The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society discussion
This topic is about
Stand On Me
Hamilton-esque books, authors..
>
Frank Norman
Mod
Artist and sitter knew each other as acquaintances at the Colony Room in the late 1950s. The portrait was made from sittings at the artist's flat towards the end of 1961.
He also appears in another five portraits at the NPG....
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/sea...
Playwright and novelist; brought up in a Dr Barnardo's home, Norman worked as a farm labourer and in a travelling fair as well as serving two short prison sentences (described in his autobiographical Bang to Rights, 1958 and Stand on Me, 1961) before making his name as the writer, with Lionel Bart, of the successful musical Fings Aint Wot They Used T'be (1959).
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Dodgem Greaser
And if "Dodgem Greaser" ain't a Glam song waiting to be written then I'd like to know what is...
I can't speak to Bang To Rights or to Dodgem Greaser, but based on Stand On Me, I'm determined to find and read all the Frank Norman that I can... or all that I'm able to afford, more like, as some titles seem to fetch relatively astronomical sums.Fortunately, I managed to turn up a hardback first edition of Soho Night And Day last week, at a shockingly low price. The book sees Norman's text accompanying Jeffrey Bernard's black and white photography of Soho, circa 1965. Norman's contribution is colourful, but a bit more dry than his novels.
That Corgi cover of Dodgem Greaser is pure class!
Mod
You've inspired me there Mark - I'll keep looking having only noticed very expensive copies about
I did get Dodgem Greaser and Bang To Rights for a few quid, though had to pay a lot more for Stand On Me
Top Tip: Add the costs of all three together and then marvel at the fact that you bought three Frank Norman books for less than the cost of one new hardcover title. Denial's not always a bad thing.
Mod
'Stand On Me' by Frank Norman
34 pages in. Very dated. Not surprising as it was published in 1959, but very readable too.
Nigeyb wrote: "Very dated"Absolutely, which, for me, added to its appeal. A great time capsule, and a hell of a fun read, I thought.
I'm still trying to track down cheap copies of Bang To Rights [the Pan paperback edition] and Dodgem Greaser [the Corgi paperback edition], so will be curious to hear how you eventually reckon those two stand up against Stand On Me.
Mod
I do like Gregorious, the fat Greek proprietor of the wonderful sounding 86 café...
"I spent nearly all my life just sitting in the 86 for no reason whatever, except perhaps to wait for someone to come in who would be likely to buy me a cup of tea or a meal, and at night when the 86 was closed I would either kip in the Park or go case with a brass..."
The 86 sounds quite a place. I am trying to find out where it was located but I think Frank may have renamed it.
We don't have much to go on apart from the name...
a sleazy haunt for pimps and prostitutes, narks and tortured intellectuals...
Mod
According to London: A Cultural History by Richard Tames it was on Frith Street and was...
....epicentre of a universe populated by oddballs with bizarre nicknames and outlandish lifestyles. Tanked up on a preferred cocktail of benzedrine and cider, Frank Norman progresses with all the inevitability of a Hogarthian print series from purloining books from Foyles to passing dud cheques and a spell in prison. Norman's circle of acquaintance overlapped with that of the multi-talented but self-destructive Daniel Farson, whose Soho In The Fifties (1987) achieved a canonic status.
Here's my review of Soho In The Fifties which I read in 2014...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Anyway, next time I'm up there I'll go and have a look at 86 Frith Street and report back
Well sleuthed, sir, very well sleuthed!So The 86 was its actual name?
And thanks for the heads up vis-a-vis Soho In The Fifties, which I'll certainly be on the lookout for.
Similarly, Low Life is well worth a look in if you're in the mood for more Soho literary kicks, being a collection of Jeffrey Bernard's musings on the neighbourhood.
Speaking of Soho -- and you'll have to pardon me if I'd already mentioned this to you, but there was a period of ten years or so in our neighbourhood at the time -- The East Village -- where you could always find Quentin Crisp holding court in a boothe in the diner on the northwest corner of Second Avenue and East Fifth Street. He was a constant, and impossible to miss!
Mod
That's my guess - but it is only a guess
Quentin Crisp eh? Did you ever pass the time of day together?
I never did, no. Much to my regret. It was abundantly clear that he'd happily rabbit away with anyone who'd care to sit down, but at that point -- late 1980s and most of the 1990s -- I wasn't familiar with the colourful history of Soho and its denizens. Had I known then what I know now, I would've surely driven him bonkers with endless questions and promptings for tales.
Have just stumbled upon a nice little bit of writing about Frank Norman & Jeffrey Bernard's Soho Night And Day.https://martinjfrankson.com/2012/07/2...
Evidence suggests that the site/blog might be worth poring over.
Incidentally, I've just turned up an affordable copy of Norman's Banana Boy, which chronicles his childhood years and is supposed to rate amongst his finest.
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I enjoyed reading Martin J Frankson's musings on Soho Night and Day – a long forgotten treasure by Frank Norman & Jeffrey Bernard
That blog does look worthy of more rigorous examination
It also made me want to read Low Life: A Kind of Autobiography by Jeffrey Bernard, which I note you, Mark, have already read and rated four stars
Mark wrote: "I've just turned up an affordable copy of Norman's Banana Boy, which chronicles his childhood years and is supposed to rate amongst his finest."
Please do keep us posted with your thoughts on Banana Boy
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I'd like to make a particularly personal tribute to Frank Norman who died on 23 December bringing 1980 to such a very sad end for so many of us. I don't want to harp on about the history of his career — that's been done — and we know he wrote 16 books that included Bang to Rights and Banana Boy plus four plays including Fings Ain't What They Used to Be. 1 just want to recollect and savour some of the happenings that involved us both during the 30 years I knew him and which spanned the hooligan days of the early Fifties through to the wild and successful days of the Sixties and then to the recent tongue-in-cheek mellowness which spread benignly during the Seventies. I say 'mellow' although I know you can stir up an old wasp's nest, but Frank, until very recently, looked to be cruising through middle age, happy with his wife Geraldine, one novel a year and a Friday-only visit to Soho to give a master class. That Soho is dying we know, but that one of its more distinguished features should be so suddenly and cruelly demolished makes me wonder what on earth is God up to? I doubt that heaven knows.
Memories of Frank merge and blur. When I first met him in a cafe called the Alexandria in Rathbone Place — he was later to use it and the layabouts in it for his play A Kayf Up West — he caught my and everyone's attention with his aggression or at least his aggressive looks which were highlighted by a razor scar. He was pretty distant in those days, a little broody, and he made an amazing attempt to settle down at one point when he got married and set up as a newsagent, of all things, in the village of Boxford in Suffolk. Can you imagine it? Of course, he got as bored as hell with it. He'd pop up to London in his car, get drunk in the Stork Club, drive back to Boxford at four in the morning and, of course, the papers would get delivered at lunchtime. Well, that didn't last long.
What else springs to mind? The Ad Lib Club. That was in the days when it had just become fashionable to import piranha fish and keep them as pets. The tank in the Ad Lib represented a challenge to Frank, so he took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeve and plunged his arm into the tank. They didn't even give him a nibble, which disappointed him deeply, but he then mounted the stage and sang 'Falling in Love with Love is Falling for Make Believe'.
There was the epic fight in Gerrard Street. He somewhat foolishly wrote a piece in the Evening Standard which said that the man he'd shared a cell with when he was in the nick was a grass. Eventually the grass was sprung and came looking for Frank. My brother and I were unfortunate enough to be with Frank when the grass and 14 of his companions caught up with him. Frank ended up in hospital, but he showed tremendous guts in a fight reminiscent of Brando's effort in On the Waterfront.
Our efforts to collaborate on the book we did together, Soho Night and Day (he wrote it and I took the pictures), were something of a farce. We'd wander around Soho all day and night having hospitality heaped on us by publicans and restaurateurs who wanted to appear in the book and I suppose we were drunk for a year. When we weren't given hospitality, Frank paid for everything.
That generosity sums him up for me. We had some fearful rows but his sort of generosity would end them. He had tremendous loyalty towards his friends and was so much a warmer person than the 'scar-faced ex-jailbird' he called himself, The Times cut a sentence I wrote about him — not the sort of thing, The Times would like. I said that he negated that ghastly cliche You only get out of life what you put into it'. Frank put an awful lot into it, and I wish he'd got a little more out of it than he did, We all knew him far too briefly.
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/articl...
And here you can flick through a few sample pages of Soho Night and Day which does look rather fine and lovely....
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/mor...
Thanks for turning that up and posting it. Unless something amazing turns up in the next five months, 2017's gonna go down as The Year Of Frank Norman for me.
Mod
In addition to 'Stand On Me', 'Dodgem Greaser' & 'Bang to Rights'...
...I've also ordered a copy of 'The Lives of Frank Norman', a Penguin collection published in 1972 and which contains extracts from four of his previously published autobiographical books:
Bang to Rights (1958)
Stand on Me (1960)
The Guntz (1962)
Banana Boy (1969)
Must admit I like the sound of 'The Guntz'...
...though not entirely sure why
It's a shame that he hasn't been brought back into print. I'd love for there to be an easy, fast and cost-friendly way to plough through his canon.
Mod
And it is quite a canon...
General Works
Bang to Rights (1958)
Stand on Me (1960)
The Guntz (1962)
Soho Night and Day (1966)
The Monkey Pulled His Hair (1967)
Barney Snip – Artist (1968)
Banana Boy (1969)
Norman's London (1969)
Lock'em up and Count'em (1970)
Dodgem Greaser (1971)
The Lives of Frank Norman (1972)
One of our Own (1973)
Much Ado About Nuffink (1974)
Why Fings Went West (1975)
Down and Out in High Society (1975)
The Fake's Progress (1977) (with Tom Keating and Geraldine Norman)
Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper (1979)
The Dead Butler Caper (1980)
The Baskerville Caper (1981)
Plays
Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be (1959)
A Kayf Up West (1964)
Insideout (1969)
Costa Packet
If Wikipedia is to be believed, there's a fair-sized swathe of his output that falls far short of the high standards that his earlier works commanded. But then that's nothing but a matter of personal taste in the end, so... who knows.Meanwhile, I've just ordered a cheap Pan paperback of The Guntz, whose title should be rhyming slang if it isn't already. Trump & Pence ain't the nazz, the guntz more like.
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'Stand On Me' (1958), a memoir, is a great little time capsule from late 1950s Soho. Frank Norman, who generally does his very best to avoid paid work, describes his life loafing around Soho added with a few of his more interesting or amusing anecdotes, and what an engaging guide he makes.
Click here to read my review
Thanks to Mark for another red hot, hot tip
Mod
“Soho Night and Day”; text by Frank Norman, photography by Jeffrey Bernard.
“Additional photographic material” by R. Rickcord.
Corgi, First Edition, 1968. Back cover [detail]....
“Soho has an atmosphere not to be found anywhere else in London. The elegance of the early days has long gone but the Soho of today has much to offer. There are so many sides to Soho and so many things going on that it is difficult to know where to begin.”
Mod
Nice finds indeed. The copy of Soho Night And Day that I bought wasn't the Corgi edition, so didn't have that cover -- or dust jacket, as the case might or might not be. Fingers crossed some inexpensive copies will turn up eventually, because it's a worthwhile one to have.Really dig that Brian Duffy photo, which reminds me of David Bailey's black and white portraits of the Kray twins.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt698...
Mark wrote: "The copy of Soho Night And Day that I bought wasn't the Corgi edition, so didn't have that cover -- or dust jacket, as the case might or might not be. Fingers crossed some inexpensive copies will turn up eventually, because it's a worthwhile one to have."
Thanks Mark - I'm still doing regular searches to find that elusive sub £20 copy. I can feel it out there waiting for me.
I'm certainly keeping my eyes peeled as well, on your behalf. One is bound to eventually turn up.I agree with you about the photographer in Blow-Up, which I'm now feeling like I need to watch again. Perhaps a double-feature this evening alongside Performance?!
Incidentally, I've got this coming Friday off work, and I'm planning to set off early in the morning for the main branch of the New York Public Library's Reading Room and spending the day with Patrick Hamilton's Monday Morning. You can expect a full report in the proper thread!
Mod
A Blow-Up / Performance double feature - would be as good as life gets
NY Library for 'Monday Morning' - it's the only way to read it (quite literally in this instance)
Reasonably priced copy of SN&D - yes please
Enjoy your day off. Sounds wonderful.
Mod
Nice! My paperback copy should be turning up any day now. It's a proper Norman Invasion these days...
Will look forward to your critique... a copy of that one has still eluded me, but I'm sure one will turn up sooner or later. My own private Norman Invasion continues as I've just begun reading Banana Boy.
So far, so good, although I'll cop to being a bit perplexed -- Banana Boy, unlike Stand On Me, is extremely well written by anyone's standards. No real slang or cockney street verse... stunningly literate. It very well might be that Frank Norman convincingly adopted different voices for different autobiographical books, I'm not sure. But if that is indeed the case, it's an impressive feat.I'm guessing that Bang To Rights, stylistically, is on par with Stand On Me?
Mod
Very interesting. I think he was probably a very bright guy and a fast learner. Particularly given that....
Mark wrote: "I'm guessing that Bang To Rights, stylistically, is on par with Stand On Me? "
Even more extreme. Frank didn't know how to spell, and rather than look stuff up in the dictionary he wrote out the words phonetically, or took a guess. To keep it authentic the publisher decided to stick with Frank's misspellings and poor grammar.
Consequently 'Bang to Rights is full of misspellings and grammatical errors. It’s a bit off putting but it also gives the book a definite rawness and energy.
I'm about 50 pages in and finding it a bit less interesting than 'Stand On Me' primarily because I am less passionate about prison life than Soho life. That said, it’s a great insight into the English penal system of the late 1950s and, in common with 'Stand On Me', Frank is painfully honest and takes you into the heart of his world. Essentially he describes how to navigate the dangerous world of prison life, where you have plenty to fear from your fellow inmates, as well as having to deal with the pettiness of prison officers.
Pleased to report, I'm onto a real winner with Banana Boy, so much so that I'm finding myslef [and myself] slowing down to make it last. In general, I'm no fan of childhood memoirs, but this one's brilliant. Gives Behan's Borstal Boy one hell of a run for its money and doesn't fall short. Copies of this one tend to go cheap, so I heartily recommend snatching a copy.
Mod
Coincidentally 'Stand On Me', in parts, puts me in mind of Behan's 'Borstal Boy' too
Well done, you'll enjoy it. It avoids all of the sentimentality that usually clutter up childhood memoirs, and is full of his usual humorous philosophising -- Norman's Wisdom, let's call it!
Mod
Indeed so. Very good.
Turned the final page of Banana Boy during this evening's subway commute and, happy to report, it was superb. You're in for a real treat. A bit of advice, though, if I may be so bold... Banana Boy seems to finish right where Dodgem Greaser starts, so, even though you've already snared a copy of Dodgem Greaser, I'd advise putting it aside until after you've read Banana Boy.Really really wish I had a copy myself... I'd love to keep carrying on with Norman's tale immediately.
Mod
I finished 'Stand On Me' last night - another goodie. I aim to pen a review later.
Have just ordered cheap copies of Things Ain’t Wot They Used T’be [Grove/Evergreen, 1962] and The Monkey Pulled His Hair [Corgi, 1967].Reasonably priced copies of Bang To Rights [Pan edition] and Dodgem Greaser [Corgi edition] remain elusive.
Mod
At some not too distant point, I’ll stop being shallow and just buy whatever editions are available at a reasonable price. It does seem like he’s ripe for rolling out new editions, though, doesn’t it? Like, the proper treatment, with new introductions. In a world where everything’s recycled in the name of The Dollar, I’d think it’d be bound to happen.Meanwhile, I've been trawling round youtube, trying to find footage of his appearance on What’s My Line... of course, to no avail.
Mod
Meanwhile here's Raymond Chandler's foreword to 'Bang to Rights'...
...and some words from the Social Service Quarterly, also at the start of 'Bang To Rights'. Click on the image if you can't read it to get a bigger photo...
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'Bang to Rights' (1958)
In common with 'Stand On Me', Frank is painfully honest and takes you into the heart of his world. Essentially he describes how to navigate the dangerous world of prison life, where you have plenty of fear from your fellow inmates, as well as dealing with the pettiness of prison officers.
As always though he has plenty of good stories and a great ear for remembering detail and dialogue. In part it reads like a grittier episode of 'Porridge' (the BBC 70s prison sitcom with Ronnie Barker).
Click here to read my complete review
The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society
Books mentioned in this topic
Stand On Me (other topics)Stand On Me (other topics)
Banana Boy (other topics)
Dodgem Greaser (other topics)
Soho in the Eighties (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Christopher Howse (other topics)Christopher Howse (other topics)
Jeffrey Bernard (other topics)
Frank Norman (other topics)
Christopher Howse (other topics)
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I can't tell you much about Frank Norman but Mark, our very own legendary denizen of TPHAS, has put me onto one of his books - 'Stand On Me'.
My copy of 'Stand On Me' has arrived today and I intend to start it in the next few weeks.
Here's what it says on Wikipedia...
Frank Norman (9 June 1930 – 23 December 1980) was a British novelist and playwright.
His reputation rests on his first memoir Bang to Rights (1958) and his musical play Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be (1960), but much of the remainder of his work remains fresh and readable. Norman's early success was based in part on the frankness of his memoirs and in part on the style of his writing, which contained both renditions of cockney speakers and his own poor spelling. Jeffrey Bernard in an obituary of Norman wrote that he was...
'....a 'natural' writer of considerable wit, powers of sardonic observation and with a razor sharp ear for dialogue particularly as spoken in the underworld.'
The rest is here....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_N...