Manhood, by John Wain

 

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BIOGRAPHY

John Wain was born in the Midlands in 1925. He studied at St Jonh’s College, Oxford, and later he taught at Reading University and also at Oxford. But he was essentially a man of letters: he wrote poetry, novels, short stories, plays, essays and biographies. Nevertheless, nowadays, his works are less read.
As a poet, he belonged to a group of writers called “The Movement”, active in the 1950s. They wanted to give a sense of Englishness in their poems and go back to traditional literature, a reaction to the exuberance and exoticism of the modernists, such as Dylan Thomas. Other members were Kingsley Amis (Martin Amis’s father), Philip Larking and Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s partner).
As a narrator, he was associated with the “Angry Young Men”, a group of writers highly critical of the political system and the social order; so, their literature would be more realistic, and their topic the lives of the working class. Here we find Allan Sillitoe and John Osborne, whose play Looking Back in Anger was the seed of this tendency. We also can say that Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch shared some of their ideas.
Perhaps Wain’s most interesting work was Hurry on Down, a comical novel that follows the adventures of a young man after finishing his university studies.

He died in at the age of 69.

SUMMARY

Mr Willison is somebody who wasn’t very happy with his youth and childhood. He wasn’t satisfied with his physical education. He would have exercised more, played more sports. He had studied hard to get a good job and so all the time was working on books and exams.

Now he has a teenage son, Rob, and he wants to give him another kind of education. Not so much school academic subjects and a little bit more of sport. So, he takes his boy for long bike rides and prompts him to inscribe in the school rugby team. But Rob isn’t very fond of physical activities; nevertheless, he loves his father and wants to make him happy.

One day, after several miles of cycling, Mr Willison gives his son a boxing punch-ball and a pair of boxing mittens. Rob isn’t really interested in boxing, but he doesn’t reject his father’s present, and he even tries to hit the ball with all his strength.

Then, at school, we suppose because of his father’s insistence, tries, or says he tries, to join the rugby team. But, as in the end he isn’t selected, he makes up for saying he was chosen for the boxing team; this way he doesn’t disappoint his father. Mr Willison is very excited with this piece of news, and he takes on himself to train him. However, his wife says boxing is a dangerous sport for the brain, and there is a heated discussion about the topic between husband and wife. Mr Willison is overjoyed, and Mrs Willison is furious.

So everyday Rob trains very hard with his father, but, when the day of the tournament arrives, he says he doesn’t feel very well and that he cannot fight in the contest. His mother is very worried and blames his husband for the situation and tells him to call the doctor. Mr Willison is so bewildered that his suspects his son of faking his illness out of fear. In the end, he decides to call the manager of the boxing team.

 

QUESTIONS

-What do you think is going to happen after the father discovers the truth?

-Mrs Willison mentions “her big night” referring to the night her son was born. What was your “big night / day”?

-What do you know about Baroness Summerskill, Ingemar Johansson and Marquess of Queensberry?

-There is a lack of communication between father and son. According to you, should there always be complete frankness between parents and children?

-In general, is “suffering” something profitable in order to shape a person’s character?

-Is it essential for a teenager to come through a rite of passage?

-When, in your opinion, does pushing our children to study, or play sports become necessary, and when does it become harmful?

 

VOCABULARY

short cut, dale, beamed, mittens, scrum, cramming, trunks, catches, parried, bullet-headed, louts, take a grip, fit as a fiddle, bout, M.A.

 

free-wheeling, haunches, fatigue, endurance, sullen, clambered, doggedly, physique, prone, rebellion, simultaneously, mittens, landmark, tournament, trials, acutest, satchel, to, limber, up, keened, louts, compel, appendicitis, jabbering, defensive, queries

Many Are Disappointed, by V. S. Pritchett

BIOGRAPHY (from last year), by Rafel Martínez

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but, due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

Four cyclists going on a ride expect to find a bar or a pub at the top of a hill, but they are disappointed because there is only a house with the old sign “Tavern”, that can mean an inn (that is no alcohol), so they won’t be able to have some beers. They have followed this road in the hope of sightseeing an antient Roman way: second disappointment. And thus, so on with some more. In the house there’s a small and frail woman with her daughter, also a little girl. The woman is happy to serve them some tea with some light food, although they would rather have had stronger food. At the end, they are happy with their tea, and they even start to have some feelings for the woman and her child. After tea, they went back again in search of a pub, and the woman feels very happy to have had them at home, and this not only for the money she got from their meal.

I think there are two very interesting features in this story. First, the characters: you don’t find the typical way of composing a story: the narrator begins introducing the characters with a full description, physical and psychological; instead, you have to unite the different pieces of the characters to form them, like in a puzzle. What did the author do this for? And second, the title. In the story, there are a lot of disappointments, and everyone has their own disappointment. But in the end, I think they are satisfied with what they had, at the end disappointment has been disappointed.

Many Are disappointed: Analisys

Many Are disappointed: Review

QUESTIONS

Look for and jot down information about the characters in order to describe them (surname, appearance, personality, age, likes and dislikes…)

Bert
Sid
Harry
Ted
The woman
The girl

What kind of bike are they riding? How do you know?

What different feelings does the woman have for the four different men?

Why does Sid think that he had seen the woman before? Does he want to flirt with her?

In which part of Great Britain is the story situated (look for the toponyms in a map)?

Why is there a confusion between Romans and Gypsies?

Describe the meal.

Why do you think the woman trusts a very confidential thing (she almost died) to Sid?

Do you think the house is really a “tea-house”? Why?

Explain all you know about the ring.

Are the really sportsmen? How do you know?

Why did or didn’t you like the story?

VOCABULARY

dunno, out-building, ruddy, skylark, stubborn, reed, meadows, hedge, wiry, whimper, frail, drab, moist, dumbfounded, sell, gasper, treacle (coloured), drizzle, dazed, dippy, cocksure, splice, flash, dawdle, drably, scabious, bin, boldly, wants, pout