Alan Sillitoe; Independent obit
Hyfler/Rosner
working-class life in novels such as 'Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning'
By Peter Guttridge
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
In his long life, Alan Sillitoe wrote over 50 books -
novels, short story collections, travel works, poetry
collections, plays and screenplays - but he remained best
known for his first two works: the novel Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning (1958) and the short story collection that
had as its title story "The Loneliness of The Long Distance
Runner" (1959).
The debut novel won him the Author's Club First Novel Award;
the short story collection won him the Hawthornden Prize.
But the true significance of the two works came with their
film adaptations, spearheading as they did a new genre in
British cinema-gritty, working class, "kitchen sink" drama.
The two film adaptations also, incidentally, launched the
film careers of (respectively) Albert Finney and Tom
Courtenay.
Sillitoe certainly knew the kitchen sink, and was from the
working class. He was born on 4 March 1928 to Christopher
Sillitoe, a labourer, and his wife Sabina. His father, like
many labourers of the day, was illiterate. That was not in
itself a handicap to those who worked with their hands but
Sillitoe was born on the brink of the Depression.
The family were constantly moving in search of work - and to
avoid the rent-collectors - but were always in the vicinity
of Nottingham. Sillitoe grew up alongside two brothers and
two sisters with no real ambitions. At 14 he failed the
examination for grammar school but, even had he passed, it
is doubtful his family would have had the money to send him.
By then - 1942 - war had broken out. Sillitoe took various
labouring jobs: he worked at the Raleigh bicycle factory, in
a plywood factory, then as a capstan lathe operator before
becoming an air traffic control assistant. (1945-1946). He
moved on in 1946 to be an RAF wireless operator with the
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He hoped to be a pilot,
but none were required by then.
He spent the next three years in the signals corps in
Malaya. Towards the end of 1949 he contracted tubercolosis
and spent the next 18 months in a military hospital. There,
he read everything he could lay his hands on, including
Greek and Roman classics and - more importantly - Robert
Tressell's 1914 masterpiece of working class life, The
Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
Sillitoe was inspired to become a novelist but the novel he
wrote in hospital was rejected. When he was well he moved
back to Nottingham with a disability pension. In 1952, in a
bookshop in town, he met the aspiring American poet Ruth
Fainlight. Curious as it sounds for an author who was a lead
writer in what has become known as "provincial realism",
Sillitoe and Fainlight spent the next six years living off
his disability pension in France, Spain and Majorca. In
Majorca Sillitoe fell under the influence of the poet Robert
Graves, who encouraged him to turn short stories the
Nottingham author had been working on into a novel.
In fact, Sillitoe's first publication, in 1957, was a
collection of poetry, Without Beer or Bread. He followed it
a year later with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which
was an immediate commercial and critical triumph. It won the
Author's Club First Novel Award and Sillitoe scripted the
film, that was released in 1960 to equal critical acclaim.
(The stage version, first performed in 1964, was less
successful.) By the time the film of Silllitoe's debut novel
came out, his short story collection, led by "The Loneliness
of the Long Distance Runner", had come out and won the
Hawthornden Prize.
Sadly, as it would be for any writer, Sillitoe's subsequent
fiction, prolific as he was, never achieved the popularity
or commercial success of his debut novel and subsequent
short story. Both works caught a mood in which young,
working-class people were celebrated - in an unsentimental
way - but in which the celebration was tinged by
hopelessness despite their cocky rebelliousness.
In 1959 - the year of Loneliness's publication, Sillitoe had
moved to London and married Fainlight. His third novel, The
General, was published in 1960 but was eclipsed by the film
of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, starring a feisty
Albert Finney. (The General had a disappointing film
adaptation as Counterpoint in 1967.)
Finney played Arthur Seaton, a thoughtlessly rebellious,
lecherous, boozy working-class lad on the make. Sillitoe put
this character to one side in Key To The Door, his 1961
autobiographical novel that followed Arthur's older brother,
Brian, through his National Service in Malaya. Brian's
adventures continued in The Open Door (1989). In 1961
Sillitoe, this master of provincial realism, moved to
Morocco, where he wrote The Ragman's Daughter (1963), filmed
quite successfully in 1973.
In the 1960s Sillitoe visited the Soviet Union on a number
of occasions (recorded in 1964's Road To Volgograd and
2007's Gadfly In Russia) and critics have noted that his
prolific writing output suffered from his desire to make
political points. His trilogy - The Death of William Posters
(1965), Tree On Fire (1967) and The Flame of Life (1974) -
suffered in this way. Perhaps his most overtly political
work was the screenplay for Che Guevera in 1968. But perhaps
his most overtly political statement was when, in the same
year, he lambasted the Soviet Writer's Union Congress in
1968 for their abuse of human rights.
By now his wife had seen her first poetry collection
published and she continued to succeed as poet, short story
writer, translator and librettist. Sillitoe, too, continued
with a wide range of work. Although an atheist he developed
an interest in Judaism and was a strong pro-Zionist.
In 1967 he had written his first novel for children - The
City Adventures of Marmalade Jim - and his work for children
continued to be successful. He was proud of his poetry and a
number of collections followed, as did accounts of his
travels around the world with his wife.
In 2001 he wrote Birthday, a sequel to Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning. He continued to write a range of other works
thereafter but - perhaps frustratingly for him - remained
best known as a provincial realist who, he said, "strove to
explain the complications of the human soul with a
simplicity that can be universally understood."
For all that, he remained drawn to his technical know-how.
He kept a radio transmitter at home to tune into foreign
stations and when promoting Gadfly In Russia at the
Edinburgh Book Festival a couple of years ago, turned up
with his morse code set to show that, 60-odd years on, he
hadn't lost the knack. Actually, although his later books
were often ignored, he never lost the knack.
Alan Sillitoe, writer: born Nottingham 4 March 1928; married
1959 Ruth Fanlight (one son, one daughter); died London 25
April 2010.