Patrick Hamilton – Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

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1930s setting, Andrew Greig, Book Review, London setting, Modern Classics, Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

An extraordinary trilogy of hope and despair in thirties London

Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy of bar and street life in London in the late twenties and early thirties, linked by their three central characters, was originally published as three works : The Midnight Bell, in 1929 when Hamilton was 25, The Siege of Pleasure 3 years later, and the final volume, The Plains of Cement in 1934. They were then republished the following year as this trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky

The novels are drawn in part (or the first one is) from aspects of Hamilton’s own rather destructive life. Although they could indeed be read singly, without reference to each other, and in any order, it is through reading them sequentially that the widest understanding happens.

The Midnight Bell is a West End pub. Two of the bar staff are Bob, who yearns to be a writer and is something of an auto-didact, and Ella, a plain, good natured young woman who is in love with Bob, although she has no hopes in that direction, as she is aware that his considerable physical charms, his wit, likeability and intelligence – not to mention his own intense susceptibility to pretty women, put him out of her reach.

Bob has a growing problem with alcohol, but at the beginning of the novel it is no more than heavy drinking, and there is every likelihood, in his mind, that he will fulfil his literary ambitions, and make something of himself. Ella, the perfect kindly barmaid does not drink, and seems the least damaged of the three central characters. The other protagonist is Jenny, a ravishingly pretty young prostitute, aged 18, whose entrance one evening into The Midnight Bell will be cataclysmic for Bob

(The trilogy was broadcast as a BBC drama the set has been uploaded, in small segments, to YouTube)

The Midnight Bell is Bob’s story, a decline and fall, laid absolutely low by love. As Bob himself is a witty man, this book ripples with Hamilton’s sparkling word play and mordant observations. In fact, for my tastes, the self-deprecating humour, as an antidote to the darkening story, was almost a little overdone. In Hamilton’s later books – most specifically in The Slaves of Solitude, his brilliant and sly humour is much less overt, and instead sparkles darkly and judiciously, rather than `and here’s another funny line’

The much, much, bleaker The Siege of Pleasure is Jenny’s Story. Picking up at the end of the Midnight Bell, when Jenny’s destruction of Bob is almost complete, Hamilton almost immediately back tracks to show how Jenny, who is not consciously wicked, became a woman of the streets. Unlike the destructive, vicious and racketty Netta of his other highly acclaimed novel, Hangover Square: A Story of Darkest Earl’s Court, another stunningly beautiful, completely amoral woman who uses her beauty to part men from their money, Jenny, though absolutely self-obsessed, has a kind of charm and a desire to please. Jenny’s dark destruction is also due to alcoholism. The Siege of Pleasure also seethes with Hamilton’s socialist, egalitarian politics – Jenny is a well-drawn individual woman, but she is also a representative of the unfairness of the class system. The best she can hope for is a life in service, and, at the start of the book, becoming the live-in housekeeper and cook to a trio of elderly siblings, represents a big step up on her own humbler, violent beginnings. Her fall is rapid and its start happens in a single evening.

Tottenham Court Road Station, 1930s

But, for me, the stand-out is Ella’s story, in The Plains Of Cement – London and the area between Oxford Street and the Euston Road, form the bulk of it, though the glamour of theatre land, and the poverty of Pimlico, are also drawn. Ella is a good young woman, kindly, and with a kind of commonplace store of cliché driven phrases, which however come with a homespun innocence from her. She is another with few prospects, and, her only escape could come through marriage, except that she accepts her plainness is unlikely to make this likely. One of the denizens of the bar is a truly irritating, desperately lonely on the verge of elderly bachelor, Ernest Eccles. Eccles is screamingly annoying, the kind of person whose conversation is full of meaningful innuendo which is at the same time WITHOUT meaning. The developing courtship (if indeed that is what it is) is wonderfully handled, and Ella, appreciating Eccles’ good qualities, must juggle moral choices – she has a dearly loved mother, and a hated, bad-tempered stepfather – also working in the bar industry, fallen from almost being a `self-made man’ to a bottle and glass washer. Ella gives half her earnings to her mother; the stepfather is mean as well as an emotional bully.

This again is a bleak book, but it is the writer’s wonderful humour, light touch, fine ear for dialogue, and the internal running commentary of Ella’s thoughts whilst her `out in the world’ external doings and sayings are happening, that makes his work such a delight to read.

The excruciating progression of Eccles’ courtship of Ella, and her frustration, embarrassment and changing feelings towards her elderly admirer, moment to moment, are wonderfully drawn. – here is an excerpt where Eccles is holding forth, but Ella is fixated on the fact that he has a particularly noticeable tooth, which is presently distracting, whilst Eccles is holding forth about his various ‘Funny Little Habits’ of which he is inordinately proud:

The Funny Little Habit under immediate scrutiny was his Funny Little Habit of being Rather Careful in his Choice of Words – in other words, his objection to swearing.

‘I mean to say It’s Not Necessary, is it’ he was saying

‘No…’ said Ella, tooth-gazing.

‘I do think it’s so unnecessary to be Unnecessary‘ said Mr Eccles, getting into slight tautological difficulties. ‘You know what I mean – don’t you?’

‘Yes. I do.’ She wondered if it would have been any better if it had come down straight. Even then it would have wanted the point filed off to get into line with the rest.

‘I mean to say if you’ve got to use expletives why not just use ordinary, decent, everyday words?’

‘Yes. Why not?’ (His other teeth of course were in excellent condition for his age.)

‘I always think it was such a good idea,’ said Mr Eccles, – ‘a fellow I read about in a book. Instead of saying “Damn” and “Blast” and all the rest, whenever he was annoyed he used to say “Mice and Mumps – Mice and Mumps”

‘Oh yes?’ (Couldn’t a dentist break it off halfway down, and then crown it?)

The detailed, authentically delineated Ella comes from the same kind of world as Enid Roach in Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude – and Ernest Eccles, though not consciously bullying, in the manner of the obnoxious Mr Thwaites in that book, is equally a boor, insensitive, solipsistic and insufferable in his pomposity. Hamilton writes from inside his central female characters utterly believably.

The autobiographical basis for the first novel in the trilogy came from Hamilton’s own love affair with a prostitute, and his own alcoholism. His father, too, was an alcoholic, an unsuccessful writer, and made an early, disastrous marriage to a prostitute. Out of his own dreadfully destructive nature and nurture Patrick Hamilton created finely crafted literature. Alcohol, and its potential for destruction, as well as its ability to create a rose-tinted world, runs through all three books, as does the various ways in which capital exploits labour

In the end, despite the humour, the storyline, the well drawn characters, and the marvellous journey of 3 novels sequentially, which can be enjoyed as solo outings, it is Hamilton’s depth and humanity which grabs me, every time. His touch may be light, and have at times an almost Restoration style comedy of manners going on (the trajectory of the courtship between Eccles and Ella) – but light, in Hamilton’s touch, is never limited to the superficial, and he has an enviable ability to whisk aside the surface, and leave the reader heart-clutchingly aching as they engage with, not only his central characters, but ourselves. He is some kind of witness to the lives all those who are not the explorers who discover continents, the astronauts who step on other planets, the rulers of nations, but those who live inside the ordinary dwellings, the denizens of those Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky Amazon UK
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky Amazon USA

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Andrew Greig – That Summer

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Andrew Greig, Book Review, Second World War, That Summer

Reminds me of the debt my generation owe

This is a wonderful book set in the home front in the second world war. Though I’ve read lots of first world war novels, and lots about the atrocities of the Holocaust, I’ve read very few books about what it meant to be in the forces at home, and perhaps have not thought too much about what it meant to be part of a generation who went to war, and who felt their sacrifices HAD to be done, because the alternative was too ghastly to contemplate (clearly a very different experience from the First World War)

Greig focusses on the story of a young fighter pilot and a radar operator, during the Battle of Britain, and they and their immediate friends symbolise the personal stories of a generation. This is a beautifully written book, extremely sad, but without any mawkishness. The ending is absolutely obvious right from the start of the book, but this is not a problem – it is the journey to get to that inevitable end that is the heart, not what that ending will be.

This was the first book i ever came across, by lucky chance, from the Scottish poet and novelist Andrew Greig. He is a profoundly excellent writer, managing the craft of narrative, depth and authentic characters, coupled with that precision of language which the discipline of poetry brings.

Greig manages that subtle and wonderful marriage of creating characters who are so particular and individual that they move beyond the individual and particular to reveal profound, and transcendent truths

That Summer Amazon UK
That Summer Amazon USA

Andrew Greig – Fair Helen

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Andrew Greig, Book Review, Fair Helen, Scottish writer

The brown-eyed actor, Ivanhoe’s ancestor, Fair Helen and a compromised narrator

Oh blessings on Andrew Greig! He never disappoints this reader.

In Fair Helen he has gone for an old, or I should say, Auld Ballad, and expanded it. It is the tale of the borders, reivers, a couple of student friends in ‘Embra’ in the 1590’s, during the time ‘Jamie Saxt’ is King of Scotland and the ‘Auld Hag’ is dying on the throne of England. Meanwhile there are dark conflicts a-brewing between the Auld Religion and the Reformers. We are set for a fine tangle between politics, Church, State, Ancient Enmities and Loyalties – and incandescent loves.

Adam Fleming, a heidsman’s son, falls hard for Fair Helen, an Irvine,  who is betrothed (against her wishes) to the powerful son of another clan. These are lawless times (when were they not). Fair Helen is the cousin of Harry Langton, the narrator, a poor scrivener and friend of the Fleming son, who becomes embroiled and a pawn in a deeper game than just that of taking care of his friend and his cousin.

What is new in this piece of writing from Grieg is that it is right in his heritage as a Scottish writer, and there is much which is in the vernacular. And a pretty muscular and rich vernacular it is too.

I made a big mistake in getting this on the Kindle, as the glossary is much less accessible than it would be in the paper book.

So I gave up and surrendered to working out the meanings and hoped I was not making too many mistakes!

But don’t think Greig is just a folksy folky writer. He digs a rich seam of love requited and unrequited, filial duty, violence, and his central narrator, our poor scrivener, is deliciously dry, and wry, particularly in his footnotes (reasonably easily found on the Kindle without too much distraction). Not to mention battling with where loyalties lie and who can and who cannot be trusted

Greig, as ever, provides a treasure chest to ponder. And then there is his writing, layered, textured, snaggled with new-minted images.

There were so many places where I got caught by images, and fiddled with underlining passages of beauty and contemplation

So, here, on memory:

 Yet the dead return to us, no doubt, by night or by day, rising up from the rotted mulch of the years. Up from black oblivion they rise, catch fire and play across the surface of our minds, insubstantial, unignorable

And this, following a bloody raid and ambush, with a final image which raised hairs on my neck, that poet’s way of making images serve double purpose

 I had seen the gathering of a gang, now I witnessed its sundering. Many went their own way at Tinnis. It was dawn of the day by the old standing stone, cold and red-pink as lifeblood carried downriver

I like the sonorous weight of Greig’s prose, its economy, its variety, the darkness always waiting:

 She died around Candlemas on a quiet afternoon, her sister Ann and I present. Her breaths spaced wider. Her chest rose and fell minutely. Her jaw dropped. I heard that last breath go. Then there was but a shell and an open mouth, and within it darkness without end

Fair Helen Amazon UK
Fair Helen Amazon USA

At the Loch of the Green Corrie

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Andrew Greig, At the Loch of the Green Corrie, Book Review, Scotland, Scottish writer, The Natural World

Shaman of words

Andrew Grieg makes me consider, deeply, how much we need poets. The word poet (like all words) gets over-used and watered down. The poet, like the artist, is someone who should shock us into being awake, into being present. This is absolutely what Greig does, whether in his novels, his factual writings or his poetry.

The poet should be able to penetrate into the heart of darkness, into light which is so bright that it could blind us, and to show us the everyday which we pass by, unseeing, revealed in all its glory and despair. And how Greig does!

What is this factual book about? It’s about friendship between tough men who can be tender about their relationships with their women and with each other. It is about the power and the fragility and the mystery of the world, particularly the wild world, which keeps itself as removed as it can from mankind’s depredations. It is about the poet Norman MacCaig, influential in Greig’s own poetic development (as he himself no doubt is to a younger generation) It is about fishing and climbing mountains, geology and the Highland clearances, about fathers, both actual and father figures, about commitment between lovers, about savouring good whisky, facing death, about good conversations, and about poetry itself, language, and the heart of the mind, the mind of the heart. And more.

I have no interest in fishing, and whilst a keen escaper to the wild places I suffer from vertigo and would never climb a mountain in the way mountaineers do.

Link to Sandy Birrell’s site (photo)

But this, this book. It’s like some divine and mystical text, which suddenly pushes you into reality by its carefully chosen images and thoughts. My copy was slowly and thoughtfully read, as if it were a long poem, rather than quickly raced through (I’m quite a fast reader) Writing this fine, this true, deserves no less attention from the reader, since the writer has been so thoughtful and attentive to his craft.

The structure of the book has a repeating image of the fisherman – the chapters come in pairs, Cast – where the line flies out, lands on the water, and an action is taken – and then Retrieve, where the action, the thought, the conversation is waited with, and then the line drawn in, and the caught fish revealed and examined, before the new line is thrown, and the fish of thought even thrown back into the deep glass of the loch again

Much annotated, much underlined (sorry if this offends, but my best and most remarkable, memorable books are the ones which have the most underlining) this is a book to return to, to re-savour, and to continue to allow to resonate.

Here are some odd snippets of my underlining, which struck home

“We arrive at who we are first by following, then by divergence”

” My predilection has always been, will always be, to sit until I sense the source, the place the wind comes from”

“The age of poetry is not entirely ended. Flecks of it still glitter in the pauses between stories, among the mud and gravel bed of the stream”

“turquoise lakes brim inside burning shores” (sunset over a loch)

And, recounting a small moment, when he and his fishing companions prepare to eat their evening meal, in the quiet of a deserted loch-side, as sunset falls:

“Nothing stops this, I think, the bubbling pan, the slow-oncoming dark, the light more lurid as it dies. Our choice is whether to cherish it, mourn its passing, or feel as little as possible”

Yes. That’s what the poet does. Takes the ordinary and shakes us out of our unawareness, fiercely challenging us `Awake!’ forcing us to see the timeless, the real, what matters, teaching us how to live better.

This joins the library of books which I regard as my teachers. And, like the best of teachers, opens up new vistas – Norman MacCaig The Poems of Norman MacCaig (I was ignorant of this fine poet), and Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland (The Canons)

At the Loch of the Green Corrie. Amazon UK
At the Loch of the Green Corrie. Amazon USA