I’m surprised how affected I am by the news of the death of Alan Sillitoe. When I was growing up in Nottingham, Sililtoe was an inspiring figure. Even though he wrote a generation or more before mine, he still seemed to be the only writer who wrote about the city I grew up in. The Goose Fair. The Forest. Lenton. Radford. St Ann’s. Slab Square. There’s more than just that though . Sillitoe wrote about the urge to enjoy life, and our hunger to get away from it’s grind and tedium and limitation. About the urge to escape.
I spent some of the afternoon re-reading “The Loneliness of the Long distance runner”, and I thought this quote from the end of one of the other short stories in the collection was worth repeating.
“More than anything else, I’m glad now I didn’t go to the pictures that Saturday afternoon when I was feeling black and ready to do myself in. Because you know, I shan’t ever kill myself. Trust me. I’ll stay alive half-barmy till I’m a hundred and five, and then go out screaming blue murder because I want to stay where I am.”
“I’ll stay alive half-barmy till I’m a hundred and five, and then go out screaming blue murder because I want to stay where I am.”
Sure this isn’t someone else we all know, Hopi?
.I am surprised a chap who is plugged in and gyrating to the beat of the zeitgeist gets that moving and rather beautiful passage Hopi. Many thanks for that .
Have you read his ‘Raw Material’ ? It’s a sort of semi- autobiographical cum family portrait running from the trenches of Flanders to the 1972 miners strike in Nottinghamshire. I highly recommend it and I am sure there are cheap paperback copies around on Amazon. I always saw Silletoe as a kind of East Midlands version of Gunter Grass
I shall look out for it! Many thanks…
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I think John Harvey deserves a mention for chronicling Nottingham rather well…
John, I so thoroughly enjoy your wtinirg style. It’s always frank and honest. This is a very thought-provoking piece and the acceptance of the gloomy outlook is something that baffles me. As you know I recently emigrated back to my native Australia; something that many other Australians living in the UK are doing too. Australia is in the mists of a mining boom but they aren’t completely exempt from the troubles of the rest of the world, particularly the Euro Zone. The knock on effects of a possible break-up of the Euro Zone would be felt world-wide. But stopping just before the finish line is not an option in the case.Thank you for sharing and I look forward to the next edition.Kim
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