Read 'Wilt' in 2020: they say you're made of fine plastic

• David Lodge: Humor, Love and Politics

Later we will talk about feminism, social classes, normative behaviors, the new sincerity and all those things, but first we go with the important thing. The reader who 40, 30 or 20 years ago enjoyed Wilt in a swimming pool and who is now reunited with the character of Tom Sharpe thanks to the comprehensive edition of the Anagrama label ( Todo Wilt ; five novels on 1,080 pages), will realize, first of all, that Sharpe was a very good writer. Not funny, or cheeky, or good-handed: very good .

The first three pages of Wilt are a shadowy but fluid internal digression, full of nuances and perfectly controlled. The omens of the comedy appear but they are like the counterpoint of the bitterness that dominates the scene. Wilt walks the dog at night because Eva is impatient if she stays home with nothing to do or say. Dog and Master arrive in a neighborhood where houses and cars are obviously better and Wilt fantasizes about overcoming the sense of appalling mediocrity that rules their lives. It is not pleasant to be aware of it, but he senses that to get out of that mousetrap that is day to day, to take revenge on life, it would take a dramatic turn, perhaps tragic. That Eva died, for example. Wilt is more like David Lodge's novels than Marqués de Sotoancho's, to give an example.

For readers who are new to Sharpe, a summary should be made: Henry Wilt is a novel character who introduced himself to Spanish readers in the 1980s as a 34-year-old professor of literature, employed at a VET institute somewhere undetermined from southern England.

His students are would-be millers, butchers, and welders who Wilt is supposed to talk about DH Lawrence and the like. His mission is absurd, his pay is medium and his expectations for promotion are remote. Wilt has more problems. His wife, Eva, is a basically unemployed housewife looking for something more in life. Henry is more cultured than Eva but Eva has free time that she uses in a succession of workshops of meditation, creativity, spirituality and the like, so that her conversation is, according to Wilt, "eclectic and desperate" ... That if not directed towards the reproach of mediocrity.

As much yoga as she does, Eva longs for a bigger house, a new car and a vacation in Spain. Also, Eva is a person much more interested in sex than Henry, listless after 12 years of marriage. Due to a series of circumstances, a police officer, Sergeant Yates who is his nemesis and, at the same time, could be his soulmate, also interferes in Henry's life .

With these three footholds Tom Sharpe put together a series of five novels written between 1976 and 2010 that made him the most famous English comic writer of his generation and allowed him to live as a knight until 2013, when he died at his Llafranc home.

Some facts: Sharpe was born in London in 1931, the son of a pastor of the United Anglican Church, almost old and almost fascist. He studied in Cambridge, lived with his mother in South Africa in the 1950s, made a living as a teacher, and managed to be expelled from the country as a subversive.

Africa the stories of two of his first novels, brought tumultuous meeting and Indecent Exposure , where the alleged seditious metepatas Communists were poor men who shamed their wives lack of character. Back in the UK, Sharpe continued to teach literature at Cambridge, although not at university but, bingo !, at a vocational school.

First relevant question: are Wilt's books still funny? Yes, but in a less obvious way than its former readers remember. Wilt reads himself a second time more with a smile than a laugh: the plastic doll's gag is in anyone's memory, so good humor matters more than surprise. The grace of Wilt is to appreciate what Eva and Henry are ridiculous and how tender they are , the seriousness with which they try to lead their destinies and the detachment with which they fit the jokes that life prepares for them. The word dettachment , the detachment attributed to English culture, is the key.

Nor is the task of giving an answer to those readers who want a moral judgment of the work in accordance with the dominant values ​​in 2020 easy. Wilt has everything to receive postmodern censorship: the gaze of man is central and the portrait of his wife is rather rude, just as fatherhood will be in the following novels. In addition, the joke that is the key to the arc of the entire series is based on an alleged femicide. What you have to have , as Tom Wolfe said.

In practice, things are not so simple. For example, the portrait of Eva Wilt. What is ridiculous in her is no more serious than what is in Henry. Eva looks a little silly just like Henry looks like a wimp. Also, Eva's cartoon is, in part, a cartoon of an era. In Spain, Wilt became popular in the 80s, but in reality, he is a creature from 1976 who expresses boredom with the libertine culture of the 70s. On this side, Sharpe's novels may seem conservative, although, deep down , they are just skeptical.

More interesting is the angle of social classes. The Wilt are a middle class pushed to the limit. Good mediocre people, hard-working, full of aspirations, honest and naive. In its wake, the working class does not appear idealized, on the contrary.

Henry's students are a pack of callous drunks and are delighted with his pub fights and alienation. On the other hand, the rich people in the novel are hateful. They manipulate the Wilts and pretend to be their friends to play with their middle-class longings. Only Yates, another middle-class official, can understand the Wilt. But fate has put him in the place of his enemy.

Actually, all English novels talk about the same thing, about social classes. And his famous comedy may consist of the resignation with which his characters try to get ahead between capricious and incomprehensible social codes. Actually, this was where Wilt started : a distressing walk between big houses and expensive cars.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• literature
• culture

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