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The Cynic Sensibility in British Popular Literature and Culture, 1950 to 1987 by Kieran Curran PhD Music and English Literature The University of Edinburgh 2013 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis, submitted in candidature for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and the research contained herein is of my own composition, except where explicitly stated in the text, and was not previously submitted for any other degree or professional qualification at this or any other university. __________________________ Kieran Curran, 2013 Abstract In my thesis, I focus on delineating 'The Cynic Sensibility' in British Popular Literature and Culture (1950-1987). Focusing primarily on literature and music (and, to a lesser extent, cinema/television), this works seeks to write a cultural history through analysing cultural texts. The sensibility has three key characteristics: I) it is a Bohemian sensibility; ii) it is apolitical, in that it does not endorse any political alternative to the status quo at any given time, and iii) it is popular, and exists across traditional high/low cultural lines. Connected to this last point is a tendency to oppose stylistic Modernism and its attendant obscurities. Underpinning my thesis are the work of the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk on cynicism as a philosophical phenomenon, and the cultural theory of Raymond Williams. Using this approach, I seek to not only connect spheres of culture which hitherto have been kept separate, but to provide a different insight into 20th century British cultural history. Acknowledgements First and foremost, I'd like to thank my family – particularly my parents Billy and Anne Curran – for their love and support, as well as being introduced to the joys of books and records by my brothers (Francis, Peter, Niall) and sister (Wilma). Much thanks to my primary supervisor Simon Frith of the University Of Edinburgh's Music department. His broad breadth of knowledge, analytical mind and editing skill were indispensable – not to mention his belief in the idea itself. Thanks also to my secondary supervisor Randall Stevenson, and to Darryl Jones - the mainstay of Trinity College Dublin's exemplary MPhil in Popular Literature programme. Charity McAdams and Ryan Somerville for being excellent human beings, and full of levity. Robin Oliver for being a great librarian, and a good friend (or perhaps a great friend, and a good librarian). Hamish Kallin and Tom Martin for being Rascals. Pop scholars and former PhD colleagues at the (now defunct) Institute Of Advanced Funk Research – primarily Luis Sanchez, Melissa Avdeef and Richard Worth – must be given thanks, as well as the work of Steely Dan. And immense gratitude has to go to Colleen Greig and Timothea Armour, for their ineluctable understanding and kindness to me in the course of my PhD. Finally, thank you to my good friend Mr. Stephen Murphy from Galway, Ireland. Extended conversations and analysis (in a non-academic context) with him of music, literature and films were formative, first-hand experiences of taking popular culture seriously; a true intellectual, without possessing any formal educational qualifications. Portions of this thesis appeared – in embryonic form – in the University of Durham's Postgraduate English journal, as well as in presentations delivered at Edinburgh University, Glasgow University and Northumbria University. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Annus Mirabilis – Philip Larkin 19 Chapter 2: Work Is A Curse – John Wain/Kingsley Amis/Iris Murdoch 43 Chapter 3: Just Another Sunday Evening – John Osborne/Jazz 71 Chapter 4: That's What I'm Not – The British New Wave Cinema 104 Chapter 5: I've Heard Of Politics, But This Is Ridiculous – Comedy 131 Chapter 6: Bed Peace – John Lennon and The Beatles 183 Chapter 7: Quiet Riot – Stephen Poliakoff 213 Chapter 8: No Future/No Alternative – Punk Rock 243 Chapter 9: We Are White Crap The Talks Back – The Fall 269 Chapter 10: Somehow That Really Impressed Me – The Smiths 289 Conclusion 308 1 Introduction In the following work I wish to look at the sensibility of the cynic in British Popular Culture, from the 1950s onwards. Focusing primarily on literature, music and (to a lesser extent) cinema and television, this sensibility progresses and changes as time goes on, with some works explicitly or implicitly referencing previous cynic works. This project contains eight case studies of the cynic of more or less equal length, as well as two more extended sections – one on John Osborne, particularly in relation to The Entertainer, and one on Comedy and the cynic sensibility. Each writer and period has a distinctive feel – the art produced is indebted to the times from which it came, and just as Charles Dickens is tied to Victorian England, Kingsley Amis couldn't have existed without early 1950s post war/imperial ennui, nor would Morrissey's words have been written without the recession of the late 1970s/early 1980s (not to mention the D.I.Y impulse of punk). In a similar manner to Raymond Williams's seminal Culture and Society 1780-1950 (1958), this work seeks to write a cultural history through analysing cultural texts - in a sense, to look to “the words and sequences of words which particular men and women have used in trying to give meaning to their experience” (18); although, as it will become clear, I do not wish to focus on simply words alone. As Catherine Belsey suggests in her seminal essay ‘Towards Cultural History’, “if we can interpret Shakespeare, we can surely learn to 2 interpret fashion, and music” (166). This book aims to integrate a broad range of cultural reference points, rather than simply straightforward close reading. Yet the term cynic might sound oddly vague and colloquial as the subject for an academic work. Is a cynic not simply any armchair pundit, confident in his or her assertions, drink in one hand and remote control in the other? In this case, the sensibility of the cynic might not seem a just case for analysis, given the predominance of this character type. A more extensive description of this tendency may be found as part of the Untimely Meditations of Friedrich Nietzsche: Close beside the pride of modern man there stands his ironic view of himself, his awareness that he has to live in an historicizing, as it were a twilight mood, his fear that his youthful hopes and energy will not survive into the future. Here and there one goes further, into cynicism, and justifies the course of history, indeed the entire evolution of the world, in a manner especially adapted to the use of modern man, according to the cynical canon: as things are they had to be, as men now are they bound to become, none may resist this inevitability (107). Thus, in Nietzsche's negative definition of cynicism, there is a terminal, unchangeable, immutable aspect to it. It also could be argued that the cynic sensibility is evident everywhere in British culture. This is not to mention the fact that, historically, Britain has produced artists of various degrees of contrariness who could also be termed cynics. What are the common threads which tie together the figures I am analysing, 3 and what are the key aspects that bring disparate, broadly cynical artists such as John Osborne, John Lennon, Stephen Poliakoff and Mark E. Smith together? Before I offer a set definition, now I think it may be useful to refer back to the literature of sensibility somewhat. Janet Todd, in her 1986 book Sensibility, identifies aspects crucial to the genre as being "the arousal of pathos through conventional situations, stock familial characters and rhetorical devices" (2). The novel of sensibility "reveals a belief in the appealing and aesthetic quality of virtue, displayed in a naughty world through a vague and potent distress... the distressed are natural victims" (2-3). There is a link here between the works I am analysing and this aspect of the concept of sensibility, in that each work presents a narrator, hero or central character who is - to some extent - an outsider, or downtrodden. This is presented as being a result of banal, ordinary circumstances and not from a tragic flaw - their peripheral nature seems normal and "as it is". More evident in Morrissey's music or in Lennon's solo outpourings than in the examples I have gleaned from 1950s literature, a sense of victimhood in these texts is offset by humour and a certain defiance. Where the outsider role is more crucial, and seems to be popular in galvanising an idea of youth culture can be seen in the accounts of the creation of the catch-all term of ‘Angry Young Men’ in Humphrey Carpenter’s The Angry Young Men - A Literary Comedy of the 1950s, Randall Stevenson’s The Last Of England?, and more contemporaneous accounts of mid to late 1950s drama by John Russell Taylor (Anger And After) and Kenneth Allsopp (The Angry Decade).