topics: |  fiction | uk

This is the classic book of the rebel.  The protagonist Colin is interned
in a borstal (youth rehabilitation center) and enjoys the freedom of
running.  It turns out he's quite good at it, and the administrators are keen
that he win a prize at an important race, but he is not sure whom that will
help more.

the book opens with a superb build-up of class anger.  i can't think of any
parallels for this in literature.  "them" vs "us" is
un-challengingly determined in the protaopnists mind and so beautifully
described that you start to believe in it yourself. 

But what can Colin do, against them in-law bastards that "sit there like
spiders in that crumbly manor house, watching out over" us with their
"lily-white workless hands"...  what power does he have, except to
disappoint?

Throwing the race will hurt him considerably - what satisfaction is there in
it for him? Through his rebellion, is he expressing his own will, finding
his identity, or just taking a sad revenge on the world?

NOTE: The bengali proverb: "chorer upor rAg kare mATite bhAt khAoyA" -
your plates have been stolen, so you decide not to buy new ones but to eat on
the ground directly.

Excerpt

You might think it a bit rare, having long-distance crosscountry runners in
Borstal, thinking that the first thing a long-distance cross-country runner
would do when they set him loose at them fields and woods would be to run as
far away from the place as he could get on a bellyful of Borstal
slumgullion--but you're wrong, and I'll tell you why. The first thing is that
them bastards over us aren't as daft as they most of the time look, and for
another thing I'm not so daft as I would look if I tried to make a break for
it on my longdistance running, because to abscond and then get caught is
nothing but a mug's game, and I'm not falling for it. Cunning is what counts
in this life, and even that you've got to use in the slyest way you can; I'm
telling you straight: they're cunning, and I'm cunning. If only 'them' and
'us' had the same ideas we'd get on like a house on fire, but they don't see
eye to eye with us and we don't see eye to eye with them, so that's how it
stands and how it will always stand.  [opening page]

They're training me up fine for the big sports day when all the pig-faced
snotty-nosed dukes and ladies--who can't add two and two together and would
mess themselves like loonies if they didn't have slavies to
beck-and-call--come and make speeches to us about sports being just the thing
to get us leading an honest life and keep our itching finger-ends off them
shop locks and safe handles and hairgrips to open gas meters. They give us a
bit of blue ribbon and a cup for a prize after we've shagged ourselves out
running or jumping, like race horses, only we don't get so well looked-after
as race horses, that's the only thing. 
 
... there are thousands of them, all over the poxeaten country, in shops,
offices, railway stations, cars, houses, pubs--In-law blokes like you and
them, all on the watch for Outlaw blokes like me and us-and waiting to 'phone
for the coppers as soon as we make a false move. 

the poor and the army

I'm seventeen now, and when they let me out of this--if I don't make a
break and see that things turn out otherwise--they'll try to get me in the
army, and what's the difference between the army and this place I'm in now?
They can't kid me, the bastards. I've seen the barracks near where I live,
and if there weren't swaddies on guard outside with rifles you wouldn't know
the difference between their high walls and the place I'm in now. 

[they] patted me on the back when I said I'd do it and that I'd try to win
them the Borstal Blue Ribbon Prize Cup For Long Distance Cross Country
Running (All England).  

from now on I know something I didn't know before: that it's war between me
and them.

when I was fourteen and I went out into the country with three of my cousins,
all about the same age, who later went to different Borstals, and then to
different regiments, from which they soon deserted, and then to different
gaols where they still are as far as I know.  [they attack a bunch of
picnic-ing high-schoolers "sent out by their mams and dads" and make off with
their] thin lettuce and ham sandwiches and creamy cakes... 

---
[w] An impoverished Nottingham teenager has few prospects in life and enjoys few
pursuits beyond committing petty crimes. His home life is dismal as
well. Caught for robbing a bakery, Colin is confined in a borstal, or prison
for delinquent youth. He seeks solace in long distance running, attracting
the notice of the school's authorities, but, during an important
cross-country meet which he is winning, he wonders about his purpose in
running.
- Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loneliness_of_the_Long_Distance_Runner)

--biography
Alan Sillitoe was born in 1928, the son of a tannery worker. He left school
at age fourteen to work in a factory. He was one of the working-class
novelists who revitalized British fiction in the 1950s. His first novel
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was followed with the bestselling
collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He adapted both works
for the screen in the early 1960s. He is the author of more than 40 works of
prose, poetry, and drama. 

Update: Alan Sillitoe passed away on April 25, 2010
obituary: new york times