English Lit > Book > Sam Selvon’s “The Lonely Londoners”

The Lonely Londoners is all about voice, the narrative tone full of despair, empathy and, ultimately resignation. The book holds together like life, like it’s characters; loose and without much structure or purpose, and Moses, the narrator, is telling us a story about himself and his “boys” reflected off the pavements of London at a time when the fabric of British society was being rent with change and every little isolated world within the city was floating along a little helplessly, crashing into one another creating a morass of conflict, uncertainty, and inescapable fascination for the people inhabiting it.

Author Sam Selvon pulls the book along, marking passage of time by stringing together a series of vignettes of characterization, illustrating the personalities and experiences of each of the men within Moses’ close circle of friends and needy hangers-on. The book begins with Moses in isolation, traveling to a meeting with a new “test” from Trinidad, whom he’s been asked to look out for. Through this new man, nicknamed “Galahad” we are introduced to a hard, alien London full of unknowns. Moses himself instills a level of caution in young Galahad, and so the story sets off into an exploration of London through the told experiences of the various men in this small community. 

Selvon, as the stories of each man begin to weave themselves together, comes to a place where each character is now familiar to his readers, and as time has passed, brings them into a community as represented by their attendance at a “fete”, or dance party organized by Harris, an established and more fully assimilated man, originally from Jamaica but adopted into Trinidadian  (and eventually British) society (The Lonely Londoners 102). At this point the characters have obviously found a place in the milieu of London, integrated on many levels, but still facing a stiff resistance by whites.

The most remarkable passage in the book begins when summer comes again to the city and the author launches into a free-flowing stream of consciousness that embodies the emotion and being of Moses and his boys –  action and reaction; the rubbing of shoulders and sex and culture and ideas, hopes and aspirations, revulsion and acceptance (The Lonely Londoners 92). 

Moses comes to realize, like his community, that he is changed and has made change in his little part of London. There is no going back, no return to the sun and blue sky of his old home, only the continuation of his part in the new life, “brown” as it is at times. He and his boys can no more leave London as they can forget where they came from. They are woven into the city. Selvon tells his story, it is the story of all of the West Indians in London and it doesn’t need more than the simple voice of Moses to become poignant and lasting.

Bibliography:

Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners, London: Penguin Books, 2006

Newton, over easy

Alright – here goes. I’m an English major, artist, designer, and photographer in Canada who’s decided to finally start a blog – but who hasn’t?

I don’t know if I’m different from anybody else, but I have ideas I want to put out and this is better than a traditional journal because you have the chance of feedback, good or bad, that will inform your writing and your ideas. Which I think is the whole point of a blog.

I have a lot of ideas. A lot. And sometimes I have opinions – usually the kind that lean toward more freedom, less disparity, more tolerance, less hate. In the course of my writing here I’ll present you with ideas, observations, English assignments for your review, and my own brand of politics and philosophy. You get to present me with your ideas, responses, and probably criticism, all of which I can use to explore the world.

I hope to put together a book and add writer to my resume so I will be bouncing some of my literary ideas off the board here too, which will help me explore my subject matter.

I hope to be enriched and I hope to help enrich the readers who might happen upon this blog, and for that I thank you right here and now. Without all of us stirring the world up we would have no real culture, and no reason to be curious either.