Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Paperback 806: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner / Alan Sillitoe (Signet P2629)

Paperback 806: Signet P2629 (6th ptg, undated) (1960s)

Title: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
Author: Alan Sillitoe
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: [Not Applicable]

Sig2629

Best things about this cover:
  • The title font. The title font, I like.
  • Did you have to capture the dreariness of life in a mill town so … precisely? "Shopkeep, your sootiest looking book, please."
  • The only reason I own this book is because my wife stole it from the bathroom of Collegetown Bagels in Ithaca. I mean … "found it in." Definitely not "stole it from."

Sig2629bc

Best things about this back cover:
  • "How to convey the dreariness of life in a mill town on the *back* cover … think, think … I know!" [Explains this back cover concept in detail]
  • "And beat it they do"! Promising.
  • I love how completely detached and elitist the Saturday Review review is. "Oh, the grubby lower classes … delightful!"
  • No cover artist credit, but at least we know where it was printed! USA! Thanks, Signet!

Page 123~ (from "The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale")

I wanted to sit in my overalls listening to the wireless and reading the paper in peace.

I feel you, buddy.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

4 comments:

John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur said...

I used to own that! Read it for high school lit, it really was terrific. You're right, the art is so gritty you can practically feel the soot when you pick it up, although I was a teen at the time, and not the tidiest kid, so there may be a simpler explanation for the tactile experience.

Anonymous said...

Does he really have a silly toe? Just how silly is it?

Stephen Dadalus said...

The movie is great. Raymond Dyer as the "Fancy Man" is one of the most loathsome bit character of all time.

The cunning line echoes Joyce:

"I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”

― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.