Wilson, Angus - The Wrong Set (1949)

The Wrong Set (1949)

Angus Wilson also spoke, in the review already referred to, of the need for a collection of short stories to hang together, to have some sort of unity. Of the collections he was reviewing, he singled out Louis Auchincloss's The Romantic Egoists as the best in this respect. Wilson, a liberal humanist, did not approve of Auchincloss's "arrogant, neo-aristocratic" outlook, but it had had a good effect artistically, producing a book of stories with "a strict social framework and a convinced social standpoint." The coherence of Wilson's own earliest collections, both The Wrong Set and Such Darling Dodos, is equally recognizable, though his middle-class framework is fluid rather than strict, and his social standpoint, that of a convinced liberal with an instinct for tolerance, allows for the inspection and questioning of values rather than for their dogmatic presentation. A characteristic conformation of Wilson's stories...

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