His reputation as a literary maverick was enhanced in 1953 when he introduced new writers, such as Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, in a BBC production called "First Reading."
In Wain's criticism of contemporary English society, his target is clearly the totalitarian consciousness that has as its object the manipulation and domination of the small child in all of us— that part of our self-concept that naturally sees through folly and pretense and always expects to be left uncontrolled and free. Hence, Wain's fiction is above all morally pledged to a set of values that aim at offending the status quo, when it seems either silly, absurd, or oppressive, and championing commonsense individualism, whenever it can be championed in a world of antiheroes.
At the same time, Wain is not a political ideologue, and his great dislike for the "Beat industry" of the 1950s reflects his conservative intellectual tendencies. Finding poets such as Alien Ginsberg to be New Left "ad men" for the "journalistic machine," Wain has continually attacked didactic or politically motivated literature that tries to create a cause or define a social movement.
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