Mr. Castronovo turns his attention to the novelists who succeeded Amis and thus continued, in the author's view, what he calls "the bloke revolution" -- Alan Sillitoe (of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning"), John Braine (of "Room at the Top") and others. Mr. Castronovo reminds us what good writers they were at their best. Thanks in large part to their provincial, working-class background, they also created characters who were much more authentically blokes than Amis's or Osborne's. If the term has to be used as a literary category, that is; but despite Mr. Castronovo's best efforts, it seems one we could probably do without.
John Gross in The Wall Street Journal reviews David Castronovo's Blokes: The Bad Boys of British Literature.
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