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'Billy Liar' and other Keith Waterhouse books.

Started by Serge, November 06, 2017, 04:52:39 PM

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Serge

Mentioning them in the 'short books' thread made me think I should start a thread on Billy Liar and its sequel Billy Liar On The Moon, as well as Waterhouse's other works. He seems to have slipped out of public consciousness these days, though had probably started that slide even before his death, not through any fault of his own, just because of changing tastes. But in his day, he certainly had his moments.

Billy Liar is the work that he's best known for, and to be fair, is almost certainly his best book. Although it's rooted in a specific time and place (the ersatz Leeds of Stradhoughton in the late '50s), it transcends that to become timeless through its subject matter of a young person stuck in a dead-end job they hate (in a town they hate) and fantasising about ways to get out, both realistic and fanciful. William Fisher is the Billy Liar of the title, who is working at an undertakers, has two fiancees, neither of whom he actually wants to marry, and still living with his folks. His dream of getting out of Stradhoughton and making it as a writer for a comedian called Danny Boon amidst the bright lights of London sustains him through his tribulations, along with a fictional country called Ambrosia that only exists in his mind. The other ray of hope in the book is a girl called Liz, who isn't his fiancee, but is the only person who seems like she's on the same wavelength as he is.

It's a brilliant book, evoking the desperation of a young man trapped in a series of dire-seeming (but actually just dull) situations and making you root for him, even though you realise he's never likely to make that great leap into the unknown that he needs to. It was later made into an excellent film starring Tom Courtenay, which is a classic in its own right. And it was followed sixteen years later by Billy Liar On The Moon, which finds Fisher having escaped Stradhoughton, not for London, but rather a dull Midlands town where he's risen to the heights of working for the local council, trapped in a marriage he has no enthusiasm for, having an affair he realises is a dangerous business, and surrounded by mediocrity on all sides. While this doesn't have the timeless quality of the first book, it's one of the funniest books I've ever read, certain lines from it still making me laugh on re-reading it for the umpteenth time.

I've only read a handful of his other novels. There Is A Happy Land is about a kid growing up in the North, and it's hard not to see that this is a fairly typical autobiographical first novel. But very good, for all that! Jubb is a weird book about a sex maniac, which feels very much of its time. Thinks is an interesting one, almost like a proto Peep Show, in showing us the unedited thoughts of a middle aged man, adrift in yet another unfulfilling life. He also rewrote 'Diary Of A Nobody', not once, but twice, neither of which actually add anything to the original.

I used to have a couple of books of his columns for the Daily Mirror - he wrote for them until 1986, when the shadow of Robert Maxwell made him leave, and go off to, erm, the Daily Mail, though whether this denoted a drastic rightward shift in his columns, I don't know. The Mirror columns are entertaining enough, as long as you don't mind him being a slightly stuck-in-his-ways grumpy old curmudgeon who wishes the World was more like it was when he was younger - not in a racist way, or anything, you can just tell that he thinks times were better when he were a lad.

In collaboration with Willis Hall, he also wrote a number of films, plays and TV series, most notably the TV version of 'Worzel Gummidge', which there have been at least two threads about on here to my knowledge!

Anyone else a fan?

Tlentifini Maarhaysu

Doubtless been mentioned before, but something that stops the Billy Liar film from occupying an exalted place alongside the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in my personal pantheon of ace British gloom is the bloody ending. Well, that, and the distracting 2:35:1 aspect ratio, but mostly the ending.

To recap, it's obvious Billy's more than averagely talented, having had some of his material accepted by television comedian Danny Boon, and written a song (Twisterella) that was played at the local Palais-De-Dance. His home life is stiflingly dull, his dad's an awful old tosser, his mum's incredibly dreary, his granny's just died after one of her 'turns'. His job's a load of shit, he hates the town, he has the chance to just sod off out of it to swinging London - with Julie Christie, for God's sake - and he bottles it at the last minute. That, I could just about accept, but the film throws in that piss-awful coda where you see Billy marching home, smiling all over his chops, the brass band of his absurd imaginary kingdom of Ambrosia playing behind him, all the way back to his utterly miserable semi-detached. That's a real 'know your place and fuck you' to the audience, suggesting Billy's got nothing to look forward to but slaving to pay Mr Shadrack back for all the calendars he nicked / destroyed / threw away and listening to his mardy-arsed parents putting him down. Tripe.

Serge

I think you're being a bit harsh there, I suspect that the ending is more Billy trying to put a positive gloss on his usual cowardice by retreating into Ambrosia again, though I'd have to watch the film again, as I don't remember the exact specifics of the scene. I wouldn't have thought that Waterhouse, a man who escaped his own Stradhoughton, would have come up with a 'know your place' ending.

zomgmouse

I loved Billy Liar when I read it, then read the play and watched the film. Definitely rang more than a little true to me.

I didn't feel the ending was a "fuck you" to the audience. It was a punch in the gut, certainly, but not every depressing ending is a direct attack on the audience. It's not saying "don't dream", it's saying "sometimes dreams don't get fulfilled", which is hardly the same thing. Woeful, depressing, sure. But not malicious.

poodlefaker

Maggie Muggins is a great book, a great lost London novel. Maggie is a bit like Billy's gf Liz, but she's been in London for 10 years, and her life's turned out pretty shit.

Out of print, obv. and the second-hand copies all have horrible 80s cartoon covers, like a Tom Sharpe book. It'll be reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic one day, with a moody b&W photo on the cover, an introduction by someone famous and a full-page article in the Guardian Review - it deserves it.

Serge

Heh, this version looks like it may have been by the exact same artist who did the Sharpe covers:



Going off-topic, I always loved the way that the Tom Sharpe covers always had pretty much the entire plot crammed into each over-loaded image.

Googling 'Maggie Muggins', I came across this interesting profile from 16 years ago, in which he says that it's his favourite of his own books. Might have to look into ordering it from Amazon when I've got through my current pile....

It's interesting what you say about it being reissued with a black & white cover, as I could easily see that happening to his entire back catalogue (or whatever the book equivalent of 'back catalogue' is). They could easily all be picked up by someone like Canongate or Serpent's Tail and published again now.


Andy147

The Tom Sharpe paperback covers were by Paul Sample.

poodlefaker

MM isn't a particularly funny book, though, quite the reverse. In the 80s someone must have decided that "IT'S FUNNY THIS, LOOK!!" was the only way to sell books to men. I've got Updikes and Martin Amises from the 80s that look like this. Tom Sharpe will prob. be reissued with more serious covers soon, like Evelyn Waugh.

Serge

The cover that I posted above does vaguely remind me of the artwork in Alexei Sayle's graphic novel, Geoffrey The Tube Train And The Fat Comedian, with its sense that London is a constant hubbub of people doing things on top of one another. Though the Sayle book is meant to be funny, and at no point features a bare-arsed man spread-eagled against a wall.