The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

April 12, 2017

April 12, 2016

His Guardian obituary describes the plays that led to a knighthood for Arnold Wesker (May 24, 1932 to April 12, 2016):

....
Chicken Soup With Barley (1958) tells the story of the Kahn family, antifascist East End Jews fighting Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in 1936. Roots (1959), set in a Norfolk family, celebrates the gradual move towards independence of Beatie Bryant, an early feminist prototype. Both opened at the Belgrade theatre in Coventry and the Royal Court in London. The trilogy was completed at the latter when the first two were presented alongside I’m Talking About Jerusalem (1960), in which Ada Kahn, the daughter of the Chicken Soup family, engages in a back-to-the-land experiment in Norfolk.

The trilogy plays were steeped in the socialism of Wesker’s childhood, hymning mass education and attacking fascism. They also reflected his experience of London and life outside it: Beatie was inspired by Doreen Bicker, a chambermaid at The Bell Hotel, Norwich, where Wesker was working as a kitchen porter. He gave her the nickname of Dusty, because of her “gold-dust” hair, and an Arts Council bursary of £500 covered the cost of their marriage in 1958.

Wesker became known for his social optimism: he was the nearest Britain had to a Clifford Odets. .....

Critics lauded Wesker’s epics and, although the plays were seen to be occasionally didactic, they were praised as realistic celebrations of working-class life. They presented areas of Britain that had never been seen on the stage.

.....
Wesker’s texts were revolutionary for their time. He was the young, working-class Jewish writer, lionised by a middle-class theatre in a state of flux. He rejected the label of “angry young man”, saying of this period that he was “a happy young man”. There was money, there was recognition, there were audiences hungry for his work but, as he was soon to admit, he would become an angry old man.
.......

Born in Stepney, he grew up in Fashion Street, Spitalfields, in a working-class family. His mother, Leah (nee Perlmutter), a passionate communist, was born in Transylvania. His Ukrainian father, Joe, was a tailor’s machinist. Wesker was devoted to his mother and had great sympathy for his father, a little Chaplin of a man with a strong tenor voice, who detested tailoring. As a teenager, Wesker wrestled and boxed with his father. His Yiddish-speaking parents influenced his development as a self-taught writer, and inspired the Kahn family in the trilogy.

Wesker always had trouble with authority, and this caused problems in his career. His mother taught him that humility was not a trait to be encouraged. “Somebody says something you think is silly, you don’t sit back,” he said in 1994. “You say something. It is not very wise, especially in the theatre.” He inherited Leah’s fierce personality: it fuelled his life-force and his anger with the theatre establishment.

He was educated at the Jewish infants school in Commercial Street and at Upton House school in Hackney. In 1948, he started what was to be a long line of jobs. He was apprentice to a furniture maker, a carpenter’s mate and a bookshop assistant before undertaking his national service in the RAF (1950-52). ....

In 1959, Wesker was named the most promising playwright of the year by the Evening Standard. A single-act version at the Royal Court that year of The Kitchen was followed in 1961 by a full two-act production and a film version by James Hill, with James Bolam making his movie debut. In 1966, The Kitchen became a hit off-Broadway, starring Rip Torn. It was the first play that Wesker wrote, in 1957: eventual performances in 50 centres around the world included a musical version in Japan in 2000.

Six Sundays in January
(1971) is not one of his famous works. Therein we find an affecting picture of an old woman:

Old woman, Sophie, entering basement flat on a winter evening. Wears thick glasses, stumbles three times before reaching switch. Sophie. Tibby, Tibby, Tibby! Silly name for a cat. Where ever did she get to, I wonder. Did she eat what I left. Yes, she's eaten that. Tibby, Tibby! Come and talk to me....
(long wait) I don't even like cats...

The reception of Six Sundays in January was an example of the neglect Wesker complained about in later years. But he wrote steadily, regardless of the attention he received.

In 1996 he wrote Blood Libel, a Norwich Playhouse commission. This play, together with The Merchant, explored a Christian society infected by antisemitism. Blood Libel is about William of Norwich, a 12-year-old whose murder in 1144 was attributed to the Jews. This rumour resonated throughout medieval Europe. As Wesker sought to underline with this drama, the medieval Christian fantasy of the Jew as child-murderer was an element that contributed in part to the Holocaust. In his review of The Merchant, Michael Billington wrote, “Wesker’s point comes across clearly: that anti-Jewish prejudice is ingrained in English life.” Both plays examine the past and also seem to suggest that little has changed...

Despite his early success, by 1997 his new work was still on the margins:
When God Wanted a Son had its premiere at Hampstead’s tiny New End theatre. This play hinted at what was happening in his own life. As a result of Wesker’s affairs, Dusty and Wesker were estranged and Wesker went to live in Wales.
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Although he never joined any political party, and admitted to never having read Marx or Lenin, Wesker was clearly of the left. As he wrote in his autobiography, As Much As I Dare (1994), the Jewish youth movement Habonim was his only political involvement apart from a few teenage months in the Young Communist League. He joined the antiwar group Committee of 100 and, after a demonstration, was imprisoned with Bertrand Russell.

Wesker was a European self-made intellectual who refused to flatter the theatre elite. Had he learned diplomacy, his career might have suffered less. However, had he sought to please he would never have written texts that were so challenging to the dominant English historical narrative. His distinctive achievement lay in reminding audiences that Jews are an essential part of British history and in presenting a vibrant working-class dynamic that was radical for its time.

He was welcomed back in his later years, and in 2006 was knighted. ....He was happy to return to the top table, but angry that his later work was neglected by a new generation of directors.
........
In his autobiography, Wesker comes across as an emotional, impulsive man with high nervous energy and an elevated libido. Yet, despite the marriage fracture, Dusty remained Arnold’s wife, and his carer in his final years. He had three children with her: Lindsay (named after the director Lindsay Anderson, who championed Wesker’s work), Tanya and Daniel. He also had a daughter, Elsa, with a Swedish journalist, Disa HÃ¥stad. Towards the end of his life, he lived peacefully with Dusty at their home in Hove, East Sussex.

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