"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" | |
---|---|
Short story by Alan Sillitoe | |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Social realism |
Publication | |
Published in | The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (collection) |
Publisher | W. H. Allen Ltd |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Publication date | 1959 |
"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" is a short story by Alan Sillitoe, published in 1959 as part of a short story collection of the same title. [1] The work focuses on Smith, a poor Nottingham teenager from a dismal home in a working class area, who has bleak prospects in life and few interests beyond petty crime. The boy experiences social alienation and turns to long-distance running as a method of both emotional and physical escape from his situation. The story was adapted for a 1962 film of the same title.
When he is caught by the police for robbing a bakery, Smith is sentenced to be confined in Ruxton Towers in Essex, a Borstal (young offenders institution) for delinquent youths. He seeks solace in long-distance running, attracting the notice of the school's authorities for his physical prowess. Smith is offered a light workload for his last six months at Ruxton Towers if he wins an important cross-country competition against a prestigious public school. For Ruxton Towers to win the cross-country race would be a major public relations boost for the Borstal administrators.
However, when the day of the race arrives Smith throws victory away. After speeding ahead of the other runners he deliberately stops a few metres short of the finishing line, though well ahead and easily able to win. He lets the other runners pass him and cross the finishing line, thereby losing the race in a defiant gesture aimed against his Ruxton Towers administrators. In deliberately losing the race, Smith demonstrates his free spirit and independence. The response of the Borstal authorities to Smith's action is heavy-handed, and Smith resigns himself to the drudgery of manual labour he is returned to. However, looking back on his actions, he has no regrets.
Long-distance running gives the character an ability to escape from society without the pressures of a team, which may be found in other athletic stories. [2] Additionally, Sillitoe gave running a political perspective that changed the vision of a literary runner. Sillitoe's character Smith uses running as a way to mentally reflect, allowing Smith to give clarity to his political insights and share them with the reader. [3] Through running, Smith begins to understand and become aware of the class divisions in Britain. [2] [3]
During the period that Sillitoe wrote "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" the idea of the runner was changing dramatically. Helen Small states, "…the weight of literary attention seems to be focused on a 'pre-professional era'—either written at that time or looking back at it for inspiration". [3]
Many critics and colleagues of Alan Sillitoe regard him as a member of the "Angry Young Men" movement, though Sillitoe himself disliked the label. It was associated with writers who created "belligerent and opinionated" characters, and "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" suggests a confrontation with the class issues of the time. Smith says "in the end the governor is going to be doomed while blokes like me will take the pickings of his roasted bones and dance like maniacs around his Borstal's ruins". [4] It has been suggested that Sillitoe was never simply an "Angry Young Man" but had a deep and abiding hatred for the British class system, and that his and Smith's views were not very different. [4] [5]
Marcy Playground is an American alternative rock band consisting of three members: John Wozniak, Dylan Keefe (bass), and Shlomi Lavie (drums). The band is best known for their 1997 hit "Sex and Candy".
Emo is a music genre characterized by emotional, often confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of hardcore punk and post-hardcore from the mid-1980s Washington, D.C. hardcore scene, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore. The bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, among others, pioneered the genre. In the early-to-mid 1990s, emo was adopted and reinvented by alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, and pop-punk bands, including Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, Cap'n Jazz, and Jimmy Eat World. By the mid-1990s, Braid, the Promise Ring, and the Get Up Kids emerged from Midwest emo, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the genre. Meanwhile, screamo, a more aggressive style of emo using screamed vocals, also emerged, pioneered by the San Diego bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow. Screamo achieved mainstream success in the 2000s with bands like Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, Story of the Year, Thursday, the Used, and Underoath.
Alan Sillitoe FRSL was an English writer and one of the so-called "angry young men" of the 1950s. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied. He is best known for his debut novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his early short story "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", both of which were adapted into films.
Zen Arcade is the second studio album by American punk rock band Hüsker Dü, released in July 1984 on SST Records. Originally released as a double album on two vinyl LPs, Zen Arcade tells the story of a young boy who runs away from an unfulfilling home life, only to find the world outside is even worse. Zen Arcade and subsequent Hüsker Dü albums were instrumental in the creation of the alternative rock genre, and it is considered by some to be one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
A borstal was a type of youth detention centre in the United Kingdom, several member states of the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland. In India, such a detention centre is known as a borstal school.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the first novel by British author Alan Sillitoe and won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award.
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of 25 short stories written by Kurt Vonnegut, published by Delacorte in August 1968. The stories range from wartime epics to futuristic thrillers, given with satire and Vonnegut's unique edge. The stories are often intertwined and convey the same underlying messages on human nature and mid-twentieth century society.
Somewhere in Time is the sixth studio album by English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It was released on 29 September 1986 in the United Kingdom by EMI Records and in the United States by Capitol Records. It was the band's first album to feature guitar synthesisers.
Siren Song of the Counter Culture is the third studio album by American punk rock band Rise Against. Released on August 10, 2004, it was Rise Against's first album on a major record label, after the band signed with DreamWorks Records in September 2003. The recording sessions for the album with producer Garth Richardson were mostly split between two studios in British Columbia. These sessions were marred by numerous distractions and inconveniences, such as the absorption of DreamWorks into Geffen Records, the arrival of a new guitarist, accusations of the band selling out, and the birth of lead vocalist Tim McIlrath's child.
Borstal Boy is a 1958 autobiographical book by Brendan Behan. The story depicts a young, fervently idealistic Behan, who loses his naïveté over the three years of his sentence to a juvenile borstal, softening his radical Irish republican stance and warming to his British fellow prisoners. From a technical standpoint, the novel is chiefly notable for the art with which it captures the lively dialogue of the Borstal inmates, with a variety of the many subtly distinctive accents of Britain and Ireland intact on the page. Ultimately, Behan demonstrated by his skillful dialogue that working class Irish Catholics and English Protestants actually had more in common with one another through class than they had supposed, and that alleged barriers of religion and ethnicity were merely superficial and imposed by a fearful middle class.
Allan Mark "Boff" Whalley is an English musician and writer. Formerly the lead guitarist for the anarcho-punk and folk band Chumbawamba, he is now a playwright and the founder of Commoners Choir who released their first album in March 2017.
"Jonathan David" is a song by Scottish indie pop band Belle and Sebastian. The song gets its name from the biblical duo of Jonathan and David, while B-side "The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner" is a reference to Alan Sillitoe's short story "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." The front cover features band members Mick Cooke and Bobby Kildea with Gill Dodds. All three tracks from the single were later collected on the Push Barman to Open Old Wounds compilation. The title track was the band's first single to feature lead vocals from guitarist Stevie Jackson.
Negative Approach is an American hardcore punk band, formed in Detroit, Michigan in 1981. The band is considered among the pioneers of hardcore punk, particularly in the Midwest region. Like most hardcore bands, Negative Approach was little known in its day outside of its hometown. It is now idolized in the Detroit rock underground and the punk subculture, considered to be one of the elite bands of the "old school" era, and continues to be influential. Negative Approach initially broke up in 1984 with singer John Brannon moving on to the Laughing Hyenas, and later Easy Action, but the band has reformed as of 2006 and continues to tour sporadically.
iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It is a 2006 New York Times bestselling autobiography by computer engineer and programmer Steve Wozniak. It was co-authored by writer Gina Smith and published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a 1960 British kitchen sink drama film directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Tony Richardson. It is an adaptation of the 1958 novel by Alan Sillitoe, with Sillitoe himself writing the screenplay. The plot concerns a young teddy boy machinist, Arthur, who spends his weekends drinking and partying, all the while having an affair with a married woman.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a 1962 British coming-of-age film directed by Tony Richardson, one of the new young directors emerging from the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. The screenplay was written by Alan Sillitoe, based on his 1959 short story of the same title, and concerns a rebellious youth who has been sentenced to a borstal for burgling a bakery. He gains privileges in the institution through his prowess as a long-distance runner, but reveries of important events before his incarceration that he has during his solitary runs lead him to re-evaluate his status as the prize athlete of the Governor.
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner is a short story collection by English author Alan Sillitoe.
Key to the Door is a novel by English author Alan Sillitoe, first published in 1961.
"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" is a 1959 short story by Alan Sillitoe.
Scott the Woz is a gaming comedy review web series created by American YouTuber Scott Wozniak. The series, starring Wozniak, covers video games and gaming history. Episodes are written and directed by Wozniak, with recurring characters played by his friends. Compilations of episodes were syndicated on the 2021–2022 revival of the TV network G4.