SOURCE: "The Wrong Set and Such Darling Dodos, " in Angus Wilson, Oliver and Boyd, 1964, pp. 13-26.

In this chapter from his book-length study of Wilson, Halio discusses the author's first two collections of short stories and outlines the characters, situations, and constructs employed in his fiction.

The original, enthusiastic response to Wilson's first two collections of short stories, The Wrong Set and Such Darling Dodos, unquestionably owed much to their refreshing wit and vigorous satire. Causing this response, too, was the brilliant way that they treated the problems of contemporary life, particularly the difficulties of social re-adjustment in post-war England. They offered no panaceas, of course, but as John Wain has observed [in The New Yorker, XXXV, No. 11, April, 1959] they had the merit of telling their readers something about the world they were then living in. If, a decade and a half later, they still hold both our...