English Journey - J B Priestley

 

In 1933 Priestley toured England from Southampton to Newcastle and then back to London down the East Coast.  His account of the country, four years into the Depression, was published the following year.

There are signs of the industrial collapse everywhere he goes but most calamitously, of course, in the North, which had been industrialised more intensively than anywhere else.  A Northerner himself, Priestley naturally takes this personally, and his descriptions of deserted shipyards and abandoned factories is at times harrowing.  What prevents the book becoming an ordeal is the way Priestley seeks out the positive - the charitable settlements in towns large and small which give the unemployed a way of occupying their time and expressing themselves, often through choirs and theatrical productions.  Priestley, again, was a great man of the theatre.

The English Journey should be a set book for Sixth Formers but never will be because Priestley makes no bones about who is responsible for the collapse.  The same people who, even as I write, are gleefully trashing the British economy, slashing social support to fund tax cuts for the extremely rich, few of whom live in England any more.

Blood Brothers - Ernst Haffner

Blood Brothers was published in Germany in 1932 and suppressed the next year. It was rediscovered and republished in Germany in 2013. That's it - all we know. It's a lot more than we know about Haffner, whom we are told was a journalist and social worker. Blood Brothers is his only novel, his only book. He disappeared sometime between 1932 and 1945. There is not even a photograph of him.


What a legacy this is. It's always difficult with translations to know how accurately they reflect the original text. But Michael Hofmann is the virtuoso of translators from the German. So we can be confident that his translation is accurate and faithful. Therefore Haffner himself wrote in these breathless, staccato sentences, some of them not even complete sentences. Simplistic as they may seem, the sentences are loaded with meaning. They go off like firecrackers.


What we have is a novel of lost boys, boys in their teens who have run away from boys' homes and subsist by crime on the dark streets of Berlin. They are a gang, they share a situation, yet each is sharply defined and differentiated. We have the charismatic leader, Jonny. You can always count on Jonny. We have Fred, more flamboyant, who is the gang treasurer. And then there's Ludwig, picked up for another man's crime, who is taken back into care, only to escape again with Willi, who - paradoxically - helps him go straight in the refurbished boot business. The gang breaks up, inevitably, as the lads move on or are gaoled. It doesn't matter. They know this was always going to be a sunny interlude amid a gathering storm. Berlin can manage without them because there will always be others. There is only one Berlin. Berlin is the star, the protagonist of the superb Blood Brothers.

In Dubious Battle - John Steinbeck

In Dubious Battle is Steinbeck's unabashed socialist novel.  Written in 1936 at the height of the Depression but before The Grapes of Wrath it deals, in a sense, with what the Joad family were heading out to California to do - find work picking fruit.

Jim Nolan has had enough.  He has seen his father beaten and humiliated for trying to stand up for the working man's rights.  His father stood alone - that was his mistake - so son Jim decides to join the Party.  There is little doubt that Steinbeck means the Communist Party.  The Party locally is run by Mac and soon Mac takes Jim down to Torgas Valley to try and organise an apple-pickers' strike.

Fruit picking is the only work available.  Families travel miles in clapped out jalopies or, like Mac and Jim, by hopping on freight trains.  Because it is a hirer's market, and because they know the labourers have spent their last dime just to get to Torgas, the owners slash wages the instant the men arrive.  What are they going to do about it?  Nothing - until Mac plants the idea of striking in their minds.  After all, the fruit has to be picked right now, or the growers lose their profits.

Thus begins the labour war.  Mac is a professional; people suspect his motives.  But Jim is open and honest and becomes something of an icon.  The outcome, inevitably, is violent and tragic.

It's amazing that In Dubious Battle isn't better known.  Surely it can only be because of its politics.  There is no doubt whatever that Steinbeck is with the strikers.  It can be said that he knows their efforts are doomed but nevertheless he is in awe of their willingness to fight.  The characters - almost all men - are varied, vibrant and vividly drawn; not just Jim and Mac but London (a reference, surely, to that other literary socialist Jack London), the bear of a man they persuade to lead the strike; old Joy, an echo of Jim's father, who hops a freight down to Torgas just to betray the scabs; the Andersons, father and son, who pay a terribly price for supporting the strikers; the ambivalent Doc Burton, who voices what seems to be Steinbeck's feelings; old Dan, who used to be a daredevil tree-feller; and even Burke, who may or may not be the bosses' plant.

No mere polemic, the book is crammed with plot and twists and surprises.  I for one did not expect the ending.  To put it plainly, I adored In Dubious Battle and cannot recommend it highly enough.

To the Bright and Shining Sun - James Lee Burke

 

 

Only Burke's second novel but a classic of modern Depression fiction.  The Kentucky coalfields are dying by the day.  The James family have devoted their lives to the union cause.  Old Woodson had his chest caved in by a rockfall and is now a happy-pappy, clearing forest trails for welfare.  His teenage son Perry is busy sabotaging strike-breaking scabs.  But Perry goes too far and has to get clear of the county.  He signs on with the Job Corps.  He makes mistakes but does well.  Things look like they're on the up - until Perry gets called back home to watch his father die - and to seek revenge.

 

 

A powerful story, expertly told, an example of what Burke might have been had he not become seduced by the lure of series crime fiction.  Not that Burke's crime novels aren't good, even great, it's just that this is better because it has higher aspirations.  I shall keep an eye out for more of his singles.