SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING by Alan Sillitoe (hier online bestellen)
The story:
Arthur Seaton is a smoldering, rebellious young man who skillfully works a lathe at a factory in a drab
industrial city in mid-lands Nottingham.There's a strong theme in this film, though it is rendered subtly.
It has to do with man's insatiable desire for freedom and independence from the monotony and tyranny of
daily toil. Arthur represents the social rebel who is still capable of taking pleasure from simple
lustfulness and intoxication. He's like an unruly child, standing in solitary defiance of the ugly
industrial city landscape and impersonal machines, while his colleagues and relatives are all cruelly
trapped by the workaday routine. He shouts his message to the world, "Don't let the bastards grind you
down!"
Is he fighting a losing battle? The ending is ambiguous and let's you decide for yourself whether Arthur,
too, has been beaten into submission by the system or whether he will retain some sense of
self-determination and individuality. A good marriage, after all, is not necessarily the end of an
individual's existence. There's still opportunity for simple pleasures if the couple determines to
include that among their objectives. As Arthur says to Doreen, in conceding her demand for a new home
with a bathroom, "I may continue to throw things now and then." He'll have to give up the potshots with
the air rifle at his neighbor's canister and the trysts with Brenda, but there's no reason he can't still
down a few pints and go fishing with Bert.
Extract from book:
About the author:
Alan Sillitoe was born on 4 March 1928 in Nottingham, England. He left school at the age of 14 and worked
at the Raleigh Bicycle Factory (1942), and as an air traffic control assistant (1945-6). From 1946 to 1949
he served as an RAF wireless operator in Malaya, and after demobilisation was hospitalised for 18 months
with tuberculosis, during which time he began to write. Between 1952 and 1958 he travelled in France and
Spain with the poet Ruth Fainlight, whom he married in 1959, and was encouraged to write by the poet
Robert Graves whom he met in Majorca.
Alan Sillitoe's first volume of poetry, Without Beer or Bread was published in 1957, swiftly followed in
1958 by his first novel, the ground-breaking Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a vivid portrait of
masculinity and Nottinghamshire working-class life.
His last novel, Birthday (2001), is a sequel to Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. His latest work of
fiction is A Man of His Time (2004), the story of a womanising Nottinghamshire Blacksmith.
Alan Sillitoe lives in London.
Buchdaten:
SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING by Alan Sillitoe
Sprache: Englisch
Taschenbuch: 224 Seiten
Verlag: HarperPerennial (15. Mai 2006)
ISBN: 0007205023
Preis: € 13,50
More works from the same author:
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