Around the World in 80,000 Pages - Book 4
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
You can read about my Around the World in 80,000 pages challenge here.
Miles travelled: 224
Pages read: 1,481
From the North-East we head to the boundary between the North and the Midlands: Nottingham. The world capital of wargames figures, Nottingham is a tough working-class town (with one of the highest instances of knife crime out of any UK city). Specifically, we go back to Nottingham of the 1950s for a story steeped in Ted culture.
After a rough start in Nottingham, where his father worked in the Raleigh bike factory, Alan Sillitoe joined the RAF, just missing the Second World War. He was invalided out with tuberculosis in 1949. Whilst in warmer climes attempting to recover, he tried his hand at writing. Initially, he hoped to earn only enough to supplement his pension, but his first novel
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, was a massive success, and launched him onto the world stage.
Set in his native town and with the violent and hard drinking culture he grew up with,
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning follows Arthur Seaton, a Teddy boy who spends all week working a lathe in the bicycle factory, and all weekend drinking, chasing women, or fishing. His nihilistic behaviour eventually lands him on the wrong side of a beating from two soldiers, who didn't appreciate him keeping their wives warm of a night.
Saturday Night is a hard book to review. On one hand, it is exceptionally well written, the style is clear and precise and perfectly captures the post-war atmosphere. But the protagonist is so incredibly unlikeable that it made the book very hard reading. Arthur Seaton is pretty much a sociopath. It is not just that he puts himself first, but that he has no concept of why he might in any way take into account anyone else's feelings. He lives a life devoid of anything resembling compassion, or even guilt. About half way through I feared it might turn into a moralistic tale, that he was
such an awful person that after if all caught up with him he would see the error of his ways, and lead a good life. To be fair, Sillitoe was consistent with his character, and even after it all came tumbling down, Seaton was only sorry for the trouble he had got himself in. By the end of the book he has settled down somewhat, but only because constantly living outside of societal norms had ground him down, and it seems more likely he would become a man twisted by the bitterness of having to conform against his will.
In the end, it scored 81/140: ★★★☆☆.
Our accompanying song is
Yes Sir, That's My Baby by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. The Pirates were a UK rock 'n' roll band who started in the 1950s. Their big hit was
Shakin' All Over in 1960, to which
Yes Sir was the B side. It has a rawer feel than
Shakin' and I would hazard a guess is a better representation of their live sound. It is the sort of track that fits the frenetic, beer-soaked, womanising Saturday nights of the novel. Plus rumour has it that Johnny Kidd (real name Fred Heath) was something of a rake, not unlike our hero.
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