Reading 1001 discussion

Our moderator is George.

Hi, looks like we're live now- thanks for joining in if you've gotten here. I actually didn't vote for this book in the poll, but it looks interesting and it's nice to be the first of your friends to read a Boxall occasionally, isn't it? But actually two of mine already have read this- Diane and Ian, they're such prolific readers- they both rated it four stars, which is encouraging because I think they have excellent taste.
I was able to borrow a copy a couple days ago from the university library here in Salt Lake City- a somewhat yellowed 1959 vintage copy. If you'r looking for one, I think thriftbooks.com has a couple of copies for sale cheap.
I've just read about 10% of the book so far so probably too soon for me to comment much, except to say that it seems like it will be fun to read, though it perhaps has some dark edges to it.
Who else has started? Share your thoughts in general to start off.

I have obtained a book, also very yellowed, but have not started reading yet.

OK Gail, this book did win the poll so there will probably be more readers soon, It may be a little difficult to obtain copies, I've read about 30% now and am liking it.
All the slang reminds me somewhat of Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting. Sometimes I understand the slang and sometimes not.

I have the book but I can’t get to it until I read a couple of other books but hope I have enough time to read it. I bought a kindle copy which was not expensive.

I will be joining in couple of days as soon as I finish other book.
I have a kindle version of Absolute Beginners. George, I feel already intimidated with this slang understanding. Hopefully, I'll get through it.

I think you can still understand 98% of the story without understanding the slang, so don't worry about that. I'll be watching for your comments even if it takes a month or two for you to finish the book.
The cost of the Kindle book is 3.99, yes rather inexpensive- the thriftbooks copies are about the same price if you prefer a paper one.

I will be reading a Kindle version, too.

I have started it and am really enjoying it, so far it is a lot of fun. Television arrived in New Zealand in 1961 and we mostly watched British shows so the language is familiar, although, of course, words are used in unfamiliar ways. And I was 15 in 1959 and I remember feeling so lucky that we were teenagers and had our own music, even if it was only for 30 minutes a week!

I am about 40% in, and enjoying it. The language is fun, and there are some very sly, humorous innuendos. I hope to finish today.

I just started it yesterday. I have a library ebook version.
First impressions are a slight bewilderment over the slang, although I'm starting to pick it up, and a certain bemusement that I am so old the protagonist would consider me way over the hill and on my way to the grave, and yet he belongs to a couple of generations before me and would an old man today. I also have the David Bowie song constantly stuck in my head. Which is ok. I like Bowie. And I believe this book is on his Top 100 Books list.

Pip wrote: "I have started it and am really enjoying it, so far it is a lot of fun. Television arrived in New Zealand in 1961 and we mostly watched British shows so the language is familiar, although, of cours..."

You probably have an advantage over the American readers with your greater familiarity with Brit slang. I didn't know that New Zealand didn't have TV in the 50s. Did Australia? I was born in the US in the early 50s and had TV in my early childhood.

Leni wrote: "I just started it yesterday. I have a library ebook version.
First impressions are a slight bewilderment over the slang, although I'm starting to pick it up, and a certain bemusement that I am so o..."

You reminded me by the Bowie reference that I wanted to point out if no one else did, that there had been a film made of Absolute Beginners ("a 1986 rock musical film based on the novel") which David Bowie did a song for. The song was more successful in the UK than in the US and more successful than the film, although I think there was a stage version also produced later. Bowie had a small part in the film having "... made it a condition of his musical contribution". You can watch him perform it on Youtube here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_cHv...

Songwriter Peter Weller had previously done a song with the book title, being a fan of the book, with his band "The Jam" and it was used in the US film "Grosse Pointe Blank", (starring John Cusak) which I liked a lot.

According to Wikipedia the slang term "Absolute Beginner: someone who is involuntarily sexless". I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think looking for a partner? A virgin?

George, thank you for the Bowie clip and the definition of Absolute Beginners.
I finished reading Absolute Beginners and was surprisingly impressed by the author's ability to make the narrator an arrogant teenager and a wonderfully empathetic soul bursting with life. As an American I am not familiar with the slang, the Nottingham race riots or the working class culture of London in the late 50's but nevertheless, I felt it came across as true to that time.

Four stars.
I found the book Absolute Beginners to be a vibrant depiction of 4 months in a London summer right before and during the Nottingham race riots. The narrator's stream of language is full of slang and inventions that are a treat to puzzle out but really it is his infectious enthusiasm for his own times that won me over. He is in love with London, a woman he calls Crepe Suzette and the Jazz music and scene of those times. He has no experience outside of London and as he is only 18 years old he is an Absolute Beginner at many things, including understanding the world. However, with the arrogant confidence of youth he knows that he has been born to a privileged moment in which his kind, i.e. teenagers, rule the world after decades of war and poverty had impacted the ambitions of generations before him. What started off as a bit of love story to Suzette, London and Jazz grew to reflect a moment of transition in both the narrator's growing up and in the culture of the time. The main character comes to understand a bit more about his emotions toward his parents and also his emotions toward his home town. He sees for the first time "countryside" and is astonished. He sees hate demonstrated for the first time and also is astonished. The plot is not complicated and many of the racial interactions made me cringe but the main character is at least attempting to do the right thing most of the time in regards his interactions with immigrants and people of color. I found it to be an unique snapshot of a moment in history even if it only reflected the author's love of that moment. Also, I absolutely loved the part when the elderly woman shop keeper protected the black people that were running away from the mob.

I just finished reading and must say I enjoyed the book very much. Although I was afraid of not being able to understand the slang, it turned out just fine. Once you realize that a cat is a man, and a member is a person you can follow the story. I had difficulty finding out that, for example, ear means hear, but pronouncing it out loud helped me a lot.
It is a positive story with loads of humor and wit, told by a teenager, a boy of 18 who thinks he knows everything and can rule the world. I loved his energy and enthusiasm, joined with wit and humor.
Still, faced with sickness of his father, love lost and in particular social uprisings around him, the main character becomes more realistic and grown up person. He is saying for himself that he advanced from the level of Absolute Beginner to the next one... I guess it is not only sexual (in)experience, but also life experience.

I was thinking all the time of the Bowie song, which I love very much. I was trying to see whether there is a link between the two. Thank you George for the explanation, I enjoyed the end of the book even more after you explained that there is a link between them.
My rating: 4 stars.

Television started in Australia in 1956 - I had to look that up! It started in NZ in 1960, but only in Auckland and it was only for a few hours in the evening for quite some time, so my children did not have the experience of specifically children's programmes much either. Most people preferred English programmes to American ones especially comedy,

So now I have finished the book and am impressed by how original and daring it would have seemed in 1959. Having said that I could probably cope with the slang there were things that puzzled me. I couldn't work out who the jazz singer Marie Bethlehem was nor the group Czar Tusdie. I wondered about whether other readers would pick up the cockney rhyming slang, such as Mrs Dale for the Daily Mail and references to the Suez Crisis. I thought the descriptions of London vivid and haunting. Our daughter bought a flat in Queens Park in the 1980's and over the next 14 years we visited frequently. Kensal Green is the next suburb and we walked many of the areas of North Kensington which MacInnes describes, particularly one summer when we took a flat in Shepherd's Bush and walked back and forth each day. I remember being shocked at how dirty and depressed looking London was on my first visit in 1985, even areas like Mayfair and South Kensington were surprisingly scruffy but gradually areas were spruced up, although there were still streets which were definitely dodgy abutting gentrified areas, just as MacInnes described.

Hello Pip, the makers of the movie believed that Maria Bethlehem was Ella Fitzgerald based on an actual concert she did before the riots. It might have been a play on “the First Lady”. I don’t have a clue about Czar Tusdie - it might be a play on King, as in BB King but I do not know

George wrote: "According to Wikipedia the slang term "Absolute Beginner: someone who is involuntarily sexless". I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think looking for a partner? A virgin? "

That seems a narrow definition. Probably a newer one linked to the "incel" movement. I haven't finished to book yet, but I get the impression that there's more to it than that in the way the term is used in the story. Teens are absolute beginners because they are just starting out, they are leading independent lives without any of the duties and baggage of adults.

George wrote: "Leni wrote: "I just started it yesterday. I have a library ebook version.
First impressions are a slight bewilderment over the slang, although I'm starting to pick it up, and a certain bemusement t..."

This is cool! Thank for the link!

I read this in the beginning of the year (it was on my Randomized Reading List - and yes, I am bummed that this act of participation made me lose an annual participation point since I don't have a crystal ball to predict future BOTM's). Here is a copy of my review from then:

"A coming of age story set in a very hip late-50's London. London seemed like a much cooler place then than the pre-British Invasion US of the same time frame. Of course I wouldn't know personally, since I wasn't alive then. I really liked the nostalgic vibe of the book. The descriptions were great and painted a vivid picture of Modernist London. I imagine it would be even more meaningful for those who had actually been there then. It seemed like a very dynamic time in history.

The main character is a teen-aged photographer. The book takes place over four separate days during 4 different months, culminating in the Notting Hill Race Riots. I found the story itself less than inspiring, but the atmosphere and snapshots of history compensated for a lot of this. The racist monikers used in the book made me uncomfortable, but according to some, that was apparently how people talked then. It would totally not be PC now. Aside from the racist nicknames, the main character portrays a favorable attitude toward minorities that does not seem to be shared by many other members of society during that point in history."

Diane you can claim your points for BOTM and take of your Randomised Book Point :)

I actually enjoyed this book more than I expected to as based on the blurb I was expecting a similar experience to Electric Kool Aid thank goodness this was a lot better although still not a book I particularly enjoyed.

The slang didn't bother me as I was familiar with most of it already including the cockney rhyming slang; the racist, sexist language did bother me and I had to keep reminding myself that this is a sign of the times in which it was written.

I didn't enjoy the early parts of the book but once we get to August and September I began to appreciate the narrator as a sympathetic character who appears to be out of step with his surroundings. I liked the way he judged people for themselves and not for their colour, sex, religion etc.

I should be finished in a few more days. I read perhaps too many books at once so I don't get through them very quickly. Thanks Pip for sharing some of your personal experience of London of old. I've never been there.
The discomfort of reading racist and sexist talk from characters is something I have seen come up before in Goodreads discussions. When a writer writes about characters who ARE racist and sexist, would we have him tone them down so as not to discomfort readers as much? Or would we have the writer avoid writing about such characters? When I grew up in Florida in the 50s and 60s, I saw restrooms signed "Colored", and most people I met were racist and sexist to varying degrees and to depict them otherwise wouldn't be accurate. I think we have to come to terms with the reality of that and learn from it when we read stories set in the 20th century. Maybe the realization that it was not so long ago makes it more uncomfortable than if it was in the 19th century.

George wrote: "I should be finished in a few more days. I read perhaps too many books at once so I don't get through them very quickly. Thanks Pip for sharing some of your personal experience of London of old. I'..."

I have started the book. Good points on racism, sexism. I think books need to fit their time periods and a book isn't always something that is comfortable.

Agreed, George. I don't get the sense that the author is racist, rather the contrary. It would be fairly impossible to write about the Notting Hill race riots without including racism. And that's not a part of history that should be buried.

I think the whole point of the racism was that our unnamed protagonist wasn't racist (not was Macİnness) but that so many people were, and that was what was being portrayed.

What makes me cringe with the language is not that the narrator is racist far from it, it is just the casual way the language is used in everyday life which was acceptable then but isn't now. I am sure in years to come words we use now will be unacceptable.

If a writer is specifically writing a racist/sexist character then the language they use doesn't bother me as that is who the character is, this casual use for me is worse as it shows how acceptable it was not so long ago.

I finished the book and while I was not a teenager during this time (I being about 5) this book captures the afterwar period, the birth of the teenager culture (Jazz/rock and roll). racial tensions and London's race riots. I think the book captures a full score for Legacy in capturing the spirit of the age it was written, mood of the time, and relevancy to then and now. I think the plot is rather limited, it is written in 4 parts, summer and really is one day in each of the months in our unnamed narrator who is approaching the end of his teenage years (they did end earlier then than they do now). It captures the issues of racial tensions, jazz, teenage culture, mod culture. Characterization is a bit stereotyped as even the use of slang names contributes but you have some very interesting characters; Hoplite (gay) for one.

Book wrote: "What makes me cringe with the language is not that the narrator is racist far from it, it is just the casual way the language is used in everyday life which was acceptable then but isn't now. I am ..."

Yeah, I get that. I'm in the last part of the novel now, and I think, this guy is clearly not racist, so why does he so casually say "spade"? Obviously no "political correctness" back then.
I've just finished the book. I rate it a four- minus overall. I liked the lively pace and the main character. I actually just edited the Wikipedia Article on Colin MacInnes to add a reference to David Bowie's appearing in the film of Absolute Beginners and recording the title song. It was noted in the article on the book but not the article on MacInnes. I did include references, which I just had to copy from the other article.