Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I received a moldy book I child wrote all through the book I had to throw away my purchase

Stilltoe's Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner is a collection of thematically-linked short stories about life in post-WWII London. In this collection, the author's narrative voice is so authentic that the reader is transported into the minds of poverty-stricken young Londoners who are facing the grim realities of their future as factory workers, criminals or longshoreman. The stories helped launch the "Angry Young Man" genre of film and literature that emerged in the early 1960's. The title story was made into a movie, which time has transformed into a classic. This is a great book for students of postmodern literature as well as those who just like a well-crafted tale.

This is not my favorite Sillitoe book, but it's probably the most well known to the people of my demographic (the twenty year old white kid with a passing interest in music) and thank god for that. The title story employs Sillitoe's trade mark semi-stream of conscioucness writing style to smashing effect. It's neither too precious nor too light, but demonstrates how a controlled use of style can result in stunning emotional returns for the reader. This is moving stuff and it's heady stuff, but it's not self indulgent or smacking of "the woe is me i loved an arty girl" adolescent sentiment that sounds so attractive in a song but rarely makes good prose. Not that there are any kind of arty girls in the title s. but, you know, the feeling is across the board applicable to fiction dealing with boys and girls. Sillitoe is a strangely neglected writer, as Christopher Hitchens has recently remarked, though this probably has something to do with the fact that after writing two or three great books, he turned to writing obsessively about blind ham radio operators. Book after book came out, and I've read them, and each one features some variation on blindness or radios. He's king of the blind ham radio genre, but it's an odd title for such a great writer.

When I was reading this book, I was recognizing myself on every page. Every motion, smell, and sound was coming out of my life. I was running together with the Long-Distance Runner and feeling all his sorrows. I know what the nails in guts feel like and how hard it is to win a real victory that gives you real success. One against everyone. This is how one man fights one hundred thousand men and wins. Everything can happen during the race but fools don't understand it. The best men are beasts and human beings, lions and foxes, machines and cellular structures. I would bow to that man twenty thousand times if I was to have an honor to meet him. This is a book about me.

My review of this book is based on my memory of the movie made of ' The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' and upon a certain knowledge I have of the work of Alan Sillitoe. This work is a kind of realistic look at working class or lower -middle class post-war British life. In the title story of the collection the boy selected to run deliberately loses the race in order to preserve his own independance and integrity. His gesture is the gesture of the lone individual in defiance of the suppresive system, and bears a resemblance to that of Salinger's Holden Caulfeld. The image of the long - distance runner whose task requires will and courage and ability to resist and overcome pain going on his own way and refusing the glory of public victory says much about our own inner evaluation of ourselves and our dignity. It reminds too of the liberation which Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich finds within himself despite being in prison. The loneliness of the long distance runner is the loneliness of one whose only liberation is from within.

A friend bought this book for me, and told me that it was one of her all time favorites. What a great gift because this book rocks. The stories found in this collection are striking and angry. Originally published in 1959, Mr. Sillitoe gives his protaganists a gritty disregard for rules and regulations. The title story is the best known of the lot, but the rest of the book introduces you to the poverty of the English working class, slugging it out for every penny, every crown. Many of the characters rob and steal their way to their next meal. Others will not sell themselves out to the law or the man. This for example is found in the story, Noah's Arc, where the two youth sneak their way onto a carnaval ride, only to get caught, and then manage to escape. A recurring theme is one where the characters are book owners or book readers. Sillitoe makes the point of the deepness of reading. He also makes the point that reading can be a solitary, non-social event. Arguments occur, newspapers are burned, bookcases are judged---bueno! As a person that likes realistic fiction, bordering on the ugly, struggling working class, I can say that this is a wonderful and currently underated selection.