The sad thing about [A Sense of Values] is that Mr. Wilson, who has talent and at one stage seemed really to care about American society, now writes as if he were himself in the final grip of the exurbanite disease….

As in so much American writing the style is flawless; but it is the sterile flawlessness of the Saturday Evening Post, so that one longs for an occasional lapse of taste or error in the custom-built plot in order to feel that either Mr. Wilson or at least his characters are human.

"Elegant Void," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3089, May 12, 1961, p. 297.