kev67
12-16-2013, 05:28 PM
I found this quite an interesting book, but not the page turner that I thought it would be. I was intrigued to read it because 1) it has a very good title (Alan Silitoe was very good at titles) and 2) it was promoted in the shop window as one of those rare things, a convincing, no-holds working class novel. Alan Sillitoe was a working class lad in Nottingham. Coincidentally, there was an item on the radio on Saturday morning about him. People who knew Alan Sillitoe thought his wife must have written the book because she had gone to university and he had not. The radio went on to describe an Saturday Night and Sunday Morning guided tour around Nottingham, visiting where the bicycle factory had been and the pubs Arthur Seaton, the protoganist, had got drunk in. Another cool thing that I read about Alan Silitoe was that he met Robert Graves, the author of I Claudius and Goodbye to All That when on holiday on a Spanish Island, and Robert Graves encouraged him in his writing. Robert Graves was quite a posh guy, I seem to remember reading so that must have been an interesting meeting. There is an interesting link, because I am sure I read in Goodbye To All That, that as a young man, Robert Graves visited Thomas Hardy, who encouraged him to write.
The main character in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a twenty-two-year-old named Arthur Seaton who works all week at a lathe in a bicycle factory. It is boring, but quite easy work, and well paid. There is quite a good description on what it is like to work in a factory. Arthur Seaton is not an ambitious man. His main interests are fishing, drinking reckless amounts of beer, and having sex with another man's wife. I think the book is a pretty good description of Britain at that time. The postwar economy was booming, unemployment was low and wages were good. Rationing was over. Britain still had a huge manufacturing sector. People were starting to buy and watch television. Britain had developed her own nuclear bomb and people were slightly worried about another war. National Service (i.e. conscription) was still mandatory, although not for much longer. Mass immigration was just beginning. There is quite a good description of the sort of racism a black immigrant could expect. One technological development that had not occurred yet was the contraceptive pill.
I have to say I did not like Arthur Seaton very much, but then we weren't supposed to. I see Alan Sillitoe wrote another book about him several decades on. I imagine by the amount he smoked and drank he would have gone to seed, and would have struggled to find work after being laid off at the factory.
The main character in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a twenty-two-year-old named Arthur Seaton who works all week at a lathe in a bicycle factory. It is boring, but quite easy work, and well paid. There is quite a good description on what it is like to work in a factory. Arthur Seaton is not an ambitious man. His main interests are fishing, drinking reckless amounts of beer, and having sex with another man's wife. I think the book is a pretty good description of Britain at that time. The postwar economy was booming, unemployment was low and wages were good. Rationing was over. Britain still had a huge manufacturing sector. People were starting to buy and watch television. Britain had developed her own nuclear bomb and people were slightly worried about another war. National Service (i.e. conscription) was still mandatory, although not for much longer. Mass immigration was just beginning. There is quite a good description of the sort of racism a black immigrant could expect. One technological development that had not occurred yet was the contraceptive pill.
I have to say I did not like Arthur Seaton very much, but then we weren't supposed to. I see Alan Sillitoe wrote another book about him several decades on. I imagine by the amount he smoked and drank he would have gone to seed, and would have struggled to find work after being laid off at the factory.