Absolute Beginners is remarkable - a dream of a novel. It is fast-paced, sweet-tempered, open-hearted, a golden book in many ways – a paean to youth, to a future brimming with possibility, to a present that is lived vibrantly and joyfully. It is also about selling out, junkies, prostitution, and race wars. How can this be? I suppose it is all about point of view, and the protagonist’s perspective is the embodiment of Live Now and Love It. This is one of those rare novels that make the reader feel even more alive by reading it. The enthusiasm of its narrator was equaled by my enthusiasm of the world that MacInnes plunges us into headfirst. It depicts, it mocks, it leaps forward, it grabs your hand and carries you along.I was young once, gosh, just a decade or so ago. I lived a life full of punks, hippies, goths, ravers, djs, fags, dykes, trans girls & guys, straight guys who made out with other guys and straight girls who were angry and ardent feminists, vegetarians and vegans, girls who stripped for cash in dives and guys who waved their hard-ons for free in print, fighters and peacemakers, guys who carved symbols on their bodies and girls who dressed like vampire princesses; we lived in junked-out flats filled with too many people, we shared clothes and went on road trips and had neverending parties and made protests against the government and danced all night and consumed amazing amounts of booze and drugs and sex and live music. I read Absolute Beginners during that period, and one of the best things about this novel was that it felt completely real and true to me, despite the difference in social scenes that were separated by decades, by an ocean. It showed the true diversity available to people in their late teens, in their 20s; it illustrated – and so nonchalantly – values that were not just held dear, but were unspoken, values that defied the middle class and that were simply assumed to be shared by everyone we knew. To read oneself and one’s peers in a novel written in 1958 is something special, something wonderfully moving to contemplate, even many years later.What lifts Absolute Beginners above the idea that life for the young and unencumbered can be a great time, a fun carnival, is its complete awareness that this is also rather an illusion, and a crushingly temporary one at that. So many wonderful things can happen, so much excitement – and yet the world around this world still exists to be fought against. For me and my friends, that world to rail against did not just include asshole yuppies who came to our neighborhoods from time to time, it included police brutality, the WTO, the wars abroad. In Absolute Beginners, that world above includes race warfare. "Race" is clearly interwoven throughout the narrative, and yet it is one of so many things that the narrator is aware of, just one facet of the world that the narrator comments on... the reader could almost lose sight of it. But race and racism are there the entire time and slowly but surely become the whole point; by the end, the reader and the protagonist see how fragile a life full of living can be when the world is singling out his peers for destruction, and those peers are turning to him for alliance. The protagonist chooses, and chooses well. But it marks an ending of sorts, an ending of an attitude and a lifestyle, and the beginning of an understanding that no matter what he and his peers have built, he lives in the world still, as does everyone, and that world is one of both wonder and horror.
Lately I've been into mid-century books narrated by teenagers. While I was traveling in London a couple of weeks ago, I started reading Absolute Beginners about 1958 Notting Hill in the run-up to the race riots. Now I'm reading José Agustín's La Tumba, which was published in 1964 and follows a rebellious, literary teenager as he attempts to navigate the stiff, adult world of 1960s Mexico City. I realized why I'm finding these books appealing when I watched the recent documentary on JD Salinger, author of perhaps the most famous midcentury book narrated by a teenager, The Catcher in the Rye. All teenagers feel alienated from adult society — mostly because they refuse to succumb to the phoniness of it all. In order to become successful in life, you must accept a level of phoniness. You must learn to refrain from expressing certain opinions. You must master the art of sycophancy and tactical deference. Adult social interaction is, in the words of Irving Goffman, "theatrical performance." But teenagers aren't yet invested enough in their careers or communities to succumb to the phoniness. And so, refreshingly, they rebel against it. Teenage protagonists of novels are so appealing because, despite their insecurity and inexperience, they are authentic. They allow us to engage in the fantasy of doing and saying what we merely think because we're afraid of upset the theatrical performance of polite society.Throughout my week in London, I became increasingly attached to the nameless, teenage narrator. Absolute Beginners is the British equivalent of beatnik literature. But instead of depicting the jeans-and-t-shirt-wearing literary beats of the US, we're entreated to a ragtag cast of mods and teddy boys, the two rival youth subcultures of post-war London. The novel depicts youth culture in London through the eyes of a precocious, empathetic teenager in the run-up to the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. The book is great social documentary of London's complicated multicultural coming of age through the eyes of a narrator's personal coming of age. It's also excellent fiction with a Kerouac-like unorthodoxy of prose. If you're interested in learning more about the 1958 race riots, BBC as a good overview, and Stasy Adams and Nick Bentley have written academic pieces on MacInnes's portrayal of 1950s London in his fiction.
Do You like book Absolute Beginners (2001)?
Catcher in the Rye meets A Clockwork Orange. It's an interesting look at the advent of "the teenager" in London as a cultural phenomenon. Our narrator introduces us to various colorful characters as he move between various segments of London subculture in 1958, eventually ending up smack dab in the middle if the Notting Hill race riots. There's not much of a plot. The novel is much more Henry Miller-esque in that regard. But for Americans, it gives us an interesting outlook on what the fifties were like in a different part of the English speaking world.
—Jeff
I had to take some time to organise my thoughts on this. It's difficult to assess exactly what I think of a book that is so firmly set in and attached to a particular time and place. A further problem is that the time is a couple of decades before I was born and the place is the opposite side of the country. As a result, I have no idea if the events or the narration of Absolute Beginners are in any way authentic. I also don't really care. The narration really reminded me of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, not only because both books are narrated by disaffected youths but because there's also a similar rhythm and feel to it.I found the first half of the book less interesting than the last. While I enjoyed bouncing around the London mod scene, particularly the nicknames and commentary on the other characters, I never felt very invested in the narrator's on/off relationship with Suze and really didn't feel that there was much tension in it. The sections I enjoyed the most were the home visits with his family and the race riots that conclude the story. I felt that his conversations with his mother and father really showed the generational disconnect without being overly dramatic or cliched. Both the family and race riot sections are when the prose comes out of the setting and moves onto more universal themes. The race riot deserves its own special paragraph. This is the part of the book that I felt was truly great. The simmering tension that we feel before things start to get violent conjured up images from Spike Lee's masterful Do the Right Thing. Again we see themes and issues raised that are as relevant today as they've ever been. In particular, the way that racial tensions are exploited by tabloid media. Although the media featured here is print, today's TV news is every bit as bad and the tabloids are still what they've always been. The government and police are also criticised for their ineffectiveness, either through a lack of will or a lack of ability. The more things change...
—Gavin Smith
I first read this book some 30 years ago just before the Julien Temple movie starring David Bowie opened in the Cinemas. At the time, being a teenager myself, I liked the book very much because of its breezy description of British youth culture, esp. the ultra cool early Modernists. Of course, many of the themes that I liked when I re-read it were lost to me 30 years ago. This time around I found much more depth in the story that take place during four months at the end of the decade that saw the birth of the teenager as we know it today.The book has four parts that follow the life of the 19 year old narrator from June to September. The year is 1958 and the decade is coming to an end as are the teenage years of the narrator. To me, the four parts of the book are different in their theme.The first part, June, is a love letter to London that is transforming as old is giving way to modernist architecture and city planning. While the author/narrator welcomes this change, he is a Modernist after all, there is some nostalgia for values that seem to be vanishing along with the old buildings and neighborhoods of London. This is the strongest part of the book.July deals with the narrators family and laments what has become of his dad in the claws of his mother. This part has the weakest moments of the book but picks up when the narrator begins to sense that there is some serious trouble approaching. I really like the way in which the author creates the atmosphere of the looming threat with few hints.In August, the sinister forces have achieved what they wanted and the racial tensions have reached a breaking point. The narrator is very much of aware that these forces consist mostly of hooligans but he is ashamed that so many ordinary people do not want to take a stand against the hate mongers and some even seem to have sympathy for the racists.In September, the powder keg ignites and street fighting starts. The way the mob behaves and how ordinary people are drawn into the madness is very well described. Everyone has to take a stand and by doing so reveal what their true self is. Being a patriot the narrator cannot but despise what has become of his beloved England.To conclude, this time around I found the book to be a morality tale wrapped in a love letter to London rather than the action packed adventure of a cool Modernist cat that I so much enjoyed 30 years ago.
—Kimmo Sinivuori
