Out of Time, Out of Place?

The Angry Young Man has become. Established. For the usual prize of six guineas competitors were asked to write a 'Lament of the Angry Young Man' (not more than twelve lines of verse).

The washing's started to drip on to this type- writer I've borrowed for the night. 'Shut up, you brats! Phyllis, if you want to have mashed potatoes you'd better peel them yourself!' My Polo-neck pullover is choking me. Blast the lot of You, I'm going to give six guineas to Henri Michaux In the song of my anger is an egg, And in this egg are my mother, my father, and my children. . . .

There is hate in mc, hate that is strong and of ancient vintage. . . .

I have really become hard only by thin layers; If anyone knew how marrowy I am at bottom.

But he didn't send that in, and he's a. foreigner. Or to George Scott, perhaps, who has the genuine article in his autobiography Thne and Place, the deep, biting malice of the back-street intellect which is by training 'sceptical, destructive, self- mocking'? He's not just another father-eater. But apparently nobody has read him. Go to hell, I'm not awarding a prize at all. . . .

As I now know, the conventional response—un- reflective, heroic, brash—comes easily. Seriously, what would an angry young man lament on be- coming established? The flabbiness of a safety- valve society that absorbs its gesturing anarchists all too readily and, by making them successful, deprives them of their function, imposes order on them and makes them flabby in the process? C. L. Lyall ('Oh wailydailytelegraphic me'); Joan Ackner ('Now civil and sleek, Well may Top People inherit the meek !'); Audrey Laski CI feel just like the mountain That gave birth to a blooming mouse'); J. Aitken ('So many cocks my dung-hill shared, And loud the crowing grew'); Vera Telfer CO bloody bloody is the world And bloody bloody is my lot'); D. R. Peddy; Douglas Gibson; A. W. Dicker; and Gloria Prince all AYMed at individual nostalgia. `Yaldeti Retep' couldn't quite sustain what could have been a really ferocious gimmick : Now should I that think to, Gosh! Tie a wear and neck my wash! Shave a need you dear says wife —Down upside turned been has life. WHY did I get mixed up with this idiotic busi- ness? I don't care a damn about the Angry Young Men you're talking about and I don't understand Established to mean the same thing as you do.

That's not down upside, it's rightside left. Which, again, is part of, but not all, that has to be lamented. 'Alberick' was much nearer with his Well, I swear I will find

Say in Uruguay or Paraguay a solution.. What I want is a bloody revolution.

1 would rather become a Dictator Than write rotten rhymes for the Spectator!

For the six entries printed below a rate-for-the- job equal share of the prize money. AYMen!

PRIZES

(MICHAEL O'CONNOR)

The trouble is—I never had a Dad.

At least, 1 had a Dad but Mum Was really Dad to me. And then the War—

I never had a proper chance, you see.

I picked about in books when still a child

And liked bits best where fools were told

Just what they were. 1 grasped a pen

And echoed ill-digested what these writers said.

The pockets of my jeans soon bulged with cash.

But all in vain. For I still hear The shuffling slippers of my Dad upon the stairs And smell Mum's cabbage soup above the drains.

(D. E. HARRISON)

From 'Trial by Fury,' by W. S. Filbert I once was an angry young man, A mixture of Osborne and Amis;

I defied every possible ban,.

And told Them : 'I know what your game is.'

But you can't remain young when you're old, And anger's a tiring profession.

Now I'm one of Them, so I'm told,

And I'll have to go into recession.

I've been attacked,

Pillaged and sacked— But what 1 can't stand is just being' a fact.

(JOHN D. M'INTOSH) I was such an agitator,

Writing in my blinding rage Weekly items for Spectator (See the Readers' Letters Page).

But, alas, the splendid frenzy All too swiftly did subside (My illicit source of Benze- Drine committed suicide). No more do I roar and bellow, No more engineer a row. Such an easy-going Fellow (I'm on tranquillisers now).

(NORMAN SHRAPNEL)

' The Corporal's Farewell to his Mess I was doing all right in my browned-off way, Binding in barracks and bomb-dumps all dal. Heaving red bricks, and grousing at Them, And that's how I won my A.Y.M.

But what's the good of a ruddy gong? I flogged it in Fleet Street for a song, And got shacked up with a Book Club Choice, And now I moan in a well-off voice.

Desertion? Maybe. That's what poor Col would say.

They give him three stripes, and strip him next day. But Johnny and Kingsley and me, I guess We're bitched by the Ultimate Weapon—Success.

(H. A. C. EVANS) The Stalls I used to shock and repel,

They thought me just an unpleasant smell, But now, by damn, they think that I no longer stink, Damn their eyes, blast their souls, bloody Hell!

The bourgeois critics all rang my knell, They offered me the Soldier's Farewell; But now I'm lots of fun to blokes like Nicholson, Damn their eyes, blast their souls, bloody Hell!

To every blessed damned damozel I'm Literature's new nonpareil; And now I'm rated, cor! with Eliot, Maugham and Waugh,

Damn their eyes, blast their souls, bloody Hell!

(GUY HARRISON) Whom loved 1 save Establishment? Profess it? How? When fleshly-pent My sweatered words did match my garb? Love's rosy arrow sped enbarbcd. . . .

How so mature, lack-genius Mob, To penetrate my lion's nob? Or did my blazoned woolly sleeve None save myself one whit deceive?

Once like proud Hector's babe, I shrank From whom, my chums assured me, stank :

Then, every thought was I or me. Now. boots, an' all, I cleave to thee,