A Start in Life - Hardcover

Alan Sillitoe; DJ Taylor (introduction)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0955185114 ISBN 13: 9780955185113

Publisher: London Books, 2008

Synopsis

From The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner to his more recent A Man of His Time, Alan Sillitoe remains one of England's greatest living authors. A Start in Life is Sillitoe's ninth novel and follows the fortunes of Michael Cullen, who describes himself as ''a bastard'' at the start of the novel and soon confirms another meaning of the term when he leaves Nottingham and his pregnant girlfriend behind to flee to London, where he becomes involved in a smuggling ring. Sillitoe has adopted the picaresque form for this novel, yet it is full of his trademark humour. Contains an introduction by DJ Taylor.

About this title

From the Publisher:

London Books are thrilled to be republishing Alan Sillitoe's 1970 novel A Start in Life. Michael Cullen is a bastard, by birth and by nature, as well as a rogue, a chancer with an eye for the ladies, a dreamer and an inveterate liar. He soon finds that his home-town of Nottingham is too small for him. A Start in Life chronicles his flight to London and his crash-landing into the underworld of Soho and tanglings with bastards beyond his imagination. The narrative is packed with memorable characters such as homeless Almanack Jack, gangster Claud Moggerhanger, precocious author Gilbert Blaskin, beautiful au pair Bridgitte, and the Man in the Iron Lung.

In this novel Alan Sillitoe has mixed English realism into the picaresque form and when the book was first released in 1970, despite its lighter tone compared to Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and the arrival of the so-called permissive society it still managed to shock and outrage some. It has been suggested that the characters of Michael Cullen and Claud Moggerhanger may have been the part-inspiration for the lead roles of Budgie Bird and Charlie Endell in the cult 1970s TV series Budgie. A sequel Life Goes On was published in 1985.

About the Author:

Few of the many hundreds of thousands that purchased The Arctic Monkeys' album Whatever They Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (to make it the fastest selling album of all time) will have known that the title is a line from the pen of Alan Sillitoe and the words of his hero, Arthur Seaton, in the book and film Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. `Don't let the bastards grind you down,' says Arthur, played by Albert Finney, at the start of the film as he performs robotic tasks in a Nottingham factory and I wouldn't mind betting if Sillitoe did not coin that phrase, he was the first to air it publicly to the masses. Whilst the critics and the establishment had Seaton down as an `anti-hero'- the public knew better. Arthur Seaton was the first of what would become many anti-establishment working-class heroes of the 1960s. Alan Sillitoe's impact and ongoing influence on popular culture should not be underrated.

He has been labelled as one of the `angry young men' of the 1950s and 1960s whose books (and films of their books) popularised so-called `kitchen sink drama' and dared write about the provincial working classes. Sillitoe has always rejected this categorisation but he, probably more than any of the group classed as such, had reason to be angry. Born in 1928 in working-class Nottingham the main problem was that not many people were actually working. Sillitoe's father certainly wasn't and young Alan grew up in the 1930s depression years surrounded by poverty and the grinding despair it can often bring. The boy found his refuge in reading and later in writing.

After leaving school at 14 Alan stepped on to the treadmill of factory work including 4 years at the Raleigh bicycle factory; an experience he drew upon in the creation of Arthur Seaton. Whilst serving in the RAF he was stricken with TB and spent 16 months in hospital where he began to write in earnest. Encouraged by renowned writer, Robert Graves, who he met on the island of Mallorca, Sillitoe embarked on the novel Saturday Night, Sunday Morning in 1956. Following a round of rejections the book was taken by W H Allen and published in 1958 and filmed in 1960. Despite, or because of, its then highly controversial themes of abortion, sex, violence, masculinity, frustration and class, the book was a thumping commercial success.

The next book The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner was a collection of short stories with the title novella telling of a borstal boy who bucks the system in a novel way. In a society that had just seen the first ascent of confrontational youth culture in the shape of Teddy Boys, and was about to experience Mods and Rockers, the book chimed loudly with the reading public. This was also filmed, this time with a youthfully rebellious Tom Courtenay in the title role. Sillitoe's literary reputation was secured.

Alan Sillitoe has scarcely had time to concern himself with reputation though being religiously devoted to writing and producing at least 50 books since 1958 and saddling a range of genres. Now, in his 80th year, he remains as active, prolific and relevant as he ever was. A Man of His Time published in 2004 and being the dramatised story of Sillitoe's blacksmith grandfather was generally agreed to be on a par with anything he had produced as a young man in his 30s and 40s. His body of work which includes poetry, autobiography, history, childrens' books and travel as well as his trademark, powerful and authentic fiction, demands that he be considered as England's greatest living author.

About this edition

• Publisher: London Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0955185114
• ISBN 13: 9780955185113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352