264
RICHARD WOLLHEIM
distress or excitement have been celebrated with almost religious fervor.
And again there has been in this country a succession of exact, com–
prehensive, objective surveys of the physical condition of life of certain
sections of the population; surveys which have been models of their kind
but have always been intended for some practical, generally reformist,
end. What has by and large been lacking is any sustained attempt,
whether in the form of a literature or of an oral tradition, to acquaint
people who live in one kind of way with the kinds of way in which other
people live. This has been lacking because what has also been lacking is
the kind of social curiosity that such an inquiry would be intended to
satisfy.
If
anyone has any doubts about this, just consider the English
theater, up to, say, ten years ago: and think of the reputation that
plays acquired simply because they showed themselves utterly indifferent
to the social realities they were supposed to be about. Or for that matter
consider the English theater since ten years ago: and think of the
quite erroneous reputation that some plays have acquired for being about
these realities.
But, as I say, today this seems to be altering. Along the whole
range from the serious to the pop, from the intellectual weeklies and
the books reviewed at length in the Sunday papers to glossy magazines
on the one hand and the cheap press on the other; from the
con~
scientiously written play put on at a "little" theater to the cynically
produced film that still manages to draw audiences from home and
T.V., the new curiosity threatens to engulf everything. Hoggart, Sillitoe,
MacInnes, Michael Young: Hunslet, Bethnal Green,
Cor~>nation
Street,
Dinlock, Stepney-these names have not merdy entered our conscious–
ness, but they have stayed on there, rather in the form of an imperative:
Know Thyself. Allover Britain the mind finds itself in the posture of a
man, wandering aimlessly along the street, perhaps muttering to himself,
who is suddenly brought up short by catching sight of himself in an
unsuspected mirror.
Now it's an obvious thing to say that in this new awakening of self–
interest, we can see the convergence of British attitudes upon the ex–
ample of America. But this is only the beginning of the matter. For
it
isn't just in the fact of self-consciousness, it is also in the forms that
this self-consciousness assumes, that we can see the influence of trans–
atlantic models. Both on the Left and the Right this is observable-for
the new curiosity goes in both these two directions.
On the Left the tendency has been to interpret the contemporary
British scene in terms and phrases that were developed to meet the
American situation and belong intrinsically, say, to the kind of social
