Sir: I was appalled by the mindless and impertinent nastiness
that Tony Palmer had the effrontery to offer as a ' book-review ' of Angus Wilson's As If by Magic; and by the strange editorial indulgence which had seen fit to waste a review-copy of the book on the author of The Trials of Oz. For Palmer to set himself up as li terary critic is itself a bad joke. But watching his picayune presumptions and spiteful performance in attempting to take Angus Wilson to task is particularly ludicrous. His charges against the book are clumsily presented, contradictory and illiterate. Palmer does not know how to read. It is hard to know where to begin. How the devil does Palmer read the book to contain a "dogmatic and straight-forward plea for scientific autocracy "? Where does he locate either self-pity or snobbery in a book which so carefully places both? How in hell's name does he contrive to deduce that Wilson has neither sympathy nor understanding of the young? The man is an ass.
But he is an impertinent and a transparent ass. He has the nerve to criticise Wilson for writing about the young at all. It becomes clear that Palmer, who became known as a result of his own lucrative parasitism off the youth-culture of the 'sixties, has the hubris to defend what he apparently feels to be his own territory. No doubt his own expertise in the techniques of slumming across the generation-gap is not to be faulted. That does not justify his opportunism where works of the imagination are concerned.
Among the rubbish that he throws at Angus Wilson are the facetious contentions that Wilson has seen too much Monty Python. read too much Bernard Levin. confused Jimmy Savile with James Joyce, Let me make a counter-suggestion. It would seem that Palmer may have been over-much impressed by Auberon Waugh. He shares Waugh's misanthropy. But what he lacks is the elegance, accuracy, wit, intelligence and basic honesty which his model sometimes displays. Why doesn't he stick to Pop?
P. Conradi 20 Elms Crescent, Clapham Park SW4
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