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“Neither Mickling Nor Muckling” Northern Reflexivity in The View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Humanities Commons “Neither mickling nor muckling” Northern Reflexivity in the Novels of the British “New Wave” John A. Stephenson A Thesis in the Field of English for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University November 2012 © 2012 John Ashley Stephenson Abstract This study proposes that the novels associated with the early 1960s cinematic “British New Wave,” though popularly representative of Northern England, have suffered from under-reading with respect to place-specific identity. Contemporary journalistic construction of the “angry young man,” and subsequent working class- focused analyses obscured textual expressions of northernness available to readers for whom northern place provides “belonging.” Partly as a result of the social change upon which commentators fixated, northern identity was extremely visible in its articulation in the post-war years, and the “New Wave” corpus provides a rich resource for its continuing analysis. Would a specifically “northern” re-examination of the texts by an “insider” reader provide a novel interpretation of the works and their authors, as well as revealing the ways in which this identity is assumed and communicated? Through close reading of texts “of the north,” supported by reference to analyses of place and critical approaches to the novels, the study demonstrates the progressive rarefication of a self- conscious, “performed” identity that nevertheless constitutes a genuine expression of attachment to place. Furthermore, the works of the “New Wave” authors Braine, Sillitoe, Waterhouse, Storey, and Barstow negotiate changes in northern landscape and community, their fully “reflexive northernness” interrogating both itself and more “settled” modes of belonging. The “loud” northern voice characterising this literature of the 1950s and 60s resolved the incongruities of post-industrial regional identity to some extent, enabling a partial return to a still conscious, but quieter “just is” northernness. Dedication For my grandmother, May Mitchinson, 1917–2009. Back home in Sunderland. To my parents, Ken and Stella, who were there. And to the memory of Alan Sillitoe, Keith Waterhouse, and Stan Barstow, all sadly lost whilst this study was in preparation. ! "#! Acknowledgements My grateful thanks to Bob and Sarah Stephenson for the tour of Sillitoe’s Nottingham in April 2011, and to the faculty and staff of the Harvard Extension School for their generosity and wisdom. ! #! Table of Contents Dedication……………………………………………………………………….……….iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………….………….v I. Introduction………………………………………….……………………...............2 II. “Eh, you’re mucky but I love you”: Northernness and the North……..…….…….12 III. “Willful black dreariness”: Texts “of the North” preceding the “New Wave”.........30 IV. “Queer-fish-from-the-backwoods stuff”: Northernness in the texts of the “Movement”…………………………………………………………………….….59 V. “Just about thraiped wi’ Stradhoughton”: Reflexive northernness and the “New Wave”………………………………………………………………….…….78 VI. “You can’t have your independence … and your mother’s pies as well”: After the Wave, after the North?............................................................................................112 VII. Conclusion: “I don’t know right. It just is that’s all”……………………………...151 Bibliography.........……………….………...……..……………………………………..161 Works Cited ..………………………………………...…………………..……….161 Works Consulted…...………………………………………………….……...…...167 ! #"! In Lancashire and Yorkshire ever since the world began, This is the expression of the strong and silent man: “Ee by gum!” “Ee by gum!” The only thing he ever says is “Ee by gum!” He says it when he’s happy, and he says it when he’s glum He means an awful lot when he says “Ee by gum!” —As performed by Gracie Fields Chapter I Introduction Writers associated with the “cultural event” of late 1950s and early 1960s Britain (Hitchcock 21) represented variously in the literary and news media as a “New Wave,” “Angry Young Man,” “northern realist,” or “kitchen sink” movement suffered a double problem of interpretation. The bracketing together of novels featuring young, lower class, provincial, disaffected protagonists written by authors categorised similarly, engendered an overhyped and relatively short-lived literary phenomenon too closely identified with contemporary social changes and concerns. An overly sociological emphasis has tended to distort critical analysis of these novels, and as the “New Wave” receded, its representative texts were “relegated to the margins of the literary canon” (Russell 82). Subsequent works by authors brought to prominence by this cultural moment, particularly those maintaining a realist, provincial focus, have received surprisingly little critical attention (Laing 81). Existing scholarship has adequately explored the genesis and eventual waning of the “New Wave” (e.g., Laing; Hitchcock; Ritchie), but reanalysis of the texts themselves has been minimal. The 1980s produced a number of class-focused readings more sophisticated in their approach than contemporary analyses anchored in the “aspirant working-class” paradigm, but it was not until the following decade that academic interest in “place” provided a framework for more innovative and fruitful interpretation. Geographers, sociologists, and practitioners of cultural studies have in recent years ! $! investigated concepts of region, belonging, and identity—with such studies in Britain often concentrating on the enduring socio-cultural “North-South divide.” Despite the situating of “New Wave” narratives in the North, their effective use of dialect, and the contribution to northern iconography by film versions of the novels, northern identity articulated within the texts initially received little attention. Contemporary critics, journalists, and publishers presented the northernness of both the texts and their authors as a genre-defining element or marketing strategy. Northern towns, defined as “other” in relation to London, constituted exotically bleak, deprived landscapes within which characters played out narratives of despair, defiance, and escape. Why, then, would a northern-focused reanalysis of the “New Wave” authors’ texts be a productive undertaking? Such a close reading of these novels could conceivably contribute to recent explorations of northernness in addition to further illuminating the texts themselves. If the socio-cultural moment of change in the late 1950s is posited as a vital point at which—partly as a result of the sociological currents identified at the time— northernness was extremely visible in its articulation, the “New Wave” corpus may provide an extremely rich resource for its continuing analysis. Can its texts be considered “icons of northern identity” in spite of the distortions of their “external” reception? Place studies have heightened interest in regional identity, and those discussing the North never fail to mention the 1950s “New Wave” as its modern literary and cinematic apogee. For the most part they have not, however, interrogated the texts to examine their essential northernness, distinct from their northern setting and authorship. Through such a reading of the key “New Wave” novels—Room at the Top (John Braine), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Alan Sillitoe), A Kind of Loving, (Stan Barstow), Billy Liar (Keith Waterhouse), and This Sporting Life (David Storey) I hope to reveal the highly complex, ! %! actively articulated northern identity that characterises these works. Braine eloquently describes a manifestation of what I want to call “northern reflexivity” in his later novel The Jealous God as “half-unconscious, half in jest” aptly summing up the genuine, yet self- aware and humorous expression of place-specific identity (48). The conscious use of dialect words, expressions (especially “stock phrases”) and structures, and a semi- humorous identification with the “grim” and the “ordinary” contribute to this projection of northernness. The thesis will investigate whether an “under-reading” of these novels coloured their initial reception, and if their current exclusion from wider literary history results at least in part from the omission of “place-based” interpretations of the texts. Such analysis, I shall argue, is available in its fullest extent to individuals within the community of northern author, characters, and reader. In addition, I will question whether such a subjective reading strategy can successfully negotiate the pitfalls of regional stereotype and cliché, both externally imposed and internalised by “insiders,” possibly via the very cultural products under examination. In addition to studies of the “New Wave” cultural event mentioned above, contemporary critical reviews, writers’ autobiographies, and publishing materials including descriptive copy, jacket designs, and author bios will inform my analysis of the novels’ interrelationships with the social and cultural currents of the post-war period. Similar reference to the influential cinematic interpretations of the novels will also provide useful evidence regarding the popular consumption of these narratives and their expression of northern identity, though a comprehensive analysis of the films themselves is beyond the scope of this study. “The North” is a concept requiring exploration, and I shall draw on “place studies” along with selected examples of twentieth-century travel ! &! writing to support my assertion
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