Tom Sharpe
Encyclopedia
Tom Sharpe is an English satirical author, best known for his Wilt
series of novels.
Sharpe was born in London
and moved to South Africa
in 1951, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher, before being deported for sedition in 1961. His time in South Africa inspired the novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, in which he mocks the apartheid regime. Upon returning to England, he was a history lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, which inspired his Wilt
series in which he derides popular English culture.
As of 2004, he was living in Llafranc
, Catalonia
, where he wrote Wilt in Nowhere. Despite living in Spain
he has not learned either Catalan
or Spanish. "I don't want to learn the language," he says. "I don't want to hear what the price of meat is."
Several of his works became best sellers.
, before being moved to Lancing
and Pembroke College, Cambridge
.
wrote of The Great Pursuit "No one, from author to critic, goes unscathed in this satire on the publishing business on both sides of the Atlantic. Agent Frensic comes across a deliciously filthy, but anonymous, manuscript that promises best sellerdom. Frensic supplies a fake author and they are off down the primrose path. Much of this book is funny and devastatingly accurate until the plot disperses..."
Michael Dirda said in an interview: "Tom Sharpe is very funny--but exceptionally vulgar, crude and offensive. Many view him as Britain's funniest living novelist. Most people feel that his first two novels, set in a fictionalized South Africa, are his best: Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure."
Martin Levin, in a review of Porterhouse Blue, wrote "Sharpe is one of England's funniest writers. He's in the tradition of the 19th-century satirist, Thomas Love Peacock
, who wrote novels of ideas laced with physical, slapstick farce."
Adrian Mourby wrote "Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Vintage Stuff are books that hark back to a golden age of academic dottiness, of the kind that has all but disappeared since the 1940s when Sharpe himself was a student."
Tom Payne wrote of Wilt in Nowhere "Even half an hour after reading Tom Sharpe's 14th novel, it's difficult to remember what happened in it. ... Wilt is a victim of our times, and Sharpe doesn't seem to like them much. ... Sharpe might be happier in another age – the 18th century, perhaps – but even then he'd find plenty to rail against. It's tempting to see him as a contemporary Smollett: his plots are guided by whatever vices he feels like including, or whatever images are in his head. ... Wilt in Nowhere isn't Sharpe's finest work. His best tales put the reader firmly in a world: we can cherish the memories of the atavistic dons in Porterhouse Blue, or reel at the South African police in Indecent Exposure (1973). The present novel is simply a hapless tour of bits of England and Florida, in which colourful things happen and puzzle the police."
Caroline Moorehead writes (in a review of Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents) "When I was a fellow of Peterhouse, back in the Eighties, I was asked with tedious regularity whether the experience resembled Porterhouse Blue, Tom Sharpe’s grotesquely overblown satire. But even as I (truthfully) denied it, a few vignettes would slide past my mind’s eye — such as my very first Governing Body meeting, when, sombrely robed, the fellows debated, hotly and with manifest ill-will, whether the vomit by the chapel was beer- or claret-based."
Leonard R. N. Ashley in the Encyclopedia of British Humorists, wrote "Sharpe's humorous techniques naturally derive from his fundamental approach, which is that of the furious farceur who compounds anger and amusement." and "His dialogue is deft and more restrained than his characterization, which sometimes is mere caricature..." Ashley also quotes reviews and comments by many critics, and cites some 21 published reviews or critical comments on Sharpe's work, with brief summaries or quotes from each.
Wilt (novel)
Wilt is a comedic novel by the author Tom Sharpe, first published by Secker and Warburg in 1976. Later editions were published by Pan Books, and Overlook TP.-Plot introduction:The novel's title refers to its main character, Henry Wilt...
series of novels.
Sharpe was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and moved to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
in 1951, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher, before being deported for sedition in 1961. His time in South Africa inspired the novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, in which he mocks the apartheid regime. Upon returning to England, he was a history lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, which inspired his Wilt
Wilt (novel)
Wilt is a comedic novel by the author Tom Sharpe, first published by Secker and Warburg in 1976. Later editions were published by Pan Books, and Overlook TP.-Plot introduction:The novel's title refers to its main character, Henry Wilt...
series in which he derides popular English culture.
As of 2004, he was living in Llafranc
Llafranc
Llafranc is one of three coastal towns belonging to the municipality of Palafrugell, province of Girona, Spain, the other two being Calella de Palafrugell and Tamariu. It is part of the Costa Brava, the coastal region of northeastern Catalonia, in the comarca of Baix Empordà.The combination of a...
, Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
, where he wrote Wilt in Nowhere. Despite living in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
he has not learned either Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
or Spanish. "I don't want to learn the language," he says. "I don't want to hear what the price of meat is."
Several of his works became best sellers.
Education
Sharpe was educated at Bloxham SchoolBloxham School
Bloxham School is an independent co-educational day and boarding school located in the village of Bloxham, three miles from the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England. It was founded in 1860 by the Reverend Philip Reginald Egerton and has since become a member of the Woodard Corporation...
, before being moved to Lancing
Lancing College
Lancing College is a co-educational English independent school in the British public school tradition, founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard. Woodard's aim was to provide education "based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith." Lancing was the first of a...
and Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
.
Critical response
The Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
wrote of The Great Pursuit "No one, from author to critic, goes unscathed in this satire on the publishing business on both sides of the Atlantic. Agent Frensic comes across a deliciously filthy, but anonymous, manuscript that promises best sellerdom. Frensic supplies a fake author and they are off down the primrose path. Much of this book is funny and devastatingly accurate until the plot disperses..."
Michael Dirda said in an interview: "Tom Sharpe is very funny--but exceptionally vulgar, crude and offensive. Many view him as Britain's funniest living novelist. Most people feel that his first two novels, set in a fictionalized South Africa, are his best: Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure."
Martin Levin, in a review of Porterhouse Blue, wrote "Sharpe is one of England's funniest writers. He's in the tradition of the 19th-century satirist, Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Love Peacock was an English satirist and author.Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work...
, who wrote novels of ideas laced with physical, slapstick farce."
Adrian Mourby wrote "Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Vintage Stuff are books that hark back to a golden age of academic dottiness, of the kind that has all but disappeared since the 1940s when Sharpe himself was a student."
Tom Payne wrote of Wilt in Nowhere "Even half an hour after reading Tom Sharpe's 14th novel, it's difficult to remember what happened in it. ... Wilt is a victim of our times, and Sharpe doesn't seem to like them much. ... Sharpe might be happier in another age – the 18th century, perhaps – but even then he'd find plenty to rail against. It's tempting to see him as a contemporary Smollett: his plots are guided by whatever vices he feels like including, or whatever images are in his head. ... Wilt in Nowhere isn't Sharpe's finest work. His best tales put the reader firmly in a world: we can cherish the memories of the atavistic dons in Porterhouse Blue, or reel at the South African police in Indecent Exposure (1973). The present novel is simply a hapless tour of bits of England and Florida, in which colourful things happen and puzzle the police."
Caroline Moorehead writes (in a review of Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents) "When I was a fellow of Peterhouse, back in the Eighties, I was asked with tedious regularity whether the experience resembled Porterhouse Blue, Tom Sharpe’s grotesquely overblown satire. But even as I (truthfully) denied it, a few vignettes would slide past my mind’s eye — such as my very first Governing Body meeting, when, sombrely robed, the fellows debated, hotly and with manifest ill-will, whether the vomit by the chapel was beer- or claret-based."
Leonard R. N. Ashley in the Encyclopedia of British Humorists, wrote "Sharpe's humorous techniques naturally derive from his fundamental approach, which is that of the furious farceur who compounds anger and amusement." and "His dialogue is deft and more restrained than his characterization, which sometimes is mere caricature..." Ashley also quotes reviews and comments by many critics, and cites some 21 published reviews or critical comments on Sharpe's work, with brief summaries or quotes from each.
Wilt Series
- WiltWilt (novel)Wilt is a comedic novel by the author Tom Sharpe, first published by Secker and Warburg in 1976. Later editions were published by Pan Books, and Overlook TP.-Plot introduction:The novel's title refers to its main character, Henry Wilt...
(1976) - The Wilt Alternative (1979)
- Wilt On High (1984)
- Wilt in Triplicate (omnibus) (1996)
- Wilt in Nowhere (2004)
- The Wilt Inheritance (2010)
- The Wilt Alternative (e-Book) (2011)
Other Novels
- Riotous AssemblyRiotous AssemblyRiotous Assembly is the debut novel of British comic writer Tom Sharpe originally published in 1971. Set in the fictitious South African town of Piemburg it is a savagely amusing lampoon of the forces of law and order in apartheid era South Africa....
(1971) - Indecent Exposure (1973)
- Blott On the LandscapeBlott on the LandscapeBlott on the Landscape is a novel written in 1975 by Tom Sharpe. It was adapted into a 6-part television series for the BBC in 1985.-Plot:The story revolves around the proposed construction of a motorway through Cleene Gorge in rural South Worfordshire...
(1975) - The Great PursuitThe Great PursuitThe Great Pursuit is a 1977 comic novel by Tom Sharpe. It is a satire encompassing commercialism in publishing and literary criticism.-Plot introduction:...
(1977) - The ThrowbackThe ThrowbackThe Throwback is a 1978 satirical novel by Tom Sharpe.It has been released as a recorded book in two formats: in an abridged version by HarperCollins Audio read by Simon Callow and unabridged by ISIS Audio Books read by Geoffrey Matthews -Plot:The plot is based around the ancient Flawse family,...
(1978) - Ancestral Vices (1980)
- Vintage Stuff (1982)
- The Midden (1996)
- The Gropes (2009)
Short stories
- Stirring the Pot (1994)
- The anthology Knights of Madness: Further Comic Tales of Fantasy (1998) features a story by Tom Sharpe