Sloane Square Stomp

Britain's Angry Young Men fell to fisticuffs last week. Named from 27-year-old John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger, they are a group of young firebrands of exhibitionist bent who have been rattling London's literary teacup, with dozens of short-tempered novels, plays, films and reviews, all of which have said one thing loud and clear: they are fed to the teeth with the state of both the British Empire and British letters.

Last fall eight of the most articulate Angries announced their own credos in a noisy manifesto called "Declaration." The manifesto revealed that the group was not a group at all, but split fair in two over the artist's ancient agonizer: whether to save the world by his exertions or by his example. Half, led by Osborne, Movieman Lindsay Anderson, 35, and Drama Critic Ken Tynan, 31, said artists must "take an interest in social environment--and that means politics." The rest, spearheaded by Existentialist Colin (The Outsider) Wilson, 25, insisted that politics is for common people, that salvation must first be found by searching the soul.

Play As Prologue. Last week the battle was joined at Sloane Square's Royal Court Theatre, a small auditorium where advanced people gather to witness advanced plays. The current offering was The Tenth Chance, a first play by 25-year-old Stuart Holroyd, about a Norwegian resistance leader in World War II. By the middle of the last act, Holroyd's agnostic hero was beginning to find God in the extremity of his suffering at the hands of Nazi torturers. Up stood Christopher Logue, 31, a leftist poet passionately engaged in the campaign to ban the bomb in Britain, and shouted: "Oh, rubbish!" A moment later Novelist Elaine Tynan, Critic Tynan's pretty blonde American wife, got up and stomped out with Logue.

Art As Action. As soon as the curtain rang down, Colin Wilson buttonholed Tynan, hissed: "Tell your friend to keep his filthy mouth closed or we'll get him." "Stay out of my life, Wilson," growled Tynan and pushed past to join his wife and Logue in the pub next door. They were barely seated when the door burst open, and in poured the Exemplars. Scattering longhairs and spilling beers, Wilson, Holroyd, Playwright Michael (Yes--and After) Hastings, 20, Novelist Bill (The Divine and the Decay) Hopkins, 29, and their partisans pushed up to the Exertionists' table. "I'll crush you with my Daimler," screeched Holroyd's wife Ann, who is rich and has one. Wilson grabbed Logue by the hair and shoved him to the floor.

"The next thing I could hear," said Logue later, "was Wilson shouting 'Stand up, Logue, stand up, Logue,' in the true, lower-middle-class English fashion." Wilson flailed wildly at Tynan. "You deliberately tried to sabotage the play," he shouted. "I'll stamp you out, Tynan. Literature isn't big enough for both of us."

Just as the bartender moved in to break it up, Tynan leveled a long finger at Wilson. "There's your supposed leader, your younger generation," he cried. "He's a dictator. He reminds me of the Oswald Mosley meetings before the war." "Terrific!" roared John Osborne. "A row like this is just what I've been looking for." Explained Logue later: "I objected to the philosophical statement, implied in every line, that we must suffer, that attempts to check, alter, reform, change our sufferings are impudence."

Next day the critics panned The Tenth Chance. "Sadistic spinach," said Tynan in his column in the Sunday Observer.

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