Life without armour

April 25, 2010 7:29 AM

Alan Sillitoe dies. The acclaimed English working class writer was perhaps best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and short story The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1959) (as both were later successfully adapted as films), but Sillitoe was also playwright, poet, travel writer and children's book author. D. J. Taylor does the man justice in an article for the TLS from 2008 when Sillitoe turned 80.
posted by Abiezer (16 comments total)

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posted by Iridic at 7:36 AM on April 25, 2010

Shame he didn't stop before the finish line.
posted by phrontist at 8:00 AM on April 25, 2010 [2 favorites]

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posted by WPW at 8:31 AM on April 25, 2010

Here's an informative article about him from six years ago. I met him briefly here on the Island nearly thirty years ago and we agreed to disagree about something. I think it was about dwelling in the past (working class Nottingham). My condolences to Ruth and his family.
posted by adamvasco at 8:41 AM on April 25, 2010

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Don't let the bastards grind you down!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:46 AM on April 25, 2010

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posted by HandfulOfDust at 9:43 AM on April 25, 2010

Damn, that boy could write.

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posted by John of Michigan at 9:59 AM on April 25, 2010

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he put the light to the fuse at just the right moment. after having read the obit, i want to search out his later work. thanks.
posted by sdn at 10:24 AM on April 25, 2010

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I remember being quite moved by The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, as an alienated 15 year-old myself.
The story does have rather a lot of run-on sentences though.
posted by Flashman at 10:52 AM on April 25, 2010

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posted by fixedgear at 11:24 AM on April 25, 2010

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posted by DanCall at 1:41 PM on April 25, 2010

The image of the long-distance runner stopping just short of the finish line has stayed with me ever since I saw the film. I understood the idea more fully just before my last exam after five years at university. I too felt like stopping there and then and walking away from that exam, as if to thumb my nose at "the system" and all those whose dreams I seemed to be fulfilling. But I wasn't a enough of an angry young man to do so.

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posted by vac2003 at 3:02 PM on April 25, 2010

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I loved "The Loneliness..."

thanks
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:41 PM on April 25, 2010

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posted by theora55 at 8:42 PM on April 25, 2010

BBC does a round-up of memories of Alan Sillitoe
posted by Abiezer at 12:29 AM on April 26, 2010

Seems like Sillitoe's credit isn't what is used to be.

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posted by ersatz at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2010