered opinion was in fact his spoken description of a tempting urge, in relation to the need to "raise the price" of terrorist actions. Eagleton's personal comments on Kingsley Amis prompted a further response from Kingsley's widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard . Howard wrote to The Daily Telegraph , noting that for a supposed "anti-semitic homophobe", it

3465-483: Was a British publisher and writer. From 1960, he was influential as the head of publishing company Jonathan Cape over a period of more than three decades. Maschler was noted for instituting the Booker Prize for British, Irish and Commonwealth literature in 1969. He was involved in publishing the works of many notable authors, including Ernest Hemingway , Joseph Heller , Gabriel García Márquez , John Lennon , Ian McEwan , Bruce Chatwin and Salman Rushdie . Maschler

3528-692: Was active in the International Socialists (along with Christopher Hitchens ) and then the Workers' Socialist League whilst in Oxford. He has been a regular contributor to the London Review of Books . After Theory (2003) was written two decades later, after the end of the great period of High Theory – the cultural theory of Foucault, the postmodernists, Derrida, et al. Looking back, Eagleton evaluates its achievements and failures, and proposes new directions needing to be pursued. He considers that among

3591-630: Was born in Berlin , Germany, to Austrian Jewish parents, Rita (Masseron) and Kurt Leo Maschler on 16 August 1933. His father was a publisher's representative. Maschler was five years old when his family fled to the UK from Vienna after the Nazi annexation ( Anschluss ) of Austria. After his parents' separation, he moved to Henley-on-Thames , where his mother took on a housekeeping job. After studying at Leighton Park School , he went to Roscoff , France, where he earned

3654-425: Was good at identifying commercial best sellers, he had "little interest in books for their own sake". He was considered a galvanising force and criticised for being inhospitable to some of his authors. He is noted to have played a key role in the career downturn of novelist Barbara Pym . In 1963, after joining Cape, Maschler rejected Pym's seventh novel, An Unsuitable Attachment , on the advice of two readers at

3717-453: Was heavily involved in the creation of the Chatto , Virago , Bodley Head and Cape Group (CVBC), which later dissolved. He discovered and published many writers, including Gabriel García Márquez , Ian McEwan and Bruce Chatwin . One of Maschler's earliest coups was purchasing Joseph Heller 's Catch-22 for £250. Maschler published two books, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard in

3780-547: Was legendary shouldn't be telling interviewers of his longstanding regret at having turned down a job at the Open University . The novelist and critic David Lodge , writing in the May 2004 New York Review of Books on Theory and After Theory , concluded: Some of Theory's achievements are genuine and permanent additions to knowledge, or intellectual self-knowledge. Eagleton is quite right to assert that we can never go back to

3843-731: Was peculiar that the only guests at the Howard–Amis nuptials were either Jewish or gay. As Howard explained, "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual." Colin Howard, Howard's homosexual brother, called Eagleton "a little squirt", adding that Sir Kingsley, far from being homophobic, had extended an affectionate friendship to him and helped him come to terms with his sexuality. Eagleton defended his comments about Martin and Kingsley Amis in The Guardian , claiming

SECTION 60

#1732852425827

3906-550: Was the monumental literary work that influenced the concept of the Angry Young Man. He wrote the play to express what it felt like to live in England during the 1950s. The main issues that Angry Young Men had were "impatience with the status quo, refusal to be co-opted by a bankrupt society, an instinctive solidarity with the lower classes". Referred to as " kitchen sink realism ", literary works began to deal with lower class themes. In

3969-408: Was to Rosemary Galpin, a nurse; his second marriage was to American academic Willa Murphy. They have since divorced. Eagleton has five children: Dominic Eagleton, Daniel Eagleton, the journalist Oliver Eagleton, Alice Eagleton and Owen Eagleton. His daughter-in-law is theatre director Andrea Ferran. Tom Maschler Thomas Michael Maschler (16 August 1933 – 15 October 2020)

#826173