Phillip Toynbee

Phillip Toynbee's name cropped up a few days ago; it was mentioned in a list of writers who were considered to be second rate. This I could not understand: 30 or 40 years ago he had a distinguished reputation as a critic and poet. I remember him only as a critic but my father admired his other writings.
Two things I remember about him: Joseph Heller, an American, had written his first novel, "Catch 22" and it hadn't gone down very well in the States. It was not until Phillip Toynbee gave it a rave review that it took off, not just here but over in the USA as well. That tells something of his reputation. Yet, one feels, surely the novel would by its own steam, as it were, have been recognised for what it was, a marvellous satire on war, a modern work of literature the like of which, it's safe to say, had never been known before.
The other thing I recall is that Phillip Toynbee gave consummate praise to a book that, later, he seemed to regret having been so enthusiastic about, Colin Wilson's "The Outsider". Whether or not it was Toynbee's admiration for the book that gave it such momentum in sales I don't know but Colin Wilson's book was so drastically reviewed by others equally as distinguished as Toynbee that it became sort of infra dig to say you liked it.
I read it and enjoyed it greatly though I have to say Wilson's later work didn't speak to me at all: he became a kind of guru of mystical and magical phenomena, an expert of Jack the Ripper (how many of those are there?) and so on.
There were, if memory doesn't fail me, two excellent literary critics writing for The Observer at that time: Phillip Toybee and Cyril Connolly ("in every fat man there's a thin man trying to get out"). They both tried their hands at novels but, like many another critic, they didn't have much success.
I have known two people who, after attending university and studying literature, found it almost impossible to engage in creative work - I mean fiction writing. Maybe it's because they are too critical of what they themselves are writing to be unstilted in their style.
Someone once said of a relation of Toltoy's that "he's too good a writer to be a novelist".