Understanding Alan Sillitoe

Author : Gillian Mary Hanson
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9781570032196
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.9X/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Understanding Alan Sillitoe written by Gillian Mary Hanson and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Alan Sillitoe offers a lucid appraisal of the life and works of the well-known contemporary British writer hailed by critics as the literary descendent of D.H. Lawrence. Known primarily for his novels Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Sillitoe has written more than 50 books over the last 40 years, including novels, plays, collections of short stories, poems, and travel pieces, as well as more than four hundred essays. In this comprehensive study of the major novels and short stories, Hanson reveals Sillitoe's artistic influences and the dominant thematic concerns of his works.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307389642
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps one of the most revered works of fiction in the twentieth-century, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a modern classic about integrity, courage, and bucking the system. Its title story recounts the story of a reform school cross-country runner who seizes the perfect opportunity to defy the authority that governs his life. It is a pure masterpiece. From there the collection expands even further from the touching “On Saturday Afternoon” to the rollicking “The Decline and Fall and Frankie Buller.” Beloved for its lean prose, unforgettable protagonists, and real-life wisdom, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner captured the voice of a generation, and its poignant and empowering life lessons will continue to captivate and entertain readers for generations to come.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504035011
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Life Without Armour written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A candid and surprising memoir of the early life of one of England’s most acclaimed and enduring post-WWII writers. Born in 1928 into a poverty-stricken family in working-class Nottingham, bestselling British novelist Alan Sillitoe’s childhood was marked by his father’s unpredictable and violent rage, as well as a near-certain condemnation to a life of labor on an assembly line. His family relocated frequently to avoid rent collectors, trading in one bug-infested hovel for another. Though intelligent and curious, the young author-to-be failed his grammar school entrance exams, and it seemed he was destined for work in a factory. The onset of Sillitoe’s teenage years, however, coincided with the advance of Hitler into Russia, and the war offered a chance for the boy to seek out a different fate. At the age of fourteen, Sillitoe used a fake ID to enroll in the Air Training Corps and went on to join the Ministry of Aircraft Production as an air traffic control assistant. He dreamed of becoming a pilot, but the war ended just after he qualified for training and he was instead shipped off to the Malayan jungle during the Communist insurgency as a radio operator for the Royal Air Force (RAF). After two years of living from one wireless watch to the next—taking in bearings and atmospherics though the radio, and exploring dangerous and primal landscapes by foot—Sillitoe finally returned to a prospectless postwar England and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. But this curse soon became a blessing: In the RAF hospital, Sillitoe began to read—everything from Kant to Descartes to Bernard Shaw—and he decided to become a writer. Already a veteran on an RAF disability pension at the age of twenty-one, Sillitoe began writing full-time, neither his physical challenges nor his numerous rejections from publishers deterring him in the least. He joined the Nottingham Writers’ Club, and his short stories began to achieve some minor local success. Soon after, a chance meeting with the American poet Ruth Fainlight led to full-blown love, and the two set off for France eager to live in a bucolic setting where they could dedicate all of their time to writing. Circumstance and favorable exchange rates then led the couple to Spain where Sillitoe continued his literary pursuits, met many artists and writers, had run-ins with gypsies, and even underwent police interrogations. Four unpublished novels later—and after nearly a decade of honing his craft—Sillitoe finally found staggering success in his working-class novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his collection of short stories The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Written with Sillitoe’s signature simplicity, this in-depth autobiography not only gives insight into the formative years and mental maturation of one of Britain’s most influential writers, but also tells a great story of an underprivileged man who, with perseverance, made the most of his particular fate.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307389650
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Saturday Night and Sunday Morning written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rousing and uproarious novel of the life, loves, and misadventures of a working-class rogue, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning marked the arrival of one of the most cherished authors in the twenty-first century. At twenty-two years of age, Arthur Seaton is a hard-drinking lathe operator in a bicycle factory. Sharp, rowdy, and attractive, he is a lover of life in the raw, and his enormous vitality comes pouring through, at a family party, at the county fair, and in several pubs he haunts on Saturday nights, where more often than not he leaves with a woman on his arm. Before long, however, his devil may care life-style gets him into some serious trouble, and Arthur's life takes a turn that not even he could have imagined.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504034473
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Man of His Time written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A working-class family saga set in rural England from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. In 1887, Ernest Burton is a robust twenty-one-year-old who sets off to Wales in his best suit in order to work at his brother’s forge. En route, he meets, seduces, and promptly impregnates a young widow. Such is the first episode of what turns into a lifetime of compulsive philandering whenever the blacksmith has a few hours away from his job. Within a year, Burton abandons the widow and returns to Nottingham. There, he marries the village barmaid, continues to toil and excel in a smithy, and fathers eight more children. Though Burton is an able-bodied provider who can ring a bull and shoe a horse with the best of them, his constant adultery, harsh authoritarianism, and violent streaks, make him anything but an ideal family man. The Burton children grow up to be rebellious despite—or to spite—their father’s iron fist. And as time goes on, Burton seems more and more at odds with British society at large. Modernity threatens his profession, independent living is replaced by the welfare state, and long-standing customs of patriarchy give way to a more inclusive democracy. Two world wars and the Depression inflict additional tragedy on the family. As the Burtons struggle to overcome their strife, will the bully father have a change of heart? In this absorbing historical portrait set in Nottinghamshire, a charismatic yet despotic blacksmith reigns over his wife and children, but is powerless to control the transformations of early twentieth-century Britain.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504038568
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Start in Life written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An outrageously funny novel of adventure, sex, corruption, and crime from one of the greatest British authors of the twentieth century. Michael Cullen is proud to be a bastard. His first memories are of the war, when his mother welcomed every soldier in Britain into her house, and young Michael hid beneath her bed to let the rocking of the springs lull him to sleep. By the time he’s eighteen, he’s got a pregnant girlfriend, and is staring down a long life of working-class respectability that simply makes him sick. So Michael says goodbye to his girlfriend and his home in Nottingham, and hits the road for London, where he will make his fortune—or die trying. From the nightclubs of Soho to the depths of London’s underworld, Michael can’t help but get into trouble. But whether he’s chauffeuring a vicious gangster or smuggling gold bullion across the channel, he never stops having a wonderful time. Indeed, Michael is something else entirely: a happy bastard with nothing to lose. A rollicking picaresque novel by the legendary author of such classics of kitchen sink realism as The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Start in Life is one of the funniest British novels of the twentieth century. A Start in Life is the 1st book in the Michael Cullen Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. “A Start in Life is, for my money, the best novel that Sillitoe has yet written.” —New Statesman “The kind of hilarious nonsense that keeps you riveted to deck-chair or arm-chair, depending on the season.” —The Daily Telegraph Praise for Alan Sillitoe “The master of British verbal architecture.” —Rolling Stone Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) was a British novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright, known for his honest, humorous, and acerbic accounts of working-class life. Sillitoe served four years in the Royal Air Force and lived for six years in France and Spain, before returning to England. His first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, was published in 1958 and was followed by a collection of short stories, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. With over fifty volumes to his name, Sillitoe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504016211
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Flame of Life written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of individual and communal struggles to maintain authenticity and revolutionary fervor in 1960s England from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The final installment of the William Posters Trilogy revolves around the plights and foibles of the Handley family commune, which set up camp at the home of the wealthy Myra Bassingfield. There, painter Albert Handley is pursuing a whirlwind existence of art, sex, and chaotic domestic life. Of his seven children, four are giving him particular grief. His eldest son, Cuthbert, has been kicked out of theological college; his eldest daughter, Mandy, is pregnant by her unstable husband; and two of his younger sons, Richard and Adam, are pillaging army manuals for subversive and revolutionary ends. To top it all off, Myra’s lover, Frank Dawley, has returned from gunrunning in Algeria—and brought along his wife and two kids from Nottingham to live in the Buckinghamshire kibbutz. Collective cohabitation soon reveals its downfalls. And when a young Spanish anarchist arrives with assassination on her mind, her trunk full of notebooks may condemn Frank for a sin committed in the African desert. As the community hangs by a thread, the very notion of revolution comes under scrutiny, begging the question: Can the fire of life burn, even when its flame is no longer in sight? This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504034996
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Raw Material written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fusion of novel and memoir from a bestselling British author chronicles the destructive effects of WWI on two working-class families in Nottingham. An advocate for ordinary people, Alan Sillitoe combines family memoir with exhaustive research on military records, and fuses them with artistic speculation in this inventive and political historical novel. Central to the story are the author’s grandfather, the blacksmith Ernest Burton, and his uncle Edgar, a World War I deserter. The launching point for this narrative family album is a legless match-seller from Sillitoe’s childhood who “walked” on the streets of Nottingham with his hands. When the young Sillitoe asked his family about the reasons behind this man’s deformity, he heard a series of different accounts: His mother said it was a train accident, his father claimed it was an explosion during the Battle of the Somme, his grandmother was convinced it was a birth defect, and his grandfather declared it was a way of dodging work. Thus Sillitoe sets the tone for a tale in which “anything which is not scientific or mathematical thought is colored by the human imagination and feeble opinion.” In order to rediscover the fictional truth behind his own spirit, Sillitoe then delves into his heritage. He paints a telling portrait of his maternal grandfather, a blacksmith who hated dogs, despised the people who loved him, and was blinded in one eye by a shred of steel. Separated from society by his illiteracy, and both feared and respected for his instinctual cunning, Ernest was a tyrant to his wife and eight children, a hardworking provider, and a talented craftsman. On his father’s side of the family, Sillitoe explores the life of his uncle Edgar, “the darling of the family” who enlisted in the British army when the Great War began in 1914. However, when the young man discovered that his service consisted of dysentery, haircuts, and taking orders, he “sensibly” deserts. To avoid the military police, he leaves Nottingham and bicycles furiously on the back roads to his sister’s house in Hinkley, but is caught a few days later in a pub and sent back to his battalion. A persistent man, Edgar deserts a second time and hides out in the forest, but again he is captured and sent just in time to join the Sherwood Foresters on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Raw Material spans a century of family history and legends, interweaving personal memories with collected facts and hearsay. The “kitchen-sink realism” Sillitoe is known for takes on a more philosophical and transparent approach in this innovative self-portrait that explores the base matter and inspirations of the esteemed British novelist’s life work.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504033671
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Travels in Nihilon written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of Britain’s leading writers comes a biting satire about a country founded on Nihilism and a government gone mad Nihilon is a country where honesty is outlawed, drunk driving is mandatory, and nihilism reigns supreme. Five researchers are sent into the midst of this chaos to compile a new guidebook about the peculiar, unexplored land and its all-powerful leader, President Nil. Adam, Benjamin, Jaquiline, Edgar, and Richard attempt to gather information—but find themselves swept up by a nation turned upside down. As they navigate their way to the capital through artificial mist created by President Nil to disorient his people, the writers are stopped by ordinary citizens whom they quickly discover cannot be trusted. Adam accidentally starts a ground war, Benjamin is forced to buy a car, and Jaquiline discovers that robbery is not only legal, but encouraged. The researchers, who arrived as tourists, will find that although it is easy to enter Nihilon, it is much, much harder to escape. Alan Sillitoe, the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, crosses into uncharted territory in this comic dystopia that is as smart as it is engrossing.

Author : Alan Sillitoe
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504034481
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Broken Chariot written by Alan Sillitoe and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This postwar British coming-of-age novel questions the foundations of society and self. Class and identity are lifelong struggles for Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, who was born in India but sent away at age seven to a boarding school in England. As an adolescent, Herbert loathes British weather and boxing—despite his penchant for camping and his brutality in the ring—and his only solace is imagining a violent revenge on his parents for “abandoning” him. As Herbert grows into an angry teen and World War II breaks out, he channels his rage into a passion for the Army Cadet Force. Then a book about escaped prisoners of war falls into his lap, and Herbert begins to daydream about running away. At the age of seventeen, the rebellious young man finally breaks free from school and heads straight into the industrial slums of Nottingham. There, Herbert discards his upper-class accent and reinvents himself as “Bert Gedling”—a working-class lathe man, a drinker, a womanizer, and eventually a soldier. During his tour of duty, Bert continues to adapt his character to the world around him, and when he returns to England he transforms once again—but this time the fictions he constructs will follow the truth of his heart. From the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, The Broken Chariot explores work, class, life, and love in postwar England.