[Some critics], like myself, have found [Powys's novels] ungainly and have thought Powysland a place of tedious sermons occasionally refreshed by thunderstorms. Others, of whom Mr Angus Wilson is the most distinguished [see excerpt above], think his ventures into the unconscious and the irrational fertilising. For them he has become contemporary. Whether admirers really go for the poet-novelist or whether they get most out of the mystical essayist who appears to be tramping on some solipsistic walking-tour in which Dorset and the Welsh Border blend with the psychic mysteries to make an ever-dissolving topography, I do not know…. Wolf Solent, a characteristic Powys hero, always carries an intensely symbolic walking-stick, an object of trust and perhaps also of sexual support.

Objects of this kind played a queer part in his secret life-illusion. His stick was like a plough-handle, a ship's rudder, a gun, a spade, a sword, a...