# Trousered Apes By Duncan Williams **URL:** **By** Roy A. Childs, Jr. **Published:** February 1, 1974 --- “We are teaching savagery and are naively appalled at the success of our instruction.” This hard-hitting work is concerned with “sick literature in a sick society,” or, more broadly, with the impact of literature on human society and civilization as a whole. The “trousered ape” of the title is taken from C. S. Lewis’ _The Abolition of Man_, and is “the last, violent, neurotic hero who wanders through a thousand modern plays and novels, the ‘anti-hero’ of our civilization.” All in all, Williams’ book is a scathing commentary on what Ayn Rand has called “the sewer school of art.” Williams’ thesis is that “the Western World and its culture are saturated with violence and animalism.” Modern literature, he maintains, is partly responsible for this and constitutes a grave threat to the the future of civilized society. For literature, Williams holds, does not merely reflect an age, it shapes its dominant values and man’s self-image. In more ways than we realize, it shapes how men see themselves, how they relate to one another and the kind of society they will live in as a result. Throughout the centuries, the world’s greatest literature has been “that which…. _sustained_ and _elevated_ mankind; it represents a conquest by man over the diverse and bewildering complexities of his own nature and of the world surrounding him.” But today, this orientation of literature is a thing of the past. What is common to modern literature is “the bitter line of hostility to civilization which runs through it.” The result, he states, is: “Today one must seriously question the possibility that the net _result_ of the contemporary arts may be a society consisting largely of semi-educated, psychologically disturbed human beings. Already countless thousands of the young are demonstrating through drug reliance and other forms of self-destructive escapism that they have lost what Teilhard de Chardin called ‘that essential taste for life’…. We are teaching savagery and are naively appalled at the success of our instruction.” And, he notes with concern Leslie Fiedler’s observation that there is today “a weariness in the West … a weariness with the striving to be men.” The fault lies with our modern decadent culture and with those who greet “the dignity of thinking beings with contemptuous laughter.” But the laughter is hollow, he claims, for even they are aware “of a sense of loss—the loss of an ideal.” For “in the novels which he reads, in the plays and films which he sees, and in the philosophical and ethical treatises which are presented for his edification, Western man is _continually_ subjected to a vision of himself as a being violent, animalistic, alienated, mannerless and uncivilized… \[and\] he is … being encouraged to identify himself with such an image…” with all of the consequences for human life and civilization. _Trousered Apes_ is not an unmixed blessing; there is a religious tone and theme running throughout the book, occasionally overshadowing the main thesis, but in general it can be read equally profitably from a libertarian or Objectivist perspective. It is filled with examples drawn from the world’s great literature, contrasted with modern literature, tracing the effects of certain philosophical shifts in the nineteenth century on twentieth century art. It is a necessary but painful dissection of a dominant portion of our modern culture, digging deep into its psychological roots. Duncan Williams analyzes everything from the effect of egalitarianism on the portrayal of heroes and ideals in literature; to the loss of the “liberty of privacy” which has resulted from the public baring of neuroses which are presented as the _normal_ in life; to the “death-oriented hopelessness” which is the _leitmotiv_ of the _avant-garde_; to the rise of sadistic violence as a consequence of a growing worship of feelings and unthinking “spontaneous” acts above reason and self-control. For those who realize what a fragile structure civilization is and who are disturbed with contemporary cultural trends, _Trousered Apes_ is required reading. A thoughtful and thought-provoking work which deserves several sequels from Duncan Williams. _Reviewed by R. A. Childs, Jr. / Literature (167 pages, indexed) / BFL Price $6.95_