Wilson appears to be using The Lampitt Chronicles to work out some of his own beliefs, about literature, marriage, faith. `For better or worse, it's the thing I've put most effort into', he told the Bookseller. That's just the problem. Wilson is one of those writers, like Burgess and Theroux perhaps, whose facility is not a betrayal of their talents but the truest expression of them. The Lampitt Papers are a lapse into seriousness.