SOURCE: "Angus Wilson: Studies in Depression," in Critical Essays on Angus Wilson, edited by Jay L. Halio, G. K. Hall & Co., 1985, pp. 81-7.

In this essay, originally published in Cox's 1963 book The Free Spirit, the critic argues that Wilson's short stories represent a liberal humanist attitude but that the author's pessimism about human life makes his humanist sentiments less idealistic than those of authors like English novelist E. M. Forster.

The fiction of Angus Wilson provides evidence for the great changes that have taken place in the thinking of liberal humanists during the last hundred years. In fact George Eliot would have found him a very odd humanist indeed. Particularly in the early short stories, his attitude towards human life appears to be one of disgust. There is a revulsion from the body in all his writing, and this saps his work of full vitality. For example, in...