English, Department of

 

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

Winter 1975

Citation

Prairie Schooner (Winter 1974/1975) 48(4): 351-358

Abstract

First paragraph:

The English Writer Alan Sillitoe is, to most Americans, a man of two books (or movies): Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (with Albert Finney); and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (with Tom Courtenay). Indeed, most Americans do not know that he has produced a book a year since 1959 (when The Long Distance-Runner came out), including eight other novels, three books of poems, two collections of short stories, one book of travel, one play, and one children's book. They know little about his life or the progress of his career, about his international connections or his present relations to the literary world. Despite the fact that his wife is the American poet, Ruth Fainlight, he has not until this year been in the United States, a fact which has somewhat reinforced this ignorance. With the American publication in 1974 of a new collection of short stories, Men Women and Children, following closely upon the American publication in 1973 of an important novel-memoir, Raw Material--both books published by Scribner's--it is time to dispel some of the ignorance and to suggest the ways in which Sillitoe's work and career can be instructive to Americans.

Share

COinS