Meaning:
Often applied to the British `kitchen sink' playwrights of the 1950s. Also
anyone, particularly young men obviously, who rails against the establishment.
Background:
The term was applied most notably to playwright John Osborne and it was from
comments about his Look Back in Anger, first performed in 1956, that the
phrase became known.
However, that wasn't its first use. In 1941, the writer Rebecca West used it
in her Black lamb and grey falcon: the record of a journey through Yugoslavia
in 1937:
"Their [the Dalmatians] instinct is to brace themselves against any central
authority as if it were their enemy. The angry young men run about
shouting."
West wasn't using the phrase in the quite specific way it became used in the
1950s. She was just referring to young men who were angry.
John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger was first performed in 1956. The term
doesn't appear in the play but it was in the reporting of it later that it
became known. In October 1957 George Fearon, Press Officer for the Royal
Court Theatre, wrote this piece for the Daily Telegraph:
"I had read John Osborne's play. When I met the author I ventured to
prophesy that his generation would praise his play while mine would, in
general, dislike it... `If this happens,' I told him, `you would become
known as the Angry Young Man.' In fact, we decided then and there that
henceforth he was to be known as that."
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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For his 30yr graduation reunion, Bill posted in his college class group a selfie
taken at a Beijing subway station. Most folks kindly lied that they saw no
change, one asked if his feet felt cold in sandals, and another remarked that he
looked the same angry young man. ("憤怒的小馬" were the exact words, referring
to a popular Wuxia character.)
The last observation hit the mark in more ways than one as Bill indeed carried a
giant chip on his shoulder for most of his life and he was wont to make up for
his forgettable looks by assuming a gruff front. He has gone mellow since but
his mien has stayed.
