Look Back With Contempt
I’ve read and watched a lot to admire and enjoy from the books and cinema of the 60s Angry Young Men crowd over the years: Alan Silitoe and the younger Kingsley Amis and Keith Waterhouse for instance (despite their later miserable decline.) But I’ve never been impressed by John Osborne. I’ve only got Look Back In Anger to go on, but that’s enough thanks. Mean-spirited, empty-hearted, aimless, showy in the worst sense, and affected where it aims for naturalism. Deeply over-rated. Osborne represents a still popular grandiose literary trend whereby a black-hearted vicious reaction against modernity represents a virtue in and of itself. While such an attitude can indeed make for great books, (ie. John Kennedy Toole, Waugh senior) all too often it doesn’t (Osborne, Waugh junior.)
Today’s Guardian has a grim article about Osborne’s atrocious treatment of his daughter. Orwell noted in his comments on Dali that we forgive great artists the most horific presonal flaws as long as they entertain us, however unjustified that forgiveness may be. And he’s right. That’s why I can love the work of Larkin despite his racism and misogyny. Reading about Osborne’s vileness here, it merely serves to underline why I dislike everything about him so much.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Greene, Waugh, and Catholicism
- Orwell Today
- New Pilger film
- Google Goes Gutenberg
- Michael Bracewell - An Aside
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4 Responses to “Look Back With Contempt”
Tim Footman
April 23rd, 2006
Hmmm, I believe I once read someone else who wrote that The Entertainer was a much better play than Look Back. Maybe so, but I’m afraid it’ll be a long time before I find out, if ever. There’s so much I want to read by people I like, but probably never will…. seeking out those who have pissed me off seems like masochism!
Ben G
April 23rd, 2006
I notice no one mentioned his small role as a plummy villain in Get Carter.
3:AM
April 24th, 2006
I never knew about that! Must say I’ve not seen it.
Reminds me though of Noel Coward as the plummy villain in “The Italian Job”. Still on the subject of over-rated cultural artefacts, that particular piss-poor attrocity of a film takes some beating. With a big stick.
Ben G
April 30th, 2006
If we’re talking about entertainment value, I still think The Entertainer is a good play. Whether it’s good enough to justify Osborne’s evidently repulsive personality is another matter.