The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

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A stage adaptation, written by Archie Hind and directed by David Hayman, was performed in 1984 by the Scottish agitprop theatre company 7:84. That is fine, I have no objection to learning what Socialists feel about poverty or anything else, I have certainly learned it now. What bothered me is that every time our main character, Frank Owen opened his mouth it was to tell us once again about Socialism. Instead of getting me more and more interested as the book goes on it makes me want to cry out "no, not again"! I would feel the same way if each time I walk out of my house one of my Christian brothers or sisters started telling me about going to church. It also made me wonder if every time someone comes near me do I start telling them about Christmas. I'll have to pay attention to what I'm saying for awhile. Here are some of Owen's beliefs we get to hear over and over again: Tressell was the pen name of an Irishman, Robert Noonan; he took it in honour of his trade, painting and decorating. Last year I adapted his masterpiece as a play which was performed at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre then at the Chichester theatre festival. The idea to do the adaptation came from its director, Christopher Morahan. He says of the novel: "It's the antidote to the double dip, what it's like to be working or not as the case may be, funny, true, angry and timeless. It changed my dad's life as it did mine."

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With surgical skill, and sometimes without the tenderness of foreplay, the reader is sand-blasted. Bleak tales of desperate poverty unfold in minute detail. You are immersed in and become part of the drama in ways that feel immediate and uncomfortabe. As you read, you may occasionally need to set the book aside and compose yourself. This isn't real, it's just a story! ... or is it? This is an ideological book, and it is a work of fiction. Part of me believes that fiction and ideology make bad bedfellows. Part of the reason for that is that fiction nearly always allows (and frequently implies) an ironic reading, and ideology doesn’t really expect that and so is undermined by not seeing the possible ironic reading. But this book is perhaps a little too didactic to allow an ironic reading.Since I read this book, I have been suggesting it to everyone I know but I can never ever tell them what is so good about it, it's just a fantastic book. I first came across this while reading the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole - a "sacred text" of mine when I was about 12. Adrian, wanting to be an intellectual, had got hold of the book but - I think - wasn´t sure he wanted to read a book about badly dressed stamp collectors. Now this book itself has become something of a sacred text to a lot of people and - finally getting around to reading it at 44 years young - I can see why. I’ve had a long and somewhat strange relationship with this book. My father asked me to read it when I was about 11 and I started it, but must have only read the first couple of chapters. All the same, and that was over 40 years ago, I remembered bits of it as I read it again this time. In 1979 Jonah Raskin described The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists as "a classic of modern British literature, that ought to rank with the work of Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and James Joyce, and yet is largely unknown... Tressell's bitterness and anger are mixed with compassion, sympathy and a sharp sense of humour." [12] According to David Harker, by 2003 the book had sold over a million copies, and had been printed five times in Germany, four in Russia, three in the United States, and two in Australia and Canada; it had also been published in Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch and Japanese. [3] Adaptations [ edit ] What we call civilisation—the accumulation of knowledge which has come down to us from our forefathers—is the fruit of thousands of years of human thought and toil. It is not the result of the labour of the ancestors of any separate class of people who exist today, and therefore it is by right the common heritage of all. Every little child that is born into the world, no matter whether he is clever or dull, whether he is physically perfect or lame, or blind; no matter how much he may excel or fall short of his fellows in other respects, in one thing at least he is their equal—he is one of the heirs of all the ages that have gone before. [11] Critical reception [ edit ]

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Paperback) - Waterstones The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Paperback) - Waterstones

One of the characters, Frank Owen, is a socialist who tries to convince his fellow workers that capitalism is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him, but their education has trained them to distrust their own thoughts and to rely on those of their "betters". Much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and the others, or more often of lectures by Owen in the face of their jeering; this was presumably based on Tressell's own experiences.Another interesting aspect is the portrayal of organised religion, and its role in a struggling community, which could make uncomfortable reading for some people of faith.