Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

An Interview with Angus Wilson

1972; University of Iowa; Volume: 3; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.17077/0021-065x.1440

2330-0361

Frederick P. W. McDowell, Angus Wilson,

You have presented your views on Dickens at considerable length in The World of Charles Dickens.Obviously, you couldn't say very much there about Dickens' influence on you.Personally, I feel that the organization of a Dickens novel may have had some bearing on the structure of your novels.Like Dickens you tend to have one or two characters presented in some detail (especially with respect to their moral choices), surrounded by a group of characters presented from the outside.Dickens illustrates this prin ciple in surrounding Pip, Arthur Clennam, Esther Summerson, and David Copperfield by externally conceived characters.Do you admit to such a principle of organization in your fiction?A.W.: Yes.I have read Dickens since I was very young, and I suppose I have read him more often than any other author; and he inevitably goes very deep into my work.Apart from the humor of Dickens which lies very close to a good deal of my humor, what is vital to his approach and to mine is that he sees his central figures always in relation to, first of all, a group and then in relation to the whole of society.Frequently with him the direction in his novels is, rather, outward from society and inwards toward the group and the central figure but always in connection with a great number of other people; he sees the central figures internally and the others are presented externally.On the whole, this has been my method.It has been the only way, I think, in which I can present my sense of man's total isolation, his working out of his problems within himself but also in terms of the other human be ings whom he comes across. 1 would say, however, that I am an agnostic and Dickens is a Christian.Therefore our view of man's potentiality is obviously different; but insofar as we are dealing with this world, I think Dickens was very concerned, whatever his beliefs in the future life, to see what man could do with himself.He frequently wrote about what had gone wrong with a man's life.Little Dorrit is a very good example of this preoccupation.How can an individual face up to failure, to seerning guilt, to a heavy burden of responsibility, how can he free himself?My books are very much about the freedom that is available to man and what he does with it.I think that both Dickens and I have a rather limited view of what that freedom is, of how much freedom is left to a man.Nevertheless, I start from the same kind of temperament as Dickens', that is to say, I am a person who is almost immediately drawn to people.I like very much being with people, I like in dividual people, am excited by them; but I am also hable to fall into a deep sort of boredom.There is in my love/hate for people (save a very This interview took place during the fall of 1971 while Angus Wilson