Entry into Jerusalem

by Stanley Middleton

John Worth is a painter with a genuine calling, and a real gift. But he seems in some sense subdued. His radical girlfriend has a ready she tells him that his work will never come to more than decoration if he does not infuse it with social meaning, political meaning. Because she is a substantial person he has to consider what she says, and it hurts-he's just not the man for the job. Stubbornly, instinctively, Worth resists. His dealer's advisor has glimpsed something in Worth's paintings that has made him buy, quietly, a number of the works for himself. He pays a visit to the artist, and suggests that he do something violent, if only as an experiment. Battered by this time, he agrees to think about it. He paints a picture airless as a De Chirico, and filled with the symbols of destruction. His friend denounces what seems to her to be the pornography of violence with no human reference, a mere icon of death. Worth understands that the judgment touches not only the work but his character. He is angry and disheartened.
His life becomes disordered, unhappy. But somehow, in his trouble and loneliness, he finds himself breaking new ground. He has always been workmanlike and steady. Now he works endlessly, with a pertinacity that looks like rage, as he begins to see his way. And as his art changes, his life is not spared the accidents of mortality. His girl leaves him, a good friend has a breakdown and kills himself. But within a year a big London exhibition of his work is arranged, the precocious climacteric of his life and art-best expressed in the violent shock of one large canvas, a modern Christ's entry into a modem Jerusalem, bringing not peace but a sword.

Genres: Fiction

172 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Stanley Middleton wrote 45 novels, including 1974's Booker Prize-winner Holiday. A Cautious Approach was his last novel.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in 1993. These are the notes I made at the time:
This is the first book of his I’ve read, though apparently he’s written a ‘score’ of them. Very quiet book, no action in any sense of the word really, and barely any plot: just a slowish, peaceful moving along of a few events that would hardly count as anything in the local news let alone the world’s eyes. The big events actually occur after the book is finished and we only something of them because the writer flashforwards. Lots of dialogue, well characterized stuff, too. Only a handful of characters, probably less than ten. The climax has hardly any great momentum, and almost seems like a petering out of the story, such as it is. Very little is rounded off, except for a couple of the female characters – these people carry on their lives long after we’ve finished reading about them. And revelations about their lives are suddenly thrown in, long into the story, things that other authors might have placed early in the piece.

[Steve Freyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant writer, my dad went to school with him says he used to help him with his homework (yes dad course you did). but check him out Nottingham known for lawrence and Sillitoe but I think Stanley Middleton is as good