Book Review: A life story which goes that extra mile

Published on Friday 19 December 2008 15:05

THE LIFE OF A LONG-DISTANCE WRITER: The Biography of Alan Sillitoe

BY RICHARD BRADFORD

Peter Owen, 388pp, 25

BIOGRAPHIES OF LIVING PEOPLE are rarely satisfactory, for the obvious reason that it is difficult to write frankly and honestly of the subject, his family, friends, acquaintances, rivals and enemies. A certain decent reticence is obligatory, not to mention awareness of the libel law. That said, the biographer of a living writer is less handicapped than most. He can examine his subject through his published works, for even the least autobiographical of authors reveals a good deal about himself in his books.

Richard Bradford, Professor of English at the University of Ulster, has already written biographies of Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, in each case however, when the subject was safely dead. He is now working on a biography – surely a bit premature? – of Martin Amis, but meanwhile here he is with a long, detailed, thorough, and agreeably sympathetic life of Alan Sillitoe.

It's a good subject. Sillitoe, 80 this year, is one of the best living English novelists, but also one who has stood at an oblique angle to the literary world, and arguably never achieved his due. Everyone who reads fiction probably knows him as the author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, both published almost half a century ago, rarely, if ever, out of print, admired in other countries, notably France, and both made into successful films, though neither film did full justice to the work from which it was drawn. It would be absurd to say that these two early successes hang like a dead weight round their author's neck – for one thing, he must have earned a regular annual income from them, and few authors are lucky enough to be able to get that from their first works.

Nevertheless, it is the case that for many, Sillitoe is associated with these books alone, while other equally fine books have received much less attention than they deserved. A Man of his Time, for instance, a long novel based on the life of Sillitoe's grandfather, an illiterate blacksmith of formidable character, is one of the best English novels to have been published this decade.

He was hailed at first as an authentically working-class novelist. He was indeed that, but the description has, I think, always irritated him. He has insisted that he writes about individuals, some of whom happen to be working-class. Twenty years ago, Sillitoe turned down an invitation to take part in "a discussion about writing about the working-classes in the different media, because, Bradford writes, "he surmised that he was being asked there not really as a writer but to speak on behalf of his 'class'… rather like allowing servants to the drawing-room at Christmas".

He has always been a man of strong views, and politically interested. Loathing fascism, as a young man he was sympathetic towards communism. That sympathy did not survive, partly on account of the Soviet treatment of Jews. For a long time, Sillitoe has identified himself with the Israeli cause against "what seemed to him a preponderance in the western media and intelligentsia of what seemed pro-Palestinian opinion".

This did nothing for his popularity in correct, Leftist circles. It meant however, that, long long before 9/11, he was warning about the dangers of Islamic terrorism. Speaking admiringly of Margaret Thatcher in 1986, he said, "there is a gut feeling in Europe that the third world war has started, and it is against terrorism, mostly Islamic terrorism, but the so-called media seems hardly aware of it". "They are," he said, "still half in love with the so-called romance of terrorism."

In reality, Sillitoe is an old-fashioned English radical who stands up for the individual and individual rights. "It has always been Sillitoe's undeviating view that human beings who act to enforce arbitrary regulations should be obstructed at all costs," Bradford observes. Given that we are all now oppressed by officials eager to enforce such regulations in a puritanical and self-righteous spirit, one can only applaud his cussedness.

But he is of course, first and foremost, a novelist and a very satisfying one. He has, as Bradford puts it, "the rare quality of being able to create characters, and narrators, who are not extensions or permutations of their creator. They do, however , share with him the quality of capricious, though not irresponsible, self-determination."

Sillitoe has gone his own way, writing the books he wanted to write, and most of them are good. So is this biography: good because it does justice to one of the most remarkable writers of our time. I hope it will persuade people to read more of Sillitoe's books, not just the two that made his name.