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The Past as Prologue
| Article
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10837 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1986 |
3,170 Words |
| Author
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Gregory Wolfe
Gregory Wolfe is the founder and coeditor of Image: A Journal
of the Arts and Religion, and a frequent contributor to The
World & I. |
GENTLEMEN IN ENGLAND
A. N. Wilson
New York: Viking, 1986
311 pp., $17.95
HAWKSMOOR
Peter Ackroyd
New York: Harper & Row, 1985
217 pp., $16.95
Peter Ackroyd and A. N. Wilson, both young British novelists, have recently published works of historical fiction that vividly recreate past times and evoke such timeless themes as the nature of faith and the way we cope with a world mired in sin and injustice. Ironically, these novels have arrived on the American scene at a time when fiction of a historical cast has all but disappeared and the current fashion is for a brand of literary minimalism that revels in provincialism. It is unlikely that the American literary establishment will perceive Hawksmoor and Gentlemen in England as important attempts to break out of a facile presentism. That would be a shame, a blindness caused by some of our own worst national habits of mind.
Americans like to think of themselves as innovators in all walks of life, from automobile manufacturing to the making of poems. It is part of our national myth to see ourselves as perpetually redeeming a world about to fall into decay and barbarism. Much of the emotional force during the War of Independence and the Founding era derived from the conviction that America was a republican phoenix rising gloriously from the ashes of decadent, monarchical
... (1958 of 18797 Characters)
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