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Moggerhanger
Never before published, Moggerhanger is the last novel written by iconic British writer Alan Sillitoe before his death in 2010. Originally intended as the third part in a trilogy, the first two of which, A Start in Life and Life Goes On , were published in England but not in America, Moggerhanger stands on its own as the last act in an amazing writer’s career, a madcap, bawdy, boisterous, and above all comic novel written in a masterly, unflinching hand, Sillitoe’s Don Quixote .
Michael Cullen, the narrator of Moggerhanger , is an aimless and now jobless, albeit brilliant and sophisticated, picaresque hero who always seems to end up in a pickle. Cullen finds himself in a Rolls traveling across England and Europe, between visits to his father, the ever-playful and outrageous Gilbert Blaskin, a famous writer, and Blaskin’s long-suffering girlfriend, Mabel; and a criminal boss, Moggerhanger by name, who once employed him and who now sends him on “jobs.” The cast of characters is strange and wonderful—from Labrador dogs, crazed poets, and endless women, to the members of the Green Toe Gang, rat catchers, brothel workers, and investigative journalists, to his old friend and traveling companion Sergeant Bill Straw, a former mercenary soldier. A work of style as well as high comedy, Moggerhanger will make you want to quit your job and go on the road, come what may.
Michael Cullen, the narrator of Moggerhanger , is an aimless and now jobless, albeit brilliant and sophisticated, picaresque hero who always seems to end up in a pickle. Cullen finds himself in a Rolls traveling across England and Europe, between visits to his father, the ever-playful and outrageous Gilbert Blaskin, a famous writer, and Blaskin’s long-suffering girlfriend, Mabel; and a criminal boss, Moggerhanger by name, who once employed him and who now sends him on “jobs.” The cast of characters is strange and wonderful—from Labrador dogs, crazed poets, and endless women, to the members of the Green Toe Gang, rat catchers, brothel workers, and investigative journalists, to his old friend and traveling companion Sergeant Bill Straw, a former mercenary soldier. A work of style as well as high comedy, Moggerhanger will make you want to quit your job and go on the road, come what may.
512 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 2016
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About the author
Alan Sillitoe
142 books140 followersAlan Sillitoe was an English writer, one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s (although he, in common with most of the other writers to whom the label was applied, had never welcomed it).
For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sil...
For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sil...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 14, 2016
After reading The Adventures of Roderick Random, I had vowed never again to read a picaresque novel. But, it didn't take long for me to break that vow. It seems that Alan Sillitoe wrote a trilogy of picaresque novels about the life and adventures of Michael Cullen, working-class bastard from Nottingham. I was given the third one to read and review. And so I have read it and will now provide a vague review of the book.
Apparently, back in the 1960s, Alan Sillitoe got enthralled by picaresque novels. The genre had first appeared in Spain in the 16th century and migrated through France to England where the genre was taken up by the likes of Tobias Smollett, who wrote Roderick Random. Eventually, Sillitoe decided to try his hand, coming out with A Start in Life in 1970, which chronicled the adventures of a young, Nottingham bastard, Michael Cullen. Some fifteen years later, he continued chronicling Cullen in Life Goes On (1985). But, Sillitoe, it seems wasn't done with Cullen. The third book of his picaresque trilogy is to come out, posthumously, in August 2016. That's the volume I read, Mogerhanger. The action in the books are all closer in time than the publication dates. I'm guessing that the action in Mogerhanger is no later than the late 1970s or perhaps very early 1980s. It's not completely clear. I didn't pick up on any cultural clues to help me figure it all out, and I didn't bother reading the first two volumes to clarify things better. This book stands on its own reasonably well.
A Picaresque novel is a tale of the adventures of a picaro, an engaging scoundrel who has much wit and charm, but who is morally ambiguous. He has no problems, in general, with womanizing and defrauding other people. The picaro in this trilogy is Michael Cullen, born a bastard and brought up on the mean streets of Nottingham, presumably in the 1950s and 1960s, perhaps even a bit of the 1940s. He has had a number of scrapes with the law and has spent time in gaol (to use the British spelling) for gold smuggling. For the latter, he was set up by his "boss", Claude Moggerhanger. Moggerhanger is a very rich and very unscrupulous man who has managed to buy himself a peerage. Cullen would like to knock Moggerhanger down a peg, but is unclear as to how to go about that. Moggerhanger is very dangerous.
At the beginning of this book, Cullen has just quit his job in an advertising agency. He had been good at his work, he was a consummate liar, but he tired of the regular grind. So, he decided just to wander around for a while to see what will happen. His wife, Frances, is a medical doctor who is so busy that she'll hardly miss him, or something.
Next thing you know, Cullen has been hired by Moggerhanger to deliver some "special items" to Turkey and to pick up some other "special items" and return them to England. So we have adventures along the way where Cullen finds himself on a train with a woman, Sophie, he feels compelled to seduce. Then, he is being shadowed by a black van. He thinks he has lost the van after he contrives to lead it into an auto accident, which he contrives to avoid himself; but he hasn't. Just as he's about to be knocked up by the people in the van, his old buddy, Bill Straw, a guy who fancies himself rather a military type, shows up to save the day.
So they get to Turkey and back and Cullen is at loose ends again. Not so the guys in the black van, who are determined to hunt him down and "deal" with him. So we have more adventures, and perhaps some kind of conclusion. Read the book to find out what it might be.
Along the way, we meet some rather "interesting" characters. It seems that Cullen eventually gets to know his biological father, the famous novelist, Gilbert Blaskin. Blaskin actually makes most of his money writing pulp under the pseudonym of Sydney Blood. Occasionally, he farms out the actually writing of the Sydney Blood books to others, including Cullen and Bill Straw. Other strange relationships are discovered when Sophie returns to England and hooks up with Cullen again.
So, you have a rather charming, if amoral, hero; lots of adventures; lots of interesting characters. Sillitoe is a gifted writer who can mostly make this stuff work. On the other hand, this isn't really the kind of thing that would appeal to an elderly, repressed Calvinist, such as yours truly. So, when I can pretend I'm someone that I'm not, I see this as a very engaging and well written book. When I view it from my own personal perspective, it's not really my cup of tea, so to speak. I end up giving it 4*s because I expect that most readers aren't elderly, repressed Calvinists.
Apparently, back in the 1960s, Alan Sillitoe got enthralled by picaresque novels. The genre had first appeared in Spain in the 16th century and migrated through France to England where the genre was taken up by the likes of Tobias Smollett, who wrote Roderick Random. Eventually, Sillitoe decided to try his hand, coming out with A Start in Life in 1970, which chronicled the adventures of a young, Nottingham bastard, Michael Cullen. Some fifteen years later, he continued chronicling Cullen in Life Goes On (1985). But, Sillitoe, it seems wasn't done with Cullen. The third book of his picaresque trilogy is to come out, posthumously, in August 2016. That's the volume I read, Mogerhanger. The action in the books are all closer in time than the publication dates. I'm guessing that the action in Mogerhanger is no later than the late 1970s or perhaps very early 1980s. It's not completely clear. I didn't pick up on any cultural clues to help me figure it all out, and I didn't bother reading the first two volumes to clarify things better. This book stands on its own reasonably well.
A Picaresque novel is a tale of the adventures of a picaro, an engaging scoundrel who has much wit and charm, but who is morally ambiguous. He has no problems, in general, with womanizing and defrauding other people. The picaro in this trilogy is Michael Cullen, born a bastard and brought up on the mean streets of Nottingham, presumably in the 1950s and 1960s, perhaps even a bit of the 1940s. He has had a number of scrapes with the law and has spent time in gaol (to use the British spelling) for gold smuggling. For the latter, he was set up by his "boss", Claude Moggerhanger. Moggerhanger is a very rich and very unscrupulous man who has managed to buy himself a peerage. Cullen would like to knock Moggerhanger down a peg, but is unclear as to how to go about that. Moggerhanger is very dangerous.
At the beginning of this book, Cullen has just quit his job in an advertising agency. He had been good at his work, he was a consummate liar, but he tired of the regular grind. So, he decided just to wander around for a while to see what will happen. His wife, Frances, is a medical doctor who is so busy that she'll hardly miss him, or something.
Next thing you know, Cullen has been hired by Moggerhanger to deliver some "special items" to Turkey and to pick up some other "special items" and return them to England. So we have adventures along the way where Cullen finds himself on a train with a woman, Sophie, he feels compelled to seduce. Then, he is being shadowed by a black van. He thinks he has lost the van after he contrives to lead it into an auto accident, which he contrives to avoid himself; but he hasn't. Just as he's about to be knocked up by the people in the van, his old buddy, Bill Straw, a guy who fancies himself rather a military type, shows up to save the day.
So they get to Turkey and back and Cullen is at loose ends again. Not so the guys in the black van, who are determined to hunt him down and "deal" with him. So we have more adventures, and perhaps some kind of conclusion. Read the book to find out what it might be.
Along the way, we meet some rather "interesting" characters. It seems that Cullen eventually gets to know his biological father, the famous novelist, Gilbert Blaskin. Blaskin actually makes most of his money writing pulp under the pseudonym of Sydney Blood. Occasionally, he farms out the actually writing of the Sydney Blood books to others, including Cullen and Bill Straw. Other strange relationships are discovered when Sophie returns to England and hooks up with Cullen again.
So, you have a rather charming, if amoral, hero; lots of adventures; lots of interesting characters. Sillitoe is a gifted writer who can mostly make this stuff work. On the other hand, this isn't really the kind of thing that would appeal to an elderly, repressed Calvinist, such as yours truly. So, when I can pretend I'm someone that I'm not, I see this as a very engaging and well written book. When I view it from my own personal perspective, it's not really my cup of tea, so to speak. I end up giving it 4*s because I expect that most readers aren't elderly, repressed Calvinists.
August 1, 2016
Well, what a ride! Alan Sillitoe’s posthumous modern picaresque is quite the adventure. It’s frank and unapologetic, full of chaos, craziness and a devoted willingness to flout convention against the reader’s moral sensibilities.
A reader can readily trace character similarities from Sillitoe’s earlier works in his picaresque hero, Michael Cullen. Michael Cullen holds that same audacious, devil-may-care approach to established social conventions, comparable to Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Smith in “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.” Michael simply wishes to live his life on his own terms. And like Arthur Seaton, Michael recognizes the importance of finding fun, amusement and good nourishment along the way.
In terms of plot, the novel itself is reminiscent of Henry Fielding’s picaresque, Tom Jones, with the combination of food references and bawdy humor. Fielding metaphorically equates love with food:
Love, namely, the desire of satisfying a voracious Appetite with a certain Quantity of delicate white human flesh […] he LOVES such and such Dishes; so may the lover of this kind, with equal Propriety say, he HUNGERS after such and such Women.
Sillitoe’s Michael Cullen essentially embodies this idea. For him, a woman is simply one of the essentials of life. No matter the journeys and veritable dangers he faces, it is always important to make time to enjoy this particular pleasure of life, regardless of any ties and constraints that may exist. As with the character Tom Jones, Michael faces a similar potentially incestuous dilemma. However, the 260-plus year discrepancy in publication between the two works has negated the need to clear up any such moral scares. For Michael Cullen, the discovery and realization is only something to relish…and to willingly and wholeheartedly try again to better savor the associated pleasures.
However Michael himself notes, It would be hard enough to get the truth out of myself if ever I wanted to, in which case how can you trust somebody to tell the truth to you? With such an admission, the reader can’t help but wonder if there’s a postmodern element to this modern picaresque: the act of the reader reading a fictitious work full of various fictions…various individual personal conceptions of reality for us the reader, as well as for our picaresque hero.
The novel itself is composed of a variety of situations and adventures that pile upon each other, as is common with the traditional picaresque. There’s no real plot, but these adventures run at a frenetic pace. Yet, the sheer fact that there are so many adventures, paired with the fact that the progression of them is placed on hold at key moments with a narrative shift, seemingly slows the progression of the novel. Completing this novel makes the reader feel as if they too have taken part in an arduous journey. While Moggerhanger does offer the complex themes and ideas of a well-seasoned author, new readers would most likely prefer Sillitoe’s early, more recognized works.
Copy provided by NetGalley
A reader can readily trace character similarities from Sillitoe’s earlier works in his picaresque hero, Michael Cullen. Michael Cullen holds that same audacious, devil-may-care approach to established social conventions, comparable to Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Smith in “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.” Michael simply wishes to live his life on his own terms. And like Arthur Seaton, Michael recognizes the importance of finding fun, amusement and good nourishment along the way.
In terms of plot, the novel itself is reminiscent of Henry Fielding’s picaresque, Tom Jones, with the combination of food references and bawdy humor. Fielding metaphorically equates love with food:
Love, namely, the desire of satisfying a voracious Appetite with a certain Quantity of delicate white human flesh […] he LOVES such and such Dishes; so may the lover of this kind, with equal Propriety say, he HUNGERS after such and such Women.
Sillitoe’s Michael Cullen essentially embodies this idea. For him, a woman is simply one of the essentials of life. No matter the journeys and veritable dangers he faces, it is always important to make time to enjoy this particular pleasure of life, regardless of any ties and constraints that may exist. As with the character Tom Jones, Michael faces a similar potentially incestuous dilemma. However, the 260-plus year discrepancy in publication between the two works has negated the need to clear up any such moral scares. For Michael Cullen, the discovery and realization is only something to relish…and to willingly and wholeheartedly try again to better savor the associated pleasures.
However Michael himself notes, It would be hard enough to get the truth out of myself if ever I wanted to, in which case how can you trust somebody to tell the truth to you? With such an admission, the reader can’t help but wonder if there’s a postmodern element to this modern picaresque: the act of the reader reading a fictitious work full of various fictions…various individual personal conceptions of reality for us the reader, as well as for our picaresque hero.
The novel itself is composed of a variety of situations and adventures that pile upon each other, as is common with the traditional picaresque. There’s no real plot, but these adventures run at a frenetic pace. Yet, the sheer fact that there are so many adventures, paired with the fact that the progression of them is placed on hold at key moments with a narrative shift, seemingly slows the progression of the novel. Completing this novel makes the reader feel as if they too have taken part in an arduous journey. While Moggerhanger does offer the complex themes and ideas of a well-seasoned author, new readers would most likely prefer Sillitoe’s early, more recognized works.
Copy provided by NetGalley
January 23, 2017
I’m pretty allergic to picaresque novels in any case and this so-called “romp” completely failed to engage me. The third volume of a trilogy it carries on the “comic” adventures and encounters of Michael Cullen whom I first met in volume one entitled A Start in Life. I didn’t like him much then and he doesn’t improve on acquaintance. Stretching things out into a trilogy is going a good few steps too far and I found the book tedious, silly and unconvincing. Disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews