Williams’s starting point is the immense pessimism of nineteenth-century men of letters....One can explain this pessimism to some extent in terms of … - Anthony Burgess

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Williams’s starting point is the immense pessimism of nineteenth-century men of letters....One can explain this pessimism to some extent in terms of various social and political failures, especially in France....But Dr Williams would rather look at the physically examinable, and he finds in the author’s disease the roots of what his book cover calls, with an admirable eye on the market, the horror of life....