Reviews for The Life of a Long-Distance Writer: The Biography of Alan Sillitoe

The average rating for The Life of a Long-Distance Writer: The Biography of Alan Sillitoe based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-11 00:00:00 Angela Leath Admirable job capturing a contrary man. Sillitoe's working class Nottingham background so important to understanding him is well fleshed out. Life growing up in the Sillitoe house was hard and likely steeled him for the eight to ten years of writing without success. 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' made him and in a sense Sillitoe never stopped rebelling against this fame. He rejected being called a working-class writer and produced a hugely varied repertoire of novels to prove it. His politics changed with time. Originally solidly left he moved consistently to the right as he aged. He was prescient in predicting a clash between the west and Islam as early as the 80s. Bradford wrote this book while AS was still alive and showed him the proofs. There are two points where the author could have been harder on his subject; Sillitoe's 1960 writings on Russia were very craven to Soviet sensibilities and Bradford never inquires whether AS explained to his wife Ruth about his infidelity in France while she was completing a divorce from her first husband in England. Still, an effective portrayal.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-07-13 00:00:00 VIRGIL FREELEN Literary merit set aside, W.B. Yeats has to be one of the greatest oddballs of Irish cultural history. A firm believer in the supernatural, he blindly obeyed the commands and wishes of his wife George when she acted as a medium and transcribed 'dead souls'utterings'(the so-called 'automatic writing'). He opposed the democratic system (the vulgarity of the ballot voting) and actively supported the fascist 'blueshirt' movement in Ireland. Genetic arrogance was also his part as he flirted with eugenics in the 1930s. Well in his seventies, he had surgery in order to keep fit for his 'physical pleasures', which really turned him into a laughing stock in Ireland and London. Surrounded by so many women (nurses, really), he was terrified of being left alone in a foreign country without knowing the language. Amazing that such a fool was able to produce such wonderful poetry. Great biography by Maddox.