Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
The Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky trilogy is an amazing achievement, originally published as three separate books: The Midnight Bell (1929), The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934). In 1935, these books were first collected in one volume as Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky.The Midnight Bell (1929)Patrick Hamilton’s protagonist Bob, the waiter at a Euston pub called The Midnight Bell, has saved £80 (worth several thousands of pounds in today's money) in the bank through prudence and maximising his tips. Following a chance encounter with Jenny, a prostitute, and with whom he becomes obsessed, and believing he can change her, he becomes ever more reckless and desperate. Towards the end, Bob, realising the folly of his misadventure, concludes "that it had all come from him, and only the hysteria and obsession of his pursuit had given a weak semblance of reciprocation". Basically he'd been played.As with all the best books by Patrick Hamilton, in addition to a riveting drama, The Midnight Bell also provides a powerfully evocation of London - 1920s London in this instance. The character of Euston, the West End, Soho, and Hampstead, still recognisable to the modern Londoner are beautifully captured, especially the various pubs and cafes which feature so heavily in the story. The other aspect that rings true so authentically is the dialogue: whether this be the conversations between the regulars at The Midnight Bell, or the somewhat stilted and love lorn conversations between Bob and Jenny, or most powerfully a dreadful scene when Bob visits Jenny in the room she shares with two other prostitutes. The true horror of his situation dawns on Bob, who remains powerless to escape. Frequently these experiences are accompanied by boozing, and then appalling hangovers and self-loathing: clearly something about which Patrick Hamilton had already gained a thorough knowledge.The Siege of Pleasure (1932)The Siege of Pleasure is essentially a prequel to The Midnight Bell and the story describes Jenny's drift into prostitution. In common with Bob, Jenny is the architect of her own downfall. Patrick Hamilton again allows his characters moments of reflection and self-insight during which there are ample opportunities to escape their downward trajectory. It's a clever technique that had me hoping first Bob, and then Jenny, might escape. Like The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure is superb at bringing the era to life via numerous little details. In this novel, Patrick Hamilton wonderfully describes the household where Jenny gets a job as a live in maid and housekeeper. The two older sisters, Bella and Marion, who employ her, are fabulous creations. One of the novel's longest scenes takes place over a night out in a pub in Hammersmith. Needless to say, Patrick Hamilton nails both the pub's atmosphere, and the way the evening evolves as two women and two men, first meet and get to know each other as inebriation takes hold and inhibitions melt away. Jenny's descent into drunkenness is one of the best descriptions of getting drunk I have ever read. Patrick Hamilton also works in an incident of drunk driving - this following his own horrific accident at the hands of a drunk driver. In 1932, whilst walking with his sister and wife in London, Patrick Hamilton was struck by a drunk driver and dragged through the street. His injuries were devastating. After a three-month hospital stay, multiple surgeries (the accident ripped off his nose and left one arm mangled), and a period of convalescence, Hamilton suffered physical and emotional scars that would continue with him for the rest of his life. Some claim this contributed to his alcoholism. It certainly badly affected his self-esteem and he became very self conscious about the visible scars and loss of mobility. (His second play, To The Public Danger, commissioned by the BBC as part of a road safety campaign, was also an account of the carnage caused by drink driving).The Plains of Cement (1934)As with the other two books, The Plains of Cement works as a stand alone story, however the reading experience is even richer, for those that read the trilogy in sequence. When writing this book, Patrick Hamilton saw himself as a Marxist, and, in common with the previous books, part of the book deals with the limited options for someone with no capital. Ella, in addition to herself, has to support her Mother, and Step Father, from her meagre earnings at The Midnight Bell. She also acknowledges that she is a plain looking woman. Unexpectedly, she is courted by one her customers, Mr Eccles, an older man. Mr Eccles is at pains to point out he has Something Put By, and for Ella's benefit He's Letting Her Know (Patrick Hamilton again employing his customary "Komic Kapitals" to emphasise key phrases, and/or cliches, homilies etc). Mr Eccles is another of Patrick Hamilton’s monstrous males (which start with Mr Spicer in Craven House (1926), continue with Mr Eccles, and which reach its apogee with Mr Thwaites in The Slaves of Solitude (1947) (although perhaps Ralph Gorse tops them all in The West Pier (1952); and Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse (1953)). I digress, Mr Thwaites at first appears absurd, but quickly becomes more sinister, using his creepy and evasive conversational style, along with this financial independence to trap and coerce poor old Ella. He is lecherous and exploitative. However, Ella is not the naive fool he assumes, and is able to see through him. Some of the book's most appalling scenes are a result of Ella's internal thoughts on Mr Eccles' absurd conversation, conduct and attitudes. Anyone looking for a happy conclusion, to the trilogy, should look elsewhere. The final story continues the tragic arc of the previous books, and perhaps more distressingly - and unlike Bob and Jenny - Ella is not the architect of her own situation, she's a victim of circumstance. Ella is one of the most sympathetic characters ever created by Patrick Hamilton and this makes her tale even more affecting. This story confronts the loneliness and sorrow of existence and concludes that all we have is our humour and humanity to confront and counteract this cold truth. ConclusionWhilst Hangover Square may be Patrick Hamilton’s best-known London novel I think that Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky trilogy (in particular The Midnight Bell) is a key book in understanding his world view and the way he used his own life to inform his fiction. The Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky trilogy is a masterpiece. Each story works well on its own terms, however when combined it creates one of the ultimate London novels. The twilight world of ordinary Londoners, trying to get by, yet all too easily seduced or distracted by the capital's temptations before coming crashing back down to earth. Beautifully written, it unerringly captures the world of the London pub, and the desperate lives of many ordinary people in the 1920s and 1930s, from a writer who was familiar with this world and sufficiently skilful to capture its every nuance. Brilliant - but very, very bleak.
Nothing here that attracts undue attention; the narratives and themes are similar to many stories and movies that may seem even more fundamental or iconic, but-- there is something in the hapless characters Hamilton has rendered that makes it all worthwhile. Each of the three books is driven by a main character, but the overall structure, location and time-frame is the same and shared by all. The three central characters, Jenny, Bob, Ella-- all know each other, and their presence in the other character's timelines varies with whose story is being told. But no fireworks; no cross-cutting transitions or Rashomon-style point-of-view shifts here. No searing sheets of verbiage. Simple words, hard times. Gritty urban characters trying their best & worst in the London of the nineteen-thirties; a sort of Proto- Kitchen Sink/ Angry Young Men work, long in advance of those movements. Atmosphere and location are deftly sketched, in short confident strokes (the modern reader actually yearns for more): "It had rained during the night, and when Bob woke next morning he looked at the window and noticed with relief that the Universe had returned. By ten o'clock he was regarding yesterday as a kind of nightmare. It had been the fog. He had been frightened of the dark, and lost his nerve. In familiar weather everything was all right again... Again, at five to eleven, he left the house. The sky was blue, the wind was blowing, the sun was shining... Drains ran, the reflecting mud on the pavements was bright blue, bicycles were skidding, the wind smelt keen and bashed you in the face, slates glistened, and everything was washed and beginning again." There is humor, and it is a distinctly British, Kingley-Amis kind of satiric worldview; a set of pratfalls is almost always preceded by the protagonist's unerring recognition that just that is likely to happen. Inevitably, though, the humor is there as a buttress to the tragedy. Alcoholism takes its rightful place as a chief enabler here. And without doubt, Hamilton knows the score with alcohol, at a visceral level: "... All she could do now, if she really wished to go, was to get up and briefly and discourteously depart. But to one so long and arduously trained in the practice of pleasing strangers, to one so wary of her genteel dignity, so morbidly fearful of participating in the minutest dimension of a Scene, such a line of action was a practical impossibility. It looked as though she must stay.Over and above this, however, she found that half of her honestly decided to stay. As well as the courage, she lacked the pure inclination to go which she had felt a few moments ago. A new sensation had replaced it. A permeating coma, a warm haze of noises and converstaion, wrapped her comfortably around-- together with something more. What that something more was she did not quite know. She sat there and let it flow through her. It was a glow, and a kind of premonition. It was certainly a spiritual, but much more emphatically a physical, premonition of good about to befall. It was like the effect on the body of good news, without the good news-- a delicious short cut to that inconstant elation which was so arduously won by virtue from the everyday world. It engendered the desire to celebrate nothing for no reason."But it's not the deep feeling for the life that's here, (though for this reader, passages as exampled above rival Nelson Algren's work on addiction), nor the humor that offsets it. Hamilton is out to draw a kind of medieval altar triptych, with all the planes of sanctity and damnation represented unapologetically. This is the story of those not born of privilege, who must play the game with Luck as the only arbiter, in a world where the odds are stacked against them.
What do You think about Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky (2004)?
c1935: FWFTB: pub, prostitute, barmaid, sleazy, desires. I would probably put this book on one of those lists that try and profile books that do/did not deserve to go out of print. Many of the 'classics'. I think, have been preserved because of their inclusion into the multitude of required reading lists when taking English Literature but I doubt this book would have cracked the nod simply because of its subject matter. I found it fascinating but, at the same time, depressing. Contemporaneous, no imagining what life was like is required- this shows, unrelentingly, what it was like for the people of a certain class during the time between the wars. There is some tongue in cheek humour and I think that Mr Hamilton used capital letters (as some authors now use Italics) to indicate some of this. " Those entering the Saloon Bar of "The Midnight Bell" from the street came through a large door with a fancifully frosted glass pane, a handle like a dumb-bell, a brass inscription "Saloon Bar and Lounge," and a brass adjuration to Push. Anyone temperamentally so wilful, careless, or incredulous as to ignore this friendly admonition was instantly snubbed, for this door actually would only succumb to Pushing. Nevertheless hundreds of temperamental people nightly argued with this door and got the worst of it."
—Ruth
You know that feeling of giddy pride you get when you feel like you have discovered an author? Such a "discovery" is, of course, ridiculous. If the author's been published then many other readers have most likely been there before you. Still, I feel like I just discovered Patrick Hamilton for myself. It just turns out that Doris Lessing discovered him, too. Then Sarah Waters. Nick Hornby compared his discovery with chancing upon a new best friend. When I first read the back cover to this collected edition of three linked novels written in the late 1920s/early 1930s I really didn't think it would be my kind of bag at all. Desolate lives set in desolate pubs in grim grimy Soho. Right, I thought, some sodden 1930s version of Bukowski. But I couldn't have been more wrong. The three novels drop us in a failed love triangle seen from all angles, each novel focusing on a different character. Bob falls in love with Jenny, a prostitute; Jenny doesn't really love Bob because she has her own life troubles to deal with; and Ella loves Bob, but Bob doesn't really notice her at all. Again, as a plot descriptor this was not something I would have necessarily gone for. What got me, though, in the end is the writing throughout. Writing in a Woolfian era, Hamilton is not that kind of stylist, but he captures character like few writers I've ever read. There is a master class in here on character creation and character development. And engulfing, gripping plotting. I've been struggling to put in words what I love about Hamilton, but I have fallen for him, and I look forward to reading more. So glad I discovered him.
—David
As this is a trilogy, I will rate the novels individually.The Midnight Bell (Four Stars): The pub scene is here, but is in the background. In the foreground is the torturous relationship of a waiter and a prostitute. It is a meticulous description of the willful self-destruction that comes with a bad relationship. The ending, however,is weakened not so much by events, as by a rushed and moralizing tone.The Siege of Pleasure (Three Stars): This is the story of the prostitute the waiter falls for, but there is virtually no overlap with The Midnight Bell. The descent into alcoholism depicted in this novel seems pedestrian compared to Hamilton's otherwise excellent work on this theme.The Plains of Concrete (Five Stars): I think the testament to a writer's talent is how well he or she writes about average people. With no quirks, mental conditions, or violent upheavals to rely on, the writer must be patient and subtle. This novel is about the barmaid Ella, who is in love with the waiter of The Midnight Bell. It is the story of a muted life. The only distracting element of these novels, particularly the final one is Hamilton's use of capitals to emphasize ideas that loom large in the characters minds. I understand the importance of honouring the author's original composition, but in this case I would happily see them edited out.
—Chris
