The Bowie Book Club discussion

Chapters 9 to 14 (last chapter) cover the evening and night.

Please, mind the book part you are commenting on in order to avoid spoilers.

Ah, this final part of the book really got to me. The scene at the pub where Billy does his comedy routine shows how gutsy he is, but also how vulnerable, describing himself as "cornered again into the position of village idiot or licensed clown or whatever it was they imagined me to be." The audience is not quite overtly hostile but they're certainly not supportive -- they laugh at him more than they laugh with him. Billy's outsider status is clear, exemplified by that moment when he drops a bit of Cockney dialect into his Yorkshire dialect routine, and Freddy Platt catches him out triumphantly.

For me it set up the expectation that, yes, this would be the final straw that would get him out of town and on his way to London. It's clearly what he wants, and yet... when Liz tries to get him to change his vague plans from "soon" to "now," he can only reply, "Difficult." When she nudges him and says "it's easy. You just get on a train and four hours later, there you are in London." "Easy for you," he replies. "You've had the practice."

In other words: Liz has the confidence to actually follow her dreams -- maybe because she hasn't spent so much time making her dreams so vastly larger than life, as Billy does -- but he doesn't really know how he would bridge the gap between fantasy and reality in order to create a new life somewhere else.

The scene of him at the hospital with his mother is really masterful, as he's so overwhelmed he doesn't really know how to react: "I had been trying on various expressions and by now I was searching feverishly for one that really belonged to me." He insists to his mother (as much as to himself) that, yes, he's really going to London tonight, but when she says "we need you at home, lad," the writing is on the wall.

Finally, he goes to the station, but never gets on the train. The closing paragraphs are both evocative and ambiguous -- the sense of defeat and disappointment that gives way to a brief exhilaration (perhaps as he lapses for a few moments back into the pleasure of daydreaming), then falls back into him slowly walking home.

In the end, I found the novel much more thought-provoking and tragicomic than I had initially expected. His constant storytelling and fantasizing is a means of temporarily removing himself from his surroundings, but by the end his fear of the unknown ("a man could lose himself in London") has turned out to be greater than his desire to break away and actually start a new life.

I wonder if Bowie may have seen in Billy a kind of cautionary tale: dream big all you want, but don't lose your nerve when it comes time to try to turn those dreams into reality.

What did everyone else think?

It's a cringeworthy scene in the New House - although Billy brings so much on himself, he is also deserving of better.

One of the great things about the book is that we start out by understanding why Billy always thinks of himself as the smartest guy in the room, but then we pan out to see just how much unexpected depth and understanding there is in other people. For example, he completely underestimates Duxbury and that scene with him is another pivotal moment.

I was a bit disappointed with the last-minute backing-out. He was so adamant in his desire to leave the small-town atmosphere that I really thought he would do it. What is it, exactly, that kept him home? It's not like he had support with his parents. I wonder about such strong hostility from his father. Add to that the description of him mother having trouble pronouncing the word "love". I really wonder if Billy was planned or even wanted.

^ Billy is on the cusp of maturity (though whether he'll ever make it is debatable). The book can be seen as his dawning realisation that he needs to put aside childish things and take life more seriously. He is not emotionally ready to relocate to London, plus he finally, perhaps, realises that the people in his life (family, friends, workmates etc) are not merely the scenery to his world - to be laughed at, feared, desired, etc - but individuals too, with their own legitimate feelings, fears, desires etc.

It's a coming of age book and perhaps a part of that is a dawning self-realisation?

Nigeyb wrote: "It's a coming of age book and perhaps a part of that is a dawning self-realization? "

Maybe he gets there in the sequel. Definitely not there yet in this book.

I think he is actually behaving typically for a 19-year-old boy, whether that behavior is good or not. Everything is boring, despicable and worth laughing at and showing disdain. As I said, a typical teenager. :)

plus he finally, perhaps, realises that the people in his life (family, friends, workmates etc) are not merely the scenery to his world - to be laughed at, feared, desired, etc - but individuals too

Yes, I definitely think this is part of his journey. We see it, as you mention, when he realizes that he's been underestimating Duxbury. It also struck me again when he's in the hospital and suddenly he has a sense of protectiveness for the same grandmother he's been so dismissive of up till now: "I found it difficult to feel anything beyond indignation that my grandmother should be seen off with this gossiping commentary."

As for why he didn't get on the train... I found myself wondering the same thing, too, and feeling sort of frustrated and impatient with him. But when I re-read it, I realized that in my own experience of becoming an adult, I was much more like Liz in that regard -- I always wanted to break away from my hometown, and the first chance I had, I did. Just as Liz says "it's easy," it was relatively easy for me to do so as well, but in recent years as I've reconnected with friends back home, I've come to see that "leaving" was much more fraught and complicated for a lot of people than it was for me at 18. So Billy getting cold feet didn't seem as strange to me now as it might have at another time, even as part of me was still rooting for him to get on that train!

As a side note: all this talk of breaking away reminds me of the absolutely delightful film Breaking Away, which I highly recommend.

Nigeyb wrote: "^ Billy is on the cusp of maturity (though whether he'll ever make it is debatable). The book can be seen as his dawning realisation that he needs to put aside childish things and take life more se..."

Have you notice his change of speech "Where's me grandma" "Me dad", etc. ? Drastic change from "Gran", "The ol'man"...

Sara wrote: "plus he finally, perhaps, realises that the people in his life (family, friends, workmates etc) are not merely the scenery to his world - to be laughed at, feared, desired, etc - but individuals to..."

Liz is secretive about what she wants and what she does: she minds her own business and she does not want anyone knowing about her plans (we, the readers, don't have a clue of where she was those 5 weeks and why she's going to Doncaster instead of London with Billy). She's mature, she's in adulthood, she's had adventures. In her ideal world, she would want to marry Billy but far away from her hometown and live a life where no every person in town knows about every single step you make. This dream seems unachievable but she does not loose sight of what she wants and leaves the town of her own.

Billy want to go to the great city and become someone big so that everyone back home knows about how big he's become. He's looking for recognition. He's longing for adulation.
He's definitely not discreet about his plans and he likes to embellish reality (it's the least we can say). He wants to be an adult but he cannot act as one; he's stuck into adolescence for the time being. The last chapters of the book seem to make this clear: e.g.: he only went back home at night because he'd had nothing to eat, having totally ignored the repetitive phone calls at the pub.
By telling tales, he wants that everyone thinks how great and talented he thinks he is whereas he is surprised at how Shadrack or Duxbury find out about his thefts and repetitive lying. This just shows how childishly he constantly acts and, whilst he does not seem to learn the lessons from his errors (does he bring the calendars back to his employer, no he chucks them in the bin at the railway station), we (the readers) understand he's not ready to grow up yet. It is so obvious in the last pages of the book in the way he speaks to Liz "are you going, tell me you're going, you going with me". Obsessively repeating the same question, just as a child would do to get some sweets.

Sara wrote: "As a side note: all this talk of breaking away reminds me of the absolutely delightful film Breaking Away, which I highly recommend."

Thanks Sara - I'll follow up on that recommendation.

Billy want to go to the great city and become someone big so that everyone back home knows about how big he's become. He's looking for recognition. He's longing for adulation.

Such a good point. His sense of identity is still based on external recognition and how people relate to him. Liz has grown beyond that.

Sara wrote: "Billy want to go to the great city and become someone big so that everyone back home knows about how big he's become. He's looking for recognition. He's longing for adulation.

Such a good point. H..."

Thank you, Sara. Actually I loved Liz's character. I did not expect such a wonderful portrayal of a woman after having to deal for 2/3 of the book with the rather plain (desperate?) characters of Barbara and Rita (I liked the mother though).

Liz is an emblem for independence. Surely she'd have had some influence on the young David Jones.

I agree, her characterization was a pleasant surprise after the characterization of the other women in the story. I like that she's portrayed in this self-contained, self-assured way, and that we don't ever know where she was or what's she's doing... I wondered at first if we were supposed to read between the lines and infer that there's something shady going on with her in some way, but in the end I think her backstory is simply supposed to remain unknown to the reader, just as it remains unknown to Billy. It would have changed the tone of it somewhat if there was a big reveal as to what Liz was up to.