Look Back in Anger
Aubry D'Arminio
February 3, 2012: Fifty-six years ago, 25-year-old John Osborne took the sex and basic story of A Streetcar Named Desire (lower class boy weds well-bred girl, whose disapproving acquaintance complicates their fiery relationship), added details of his own dissolving marriage (he, too, ''married up'') and wrote his most influential work, Look Back in Anger, in 30 feverish days. Osborne's hero, Jimmy Porter, grew up poor, yet in postwar Britain was able to afford a college education — but humiliatingly only finds work running a candy stand. He lives in a dingy attic apartment of an old Victorian house in the English Midlands with his middle-class wife, Allison, and his puppyish, lower-class best friend, Cliff. Together, they bear Jimmy's many $10-word invectives and poisonous diatribes. He rants about Allison's family hating him. He rants about Cliff's lack of sophistication. He rants about the Sunday papers, the upper class, the welfare state, bad art, worse politics, and the impending visit of Allison's judgmental friend Helena (who ultimately changes their lives). He even rants about Allison and Cliff not ranting, nicknaming her ''pusillanimous'' and him ''mouse.'' Jimmy's lot in life has made him — like the name of the 1950s British literary movement that Osborne inspired — one very angry young man.
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