Saturday Night and Sunday Morning [Paperback]

Wonderful. Anyone who decries the current trend of youngsters to binge drink need only to read this novel to know what a false "current" issue it is, and that it's been going on for years and probably always will. Saturday Night & Sunday Morning is a fantastic working-class manifesto which anyone stuck in a drab repetitive job, yearning for the reckless release of the weekend, regardless of class, will be able to relate to. A Love on the Dole for the fifties, a vernacular and cultural masterpiece. It's fun, it's eventful, it's charmingly written, and its protagonist is shockingly likeable. His pell-mell rush at life is admirable and charming, despite his caddishness (it even seduces his girlfriend to be, a sort I would have thought would be rather put off!). This is very enjoyable stuff. One of the best British novels of the century certainly: there aren't that many novels that define what exactly it is like to live in a certain class at a certain age in a certain decade in this country, but this is one of them. Viva British fiction!

Alan Sillitoe was one of a number of young writers who emerged in the late fifties and sixties and who have become known as the "kitchen sink" school. (Other members of the group included the novelists Stan Barstow, John Braine, David Storey and Barry Hines and playwrights such as John Osborne and Shelagh Delaney). Their work was distinguished by a social-realist concentration on working-class life, often with a provincial setting.

"Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" from 1958 was Sillitoe's first novel, and probably the one for which he is best known today. (His other widely known work is the short story collection "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", particularly the title story). It is set in the author's native Nottingham and tells the story of Arthur Seaton, a young worker in a bicycle factory. Although Sillitoe himself had worked in a factory and had given his hero his own initials, he always denied that the novel was autobiographical.

Reading this book, I was struck by the contrasts between it and another 1958 study of a young man from a working-class background, Colin MacInnes's "Absolute Beginners". MacInnes's nameless hero, a self-employed London photographer who lives in his own flat, is part of the new teenage subculture of the late fifties, a young man whose main interests are the latest trends in music and fashion. He is teetotal, more at home in coffee bars and nightclubs than in pubs. His self-description as an "absolute beginner" refers both to his youth and inexperience and to his desire for a world as different to that of his parents' generation as possible.

Arthur at 22 is only four years older than MacInnes's hero, but leads a much more traditional working-class life. He still lives at home with his parents and his main leisure interests (apart from chasing girls) are drinking in the pub and spending Sunday afternoon fishing, occasionally reading the "News of the World" or watching a football match. Rock-and-roll and modern fashions seem to have passed him by. In fact, it is much the same sort of life as his father might have led in the 1920s, and not all that different to the one his grandfather might have led a generation before that.

In many ways Arthur is not a particularly admirable character. He is a heavy drinker; the opening chapter is a description of a drinking bout in a working man's club one Saturday evening, which ends with him falling down the stairs drunk. He is also a womaniser with a weakness for older married women; he is conducting affairs with Brenda, the wife of a colleague at work, and Brenda's sister Winnie, who is also married. These illicit relationships, however, do not prevent him from courting Doreen, an innocent teenager who remains blissfully ignorant of Arthur's other affairs.

In his defiant attitude to all forms of authority and his self-centredness he has something in common with Smith, the criminal anti-hero of Sillitoe's "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner". In both cases their rebellion against authority is an individualistic one; both are Labour supporters by default, in that they come from backgrounds where it would be virtually unthinkable to support any other party, but neither has any belief in Socialism or in the idea that the working class can improve their lot through political action or trade union activity.

Yet in Arthur's own words (a quote later made famous by the Arctic Monkeys) "whatever people say I am, that's what I am not". It would be too easy to dismiss him simply as a drunken, rebellious troublemaker. The fact that a recreation as tranquil as fishing is one of his favourite pastimes suggests that there is a more peaceful side to his nature. Unlike Smith, he is smart enough to realise that if he fights the law the law will usually win, and although he occasionally engages in minor rowdyism he prefers to earn his living by honest labour rather than by criminal activity. The book ends with Arthur preparing to marry Doreen, having given up his two affairs after being beaten up by Winnie's soldier husband; the implication is perhaps that he has learned his lesson and is starting to take a more responsible attitude to life.

Unlike his father, who was frequently unemployed during the depression of the thirties, Arthur is fortunate enough to have come into manhood at a time of economic prosperity, a time when Britons were being assured by their Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, that they had "never had it so good", and is able to earn a reasonable wage by working hard. And yet, in Sillitoe's view, "never had it so good" was still not good enough. One of the themes of the novel is the way in which the class divisions of pre-war Britain still persisted despite the post-war economic boom. Arthur is clearly intelligent and articulate, yet has only received a basic formal education and is unable to find anything other than mundane and repetitive factory work. His anger and resentment against the "System" may stem from frustration at being unable to put his intelligence to more creative use.

Sillitoe stated in his introduction to the book that some of its chapters started life as self-contained short stories and even poems which were then fitted into the novel, and it may be that this method of working was responsible for occasional structural gaps. (For example, in the early chapters Arthur has two brothers, Sam and Fred, but Sam seems to drop out of the picture in the later ones and his name is given to another character). Nevertheless, with its strongly drawn central character and its striking, unsentimental picture of working-class Midlands life, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" is a most impressive first novel.

How many times have you read, a must read, or, a true classic. If like me, I assume you have been subjected to 'over hype' too many times to remember, and after reading the said, classic, you felt totally disappointed.
Alan Sillitoe's 'Saturday night and Sunday morning' is a gritty, hard hitting, true to life account, of a post war working-class family. Our anti-hero sets a bench marked right from the off, and lives up to the repuation he has in the first chapter all the way through.
The other characters are good enough for the job they are here to do, especially to two sisters (you will find out more when you read it), but they do sit comfatable in the background while Arthur takes centre stage.
The work and play attitude has strong parallels with society today. The need to look good on the weekend has a direct link to the comsumerism we suffer from today. And the binge drinking is exactly the same in this novel as it is today.
The prose is easy to read but packed full of detail.
Alan Sillitoe really paints a vivid picture of life using descriptions of places as well as emotions, thoughts, and fears.
I have never read such a complex book written in such a way that it is easy to read and worded wonderfully.
Identity, work, society, marriage, infidelity, money, and the Government, are all raised and put in there place by Arthur.
The style of stroy telling used here is rarely seen in contemporary fiction. Now I am not going to bang on about how authors from the past where better, etc, etc, but I will say this? Many authors nowadays use dialogue to explain practically everything, some even begin novels with dialogue. If you want to now how to tell a story and not be dependent on dialogue then read this book.
I will return to this book year after year after year. It will sit on my self along side 'Catcher in the Rye', 'Junky', and of course,'1984'.