Saturday evening and Sunday morning

Author: Alan Sillitoe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: "Angry Young Men" and "Beat Generation" are two famous literary movements after World War II. The author of this book, Alan Sillitoe, is a representative writer of the former. The people in the novel are like fish hooked by society, living together in the "crazy and bizarre world" as described by Arthur. This is a nakedly passionate and traditional-opposing lower-class society in Britain. The raw and harsh reality is far more powerful than the novelistic technique, offering a delightful experience like appreciating folk art. The book achieved great success upon publication, and the film adapted from it became an important work of Britain's "New Wave Cinema."
Arthur Seaton, a young worker, appears on stage drunk. He bets on drinking, gets utterly drunk, and tumbles from the top of the stairs to the bottom. After getting up, he vomits twice more, soiling a couple's clothes. Seeing his predicament, he escapes and spends the night at his mistress Brenda's place. The next day, he sneaks out from the front door when her husband returns home from the back door. Then follow various misdeeds. In a bar, he fights over trivial matters, getting into a brawl; after getting his car scratched while drunk, he and his brother Freddie flip the car onto its side (the owner, also drunk, is unconscious); he participates in the (Goose Fair) carnival, tears off a "skeleton" from the "Horror Train," and incites the crowd's anger; he is in love with three women at the same time. Brenda, who has a child with him, has to abort it with a hot wine bath; he soon moves on to his sister-in-law Winifred's bed after leaving Brenda; later, he is beaten badly by Winifred's husband and lies in bed for half a month before reluctantly deciding to marry a third woman. Yet such a man is fiercely passionate. He dreams of one day inventing explosives to blow up factories and the Houses of Parliament into the sky. Those around him are largely the same. During World War I, his father and uncle used various methods to avoid military service. During World War II, his cousins escape the army, are hunted, have no food or money, and live by theft; his uncle brings home two picture frames from France after World War I, which are "loot" stolen during the war, as British soldiers had acted like thugs in France.
The book depicts people like this—nine parts farce, one part drama. However, after finishing it, when you reflect on it, the impression flips: it is one hundred percent tragedy—a national tragedy.