Keep On Running

Been looking through one of my favourite collections of short stories again today in search of inspiration. It's The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe, a book that's been a faithful companion to me over the years.

This is an original American edition from 1959, and the cover is clearly designed to market these tales of working-class life in the great industrial cities of England to a transatlantic audience of anti-establishment beatniks and angsty Catcher In The Rye fans:

THE HELL-RAISING REBELS, THE MILL TOWN YOUTHS - THEY'LL TAKE ON ANYTHING AND ANYBODY, INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE LAW.

It's the Out-law against the In-law every time in these tales of the English cities' grimy lower depths. The streets are dark with soot; the hammer of factories could knock your brains out. Tea is a cup o' mash and a couple of greasy kippers. There's never enough money and often no overcoat for the winter cold.

So when the urchin, the criminal, the Borstal boys, challenge the mucky system that keeps them in their jungle ugliness...when they rob a bakery by night, smash a posh upper-class picnic, mock the pot-bellied English sportsman by deliberately losing a race...when they come out of their loneliness and boredom and defeat with a raging rebellion, you're cheering yourself hoarse on the sidelines, laughing at their clowns, betting on their long-distance runner who is out to beat society - all by himself.

Wow. It's like Holden Caulfield's started drinking mild, smoking Woodbines and going up the football. Except, of course, that's not what it's like at all. But either way, the marketing clearly didn't do the trick; if it had, and the likes of Mark Chapman had decided to read this instead of Salinger's magnum opus, it's entirely possible he'd have spent his life brewing pots of tea for John Lennon whilst pondering the merits of trade unionism.

Missed opportunity, methinks.