Sunday, April 25, 2010

Alan Sillitoe, R. I. P.

BBC News - Author Alan Sillitoe dies in London aged 82: "The author Alan Sillitoe has died aged 82 at Charing Cross Hospital in London, his family has said.

The Nottingham-born novelist emerged in the 1950s as one of the 'Angry Young Men' of British fiction.

His son David said he hoped his father would be remembered for his contribution to literature.

His novels included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, both of which were made into films."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad. I read some of his stories, including the original of "Long Distance Runner."

And of course I saw the movie.

Jeff

Ed Gorman said...

I especially admired his early work. As much as I liked the Beats I felt closer to The Angry Young Men because they dealt with their version of the blue color world as well as the class system which we have no matter how much we deny it. Ask Wall Street for starters.

Deb said...

To me, his best work is a short story called "One Saturday Morning," which is about a typical working-class family where anger and outwardly-directed violence predominate. One morning the narrator (a young son of the family) discovers a neighbor has committed suicide. It's his first exposure to inwardly-directed anger. I read it over 30 years ago and it still stays with me.

Unknown said...

I remember that one, too.