Alan Sillitoe Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)
I first read this for my English 'O' level exam back in the eighties, then bought my own copy of the novel shortly after, having been so impressed by it. Coming back to it in 2019, I now have to wonder whether the influence of this book runs deeper than I realised, and that attitudes and opinions I regarded as having come from a combination of parental influence, punk rock, and general common sense first achieved form when reading this.
Saturday Night is the story of Arthur, a young working class man employed on a factory assembly line, who drinks a lot, enjoys a fight, and prefers to shag married women because the secretive nature of the arrangement allows him the freedom to spread it about. He's selfish, vindictive, and his entire existence is founded upon a web of lies. He's a complete wanker, and yet really he's not, because he's funny, intelligent, hard to dislike, and there's a refreshing honesty to his nihilism. The novel is a straightforward allegory about growing up, a coming of age deal, I suppose, as Arthur achieves conditional enlightenment through having all of his wife-shagging, arse-kicking chickens come home to roost. It's literally the alcohol-fuelled night club punch-up of Saturday leading into the reflective hangover and recovery of Sunday morning.
The success of the book is in the portrayal of the working class as sympathetic, complex characters without recourse to sentiment, but rather celebrating the devious ingenuity of those obliged to get by with limited means. I've known a few Arthurs, even worked and lived in similar conditions, and Sillitoe really nails it, articulating the spirit of working class resistance and not letting the bastards grind you down like few others. The fidelity of Sillitoe's attention to detail is most capably demonstrated with the appearance of Sam and Chumley towards the end, respectively African and Indian, and neither entirely at home within the environment of white working class Nottingham in the fifties. Whilst both are treated as curiosities, there's no ill will because everyone has enough on their own plate without getting too upset about anyone else's business, painting what I would suggest is a generally more accurate picture of the attitude of the British working class to race than the one more commonly communicated by the media towards political ends.
At least since I first discovered the internet, more and more I've come to wonder at the herd mentality of my fellow citizens and the eagerness with which we will guzzle down whatever shit the media happen to be telling us this week. I'm not talking fake news or whatever mirage the architects of the current regime may be invoking to deflect from the fact of their having been caught with their pants down yet again. I'm talking about the many heads nodding and bleating innit terrible to whichever contemporary demon Rupert Murdoch, Jeremy Kyle, or whoever else happens to be waving in our faces in the name of scaring us into voting for Adolf fucking Hitler this week. Somehow I recall growing up with the idea that authority was not necessarily to be trusted, and that claims made by the media, particularly of the politically loaded variety, should be taken with a pinch of salt. This message seemed to be communicated by more or less everything which caught my attention from the Bash Street Kids onwards, and yet it's beginning to feel as though I grew up in some sort of bubble beyond which rock and roll - for example - was only ever about entertainment, and the version you'll see played out on America's Got Talent is probably as good as anything else you're likely to find for the same price. The squares and the head boys and the good little soldiers seem to be inheriting the earth.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is therefore a powerful memorial to a world we've left behind, to attitudes which should not be forgotten because while we're still fighting, it means we're alive; and being alive should be fun.
I first read this for my English 'O' level exam back in the eighties, then bought my own copy of the novel shortly after, having been so impressed by it. Coming back to it in 2019, I now have to wonder whether the influence of this book runs deeper than I realised, and that attitudes and opinions I regarded as having come from a combination of parental influence, punk rock, and general common sense first achieved form when reading this.
Saturday Night is the story of Arthur, a young working class man employed on a factory assembly line, who drinks a lot, enjoys a fight, and prefers to shag married women because the secretive nature of the arrangement allows him the freedom to spread it about. He's selfish, vindictive, and his entire existence is founded upon a web of lies. He's a complete wanker, and yet really he's not, because he's funny, intelligent, hard to dislike, and there's a refreshing honesty to his nihilism. The novel is a straightforward allegory about growing up, a coming of age deal, I suppose, as Arthur achieves conditional enlightenment through having all of his wife-shagging, arse-kicking chickens come home to roost. It's literally the alcohol-fuelled night club punch-up of Saturday leading into the reflective hangover and recovery of Sunday morning.
The success of the book is in the portrayal of the working class as sympathetic, complex characters without recourse to sentiment, but rather celebrating the devious ingenuity of those obliged to get by with limited means. I've known a few Arthurs, even worked and lived in similar conditions, and Sillitoe really nails it, articulating the spirit of working class resistance and not letting the bastards grind you down like few others. The fidelity of Sillitoe's attention to detail is most capably demonstrated with the appearance of Sam and Chumley towards the end, respectively African and Indian, and neither entirely at home within the environment of white working class Nottingham in the fifties. Whilst both are treated as curiosities, there's no ill will because everyone has enough on their own plate without getting too upset about anyone else's business, painting what I would suggest is a generally more accurate picture of the attitude of the British working class to race than the one more commonly communicated by the media towards political ends.
At least since I first discovered the internet, more and more I've come to wonder at the herd mentality of my fellow citizens and the eagerness with which we will guzzle down whatever shit the media happen to be telling us this week. I'm not talking fake news or whatever mirage the architects of the current regime may be invoking to deflect from the fact of their having been caught with their pants down yet again. I'm talking about the many heads nodding and bleating innit terrible to whichever contemporary demon Rupert Murdoch, Jeremy Kyle, or whoever else happens to be waving in our faces in the name of scaring us into voting for Adolf fucking Hitler this week. Somehow I recall growing up with the idea that authority was not necessarily to be trusted, and that claims made by the media, particularly of the politically loaded variety, should be taken with a pinch of salt. This message seemed to be communicated by more or less everything which caught my attention from the Bash Street Kids onwards, and yet it's beginning to feel as though I grew up in some sort of bubble beyond which rock and roll - for example - was only ever about entertainment, and the version you'll see played out on America's Got Talent is probably as good as anything else you're likely to find for the same price. The squares and the head boys and the good little soldiers seem to be inheriting the earth.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is therefore a powerful memorial to a world we've left behind, to attitudes which should not be forgotten because while we're still fighting, it means we're alive; and being alive should be fun.
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