John Wain and Kingsley Amis, whose first novels, "Hurry on Down" and "Lucky Jim," came out the same year, 1953, formed the most considerable part of the not particularly well-named Angry Young Man group in postwar English letters…. [Both] have been quite versatile and complete writers in that they write excellent poetry and criticism along with their novels and short stories. (p. 14)

[But they] are really very different sorts of writer. Mr. Amis's talent is comic and corrosive. His strongest links are with a black farceur such as Evelyn Waugh, the Waugh of "Vile Bodies," "Decline and Fall" and "Put Out More Flags," before he made his run at respectability in "Brides-head Revisited" and the war trilogy. By contrast, John Wain as novelist seems serious, solid and even a little dull, in that special English way, which is actually reassuring rather than merely boring. One thinks of Arnold Bennett...