Stanley Middleton

Stanley Middleton (born August 1, 1919 in Bulwell, Nottinghamshire , † July 25, 2009 ) was a British writer who wrote more than 40 novels about the simple life in the English countryside and who received the Booker Prize for Holiday 1974 together with Nadine Gordimer as well as received great attention in literary criticism because of its high standards.

Life

Professional career and major literary works

The youngest of three children of a British Railways employee , after attending the High Pavement School in Nottingham, began a teaching degree at University College Nottingham , which he interrupted during the Second World War to work in the Educational Corps and the Royal Artillery of the British Army in India to serve. After the war, he continued his studies and after his teacher exams worked as a teacher at his old school, the High Pavement School, and most recently from 1958 until his retirement in 1981 as head of the department for the English language .

Although Middleton made his first attempts at writing while still a student, his debut novel A Short Answer did not appear until 1958. However, he then published a new book almost once a year.

The plot of Middleton's novels often set in Beechnall, his hometown of Nottingham, and often depicted the daily life of the British middle class such as teachers (like himself), lawyers , accountants , businessmen and architects . Mostly there was only one storyline.

One of his better known early works, Harris's Requiem (1960), is about a classical composer struggling to compose a masterpiece.

In 1974 he and Nadine Gordimer received the Booker Prize for his novel Holiday . In this book, the main character 'Edwin Fisher', a middle-aged education lecturer, has recently separated from his wife and spends time in an old-fashioned "1930s and sunshine shabby" eastern English seaside resort, where he has few conversations with strangers spends on the boardwalk, meets his in-laws, contemplates adultery, but then returns to his intelligent but unaffected wife. The “plot” of the book essentially takes place in the dialogues in Fischer's head, a dialogue in which the anger at his wife, his feelings of contempt, and intellectual superiority against the “people without culture and ingenuity” around him are his all too human weaknesses be juxtaposed: his sense of failure and his need for security. On the last page, although he is thinking of sexual intercourse, Fisher drinks a cup of tea with his wife and their parents and the narrator sums it up: “Nobody knew anything, Fisher decided”.

In 1979, he turned down the appointment of a member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) because, in his opinion, he would have done nothing to deserve it. Later, better-known books were The Daysman (1984), in which the head of a comprehensive school meets the demands of work and marriage with the lure of ambition, and Married Past Redemption (1993), in which the life of a newly married couple is contrasted with the experiences of older generations becomes.

In 1998 he became a member of the Royal Society of Literature before he published his memoir in 1999 with the title Stanley Middleton at Eighty . His last novel, Her Three Wise Men , was published in 2008. In addition, A Cautious Approach was published posthumously in 2010 .

Literary style and literary criticism

Middletan was concerned about what people feel, dream, hope, anger, frighten - all those things we try to suppress in real life under the guise of civilization. One literary critic has compared reading Middleton to “the tense listening of one ear to a radio that is turned down too low. At first you don't pay much attention, but very soon you slide into it ”('cocking an ear to a radio with the volume turned down low. At first you don't pay much attention but pretty soon you get drawn in').

The tone of Middleton's narratives may seem calm and the plot thin, but the subjects were universal. Each time its main characters wrestle with the question: "What do I do with my life?"

Through the protagonist in Small Change (2000), Middleton gave a covert defense of his art: The character describes a novel he has read “about a man who lives in the country. He milked his cows; he had to call a vet once; he continued to struggle with a cold; his wife had a hysterectomy ; he was concerned about the current state of agriculture; his only son received a place in the municipal grammar school ”('about a man who lives in the country. He milked his cows; he had once to call in the vet; he had to struggle on with the flu; his wife had a hysterectomy; he worried about the present state of farming; his only son won a place in the town grammar school '). He assumed that a critic who found the book "dreary" would likely find it more acceptable "if the author had the same dreary set in the Dordogne and Tuscany - or Zimbabwe ." But he felt “privileged to be able to empathize and present this not-far-away-from-normal life of the people you see on your next walk through the town” ('privileged to share or empathize with the not-very-out-of -the ordinary life of the sort of man I'll see next time I walk out of the village ').

The writer AS Byatt described Middleton's works “as an exact vision of real things as they are”. Ronald Blythe, of a review of the first edition of Holiday wrote suggested that "one in the literature of the 19th century must seek a similar narrative" ( 'one has to look at 19th-century writing for Comparable storytelling'). The fact that Holiday would not survive in today's publishing industry was demonstrated in 2006 when the Sunday Times weekly published the first chapter of the book to a number of leading publishers and literary agents. Only one of the agents showed interest - and not a single publisher or literary agent saw through the bluff .

Although his style of writing seemed old-fashioned, Middleton resisted ever newer literary developments in fiction.

more publishments

A Serious Woman (1961)
The Just Exchange (1962)
Two's Company (1963)
Him They Compelled (1964)
Terms of Reference (1966)
The Golden Evening (1968)
Wages of Virtue (1969)
Apple of the Eye (1970)
Brazen Prison (1971)
Cold Gradations (1972)
A Man Made of Smoke (1973)
Distractions (1975)
Still Waters (1976)
Ends and Means (1977)
Two Brothers (1978)
In a Strange Land (1979)
The Other Side (1980)
Blind Understanding (1982)
Entry into Jerusalem (1983)
Valley of Decision (1985)
An After-Dinner's Sleep (1986)
After a Fashion (1987)
Recovery (1988)
Vacant Places (1989)
Changes and Chances (1990)
Beginning to End (1991)
A Place to Stand (1992)
Catalysts (1994)
Toward the Sea (1995)
Live and Learn (1996)
Brief Hours (1997)
Against the Dark (1998)
Necessary Ends (1999)
Love in the Provinces (2002)
Garland's Letter (2004)
Sterner Stuff (2005)
Mother's Boy (2006)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Middleton, Stanley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British writer and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH	August 1, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bulwell , Nottinghamshire , England
DATE OF DEATH	July 25, 2009