NOT TALKING ABOUT JERUSALEM
SIR,—Can it be that Mr. Kingsley Amis is going the way of his professors in Lucky Jim? 'The recent renaissance of the English stage is to me a closed book. . . ."I admit . . . with a touch of legitimate pride that I have never seen any of these works performed.' Oh, Lucky Jim, to be taught about literature by him!
The play-acting versus play-reading battle is an old and silly one. I will only remark that I do not believe Mr. Amis could imagine a version of Handel as wonderful as Peter Brook's production of that play. Someone had the sense to send the whole show to Moscow, but it seen s to be too much to expect literary dons to drag themselves to London.
If Mr. Amis has never seen Look Back in Anger this is a gap in the education of a man of letters of which he should not be proud. Some of Mr. Os- borne's writing suggests that he may one day write a play as good as St. Joan. Meanwhile, one .cart now see Pinter's The Collection, and this, 1 think, might do something to modify Mr. Amis's unfaveat" able view of the 'new wave' drama. It is a play 0f extraordinary subtlety, though much of this mg well be lost on the printed page, as it was in the radio version.
1 find much to agree with in Mr. Anus's remarks about Arnold Wesker, but he really ought not to take such a high-handed attitude towards the modern theatre as a whole.
R. M. BLOMFIELD
South Lodge, 147 Banks Road, Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset
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