ALAN SILLITOE - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 03/21/1979 - HFSID 206145

ALAN SILLITOE
Author Alan Sillitoe signed this letter, typed in Wittersham, Kent, England in 1979 about the writing process, his characters and what gives a literary work lasting importance. Sillitoe, who wrote about the alienation of working-class England, is best known for his novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and short story The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.
Typed letter signed "Good luck to everybody in/your life and work,/Alan/(Sillitoe)". Black ink corrections in unknown hand. 2 pages, 8x10, one sheet, front and verso. Wittersham, Kent, England, March 21, 1979. In full: "Dear John, Thank you for your letter. It came today, so God knows what circuitous route it took to get here. Probably my publisher's cat sat on it for a week or two, because it should have reached me sooner. I've just handed in another novel called THE STORYTELLER - about a young man who earns a living (just about) telling stories in pubs clubs and other places. Eventually, the characters in his stories become real for him, gang up on him and get their revenge for all the sufferings and humiliations he has made them go through. Anyway, it takes four hundred pages to get through the novel, and I think it will work, because I've spent a couple of years sweating blood over it. I suppose I had less education than most people, having left school at fourteen, though I don't regret it because I think maybe I made up for it to a certain extent, though I'm still learning. If you stop learning, you're dead. In my spare time I like to study geography and math - though my brain doesn't seem so quick as it did when I was seventeen. But to get down to the question about what gives a 'literary work' lasting importance.... For me, it's a book or story which, when I've finished it, makes me glad to be alive. If I read something like 'Moby Dick' or 'War and Peace' I think: I'm glad I was born, in spite of everything, because if I hadn't been I wouldn't have read that. There aren't many books like that, but there are enough (just about) to keep you going for a lot of your life. Being a writer is a solitary life, and yet you aren't very much alone. A person comes into your mind who you've never heard of before, but he or she is as solid as flesh and blood, and then you write about them, so that they become a friend, or a member of the family, but they only live for you in that room while you spend a few months writing about them, and in that way you are in solitude, but you are not alone. After you've finished writing about them, and they are in a book, you never forget them, and now and again you'll ask yourself: 'I wonder what happened to old Frank, when I left him at the end of that book?' as if he's a real person. 'Did he really live happily ever after, or did he get into more trouble?' One has got to write about people as real as you can, and in real everyday situations, so that ordinary people who might pick up your book can say to themselves: "Yes, Peter reminds me of a block called Tom I used to know' - or - 'That's just like our brother Albert'. One doesn't try to write a book of lasting importance, but just to do the best one can with the skill that's been developed over the years, and with any talent that might be there. In the beginning you have to read all the best books that are available in the world, but this is a pleasure because they are all marvellous [sic] novels and stories. As a kid I used to tell stories to my brothers and sisters in bed at night." His novel The Storyteller was published in 1979.English author Sillitoe (1928-2010) published his celebrated first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in 1958 and his other most famous work, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (title piece in a short story collection) the next year. Both were made into films. His 2001 novel Birthday updated the lives of the character's from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Sillitoe also wrote poems, essays, children's books and plays for stage, screen and TV, as well as short stories and novels; his latest novel, Gadfly in Russia, was published in 2007. Sillitoe, who dropped out of school at age 14, was awarded several honorary doctorates during his life. Lightly toned and creased. Corrections, but not signature, have bled lightly in places but are legible. Folded twice and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.