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The Alone to the Alone (Library of Wales) by Gwyn Thomas (21-Oct-2008) Paperback
First published in 1947, The Alone to the Alone unites Gwyn Thomas' lyrical and philosophical flights of narrative in a satire whose savagery is only relieved by irrepressible laughter. It is Gwyn Thomas' most shaped the underlying meaning of South Wales' history is not so much documented as laid bare for universal dissection and dissemination. The novel, with its distinctive plural narration, is a choric commentary on human illusion and knowledge, on power and its attendant deprivation, on dreams and their destruction. The Alone to the Alone is History as Carnival and, in Gwyn Thomas' unique voice, a comic vision of humanity that recognizes no geographical boundaries. This sporadic autobiography by the Welsh literary luminary provides some fine, lyrical jolly gloom and gloomy jollity along selected highpoints of the life journey.""-Kirkus Reviews
- GenresFictionPhilosophy
Paperback
First published April 11, 1988
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About the author
Gwyn Thomas
27 books9 followersGwyn Thomas (6 July 1913 – 13 April 1981) was a Welsh writer who has been called 'the true voice of the English-speaking valleys'.
Gwyn Thomas was born in Cymmer, Porth in the Rhondda Valley, the youngest of 12 children to coalminer Walter Morgan Thomas and his wife. His mother died when he was aged six, and he was resultantly brought up by his sister, often with handouts from the local soup kitchen.
After winning a scholarship, Thomas studied Spanish at the University of Oxford. Plagued by mysterious health problems, terribly poor and depressed, it was only after spending a summer and a term at the end of his second year at Complutense University of Madrid, thanks to a miners' scholarship, that he decided to complete his studies. Thomas was diagnosed at the age of 23 with an undiagnosed thyroid malfunction that had been poisoning him for years, which was operated on to avoid his death.
On graduation and wanting to be a writer, Thomas struggled to establish himself during the 1930s depression. He took on part-time lecturing jobs across England, while trying to get his novel Sorrow For Thy Sons published.
He married his childhood friend Lynn Williams in Pontypridd Registry Office on 5 January 1938. Failing to pass the British Army medical at the outbreak of World War II thanks to 20 years of smoking, he returned to Wales in 1940 and taught at the WEA. He then became a schoolteacher, first teaching French in Cardigan, and then Spanish in Barry at Barry County Boys School for 20 years.
Post war, his wife decided to send some of his short stories to three publishers, who all accepted the scripts for publication. Approached in 1951 by a BBC Radio Wales producer to write for the radio, he returned to his childhood memories of 1920s South Wales to create Gazuka!
A prolific novelist and short-story writer, he became a regular on chat shows such as the Brain's Trust, and after 20 years of teaching in 1962 he became a full-time writer and broadcaster, retiring with his wife to Peterstone.
However, due to a combination of diabetes, heavy drinking and smoking, his health began to fail in the late 1960s. In 1981 Thomas collapsed and was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where he died on 13 April, shortly before his 68th birthday
Gwyn Thomas was born in Cymmer, Porth in the Rhondda Valley, the youngest of 12 children to coalminer Walter Morgan Thomas and his wife. His mother died when he was aged six, and he was resultantly brought up by his sister, often with handouts from the local soup kitchen.
After winning a scholarship, Thomas studied Spanish at the University of Oxford. Plagued by mysterious health problems, terribly poor and depressed, it was only after spending a summer and a term at the end of his second year at Complutense University of Madrid, thanks to a miners' scholarship, that he decided to complete his studies. Thomas was diagnosed at the age of 23 with an undiagnosed thyroid malfunction that had been poisoning him for years, which was operated on to avoid his death.
On graduation and wanting to be a writer, Thomas struggled to establish himself during the 1930s depression. He took on part-time lecturing jobs across England, while trying to get his novel Sorrow For Thy Sons published.
He married his childhood friend Lynn Williams in Pontypridd Registry Office on 5 January 1938. Failing to pass the British Army medical at the outbreak of World War II thanks to 20 years of smoking, he returned to Wales in 1940 and taught at the WEA. He then became a schoolteacher, first teaching French in Cardigan, and then Spanish in Barry at Barry County Boys School for 20 years.
Post war, his wife decided to send some of his short stories to three publishers, who all accepted the scripts for publication. Approached in 1951 by a BBC Radio Wales producer to write for the radio, he returned to his childhood memories of 1920s South Wales to create Gazuka!
A prolific novelist and short-story writer, he became a regular on chat shows such as the Brain's Trust, and after 20 years of teaching in 1962 he became a full-time writer and broadcaster, retiring with his wife to Peterstone.
However, due to a combination of diabetes, heavy drinking and smoking, his health began to fail in the late 1960s. In 1981 Thomas collapsed and was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where he died on 13 April, shortly before his 68th birthday
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 7, 2012
The Dark Philosophers return.
Gwyn Thomas’s previous collection reviewed on this site introduced a group of men that sit on the wall in their village, discussing the day, their lives, their village. They were old men of the South Wales valleys, men whose voice is as distinctive as the landscape. The plot is simple: the people here are seeking employment, and when a local girl is given a chance she is granted new clothes and a make-up, and suddenly she draws the eye of a local boy, and throws it all away to be with him. The Dark Philosophers sense her stupidity and step into help, to put lives back on track, and to see all become right again in the world. Thomas’s voice, writing in a plural first person, is a eulogy to a lost world, a rhapsodising over love and lost love, lost lives, and is deeply darkly sardonic. It is as black as coal.
Those who read my review of The Dark Philosophers know how much I love Gwyn Thomas, and as with that book, it seems a shame to say much about it, for though its plot maybe simple, it is nuanced, and to know anything of it is to spoil it. Even Ian Rowlands in his introduction skirts around saying too much. Needless to say The Dark Philosophers are a wonderful creation, and the young lovers, Rollo and Eurona, foolishly naive – they are people we know, people we care about. Thomas’s view of South Wales, of The Terraces, are loving and scathing, and he has managed to create a whole world, a living breathing place. It is a testament to his powers that this slim volume contains more than many much longer works. His novels are ballads; they hold the songs of the valley.
“And we, for another interlude, went back to our wall, to trace the circular, intricate thoughts that came to us as the downsag of our half-baked being found comfort in the hard, shrewd upthrust of well-baked brick.”
As with The Dark Philosophers, The Alone to the Alone is published through The Library of Wales, and well worth your attention. A great novel from Wales’s greatest novelist.
Gwyn Thomas’s previous collection reviewed on this site introduced a group of men that sit on the wall in their village, discussing the day, their lives, their village. They were old men of the South Wales valleys, men whose voice is as distinctive as the landscape. The plot is simple: the people here are seeking employment, and when a local girl is given a chance she is granted new clothes and a make-up, and suddenly she draws the eye of a local boy, and throws it all away to be with him. The Dark Philosophers sense her stupidity and step into help, to put lives back on track, and to see all become right again in the world. Thomas’s voice, writing in a plural first person, is a eulogy to a lost world, a rhapsodising over love and lost love, lost lives, and is deeply darkly sardonic. It is as black as coal.
Those who read my review of The Dark Philosophers know how much I love Gwyn Thomas, and as with that book, it seems a shame to say much about it, for though its plot maybe simple, it is nuanced, and to know anything of it is to spoil it. Even Ian Rowlands in his introduction skirts around saying too much. Needless to say The Dark Philosophers are a wonderful creation, and the young lovers, Rollo and Eurona, foolishly naive – they are people we know, people we care about. Thomas’s view of South Wales, of The Terraces, are loving and scathing, and he has managed to create a whole world, a living breathing place. It is a testament to his powers that this slim volume contains more than many much longer works. His novels are ballads; they hold the songs of the valley.
“And we, for another interlude, went back to our wall, to trace the circular, intricate thoughts that came to us as the downsag of our half-baked being found comfort in the hard, shrewd upthrust of well-baked brick.”
As with The Dark Philosophers, The Alone to the Alone is published through The Library of Wales, and well worth your attention. A great novel from Wales’s greatest novelist.
July 8, 2014
'For fifteen years, off and on, mostly on, we've been losing hope, health, hair, teeth and, in one of the hard winters yet to come, toes as well so we won't even be able to kick the people we can't bite now'
There is some gorgeous writing in this novel and it's filled with a dark humour and sly wit. It's set in the south wales valleys in the1940s 1930s which is filled with unemployment and crushing poverty. There is a somewhat farcical/rompy element to the book (which i didn't go nuts for) but it also has great commentary on politics and equality and the search for a new life. I really enjoyed the time and the setting and am fascinated by Gwyn Thomas (I've been watching interviews with him on 'parky'on youtube) and would definitely read more by him as reading these books are a great way to have a deeper understanding of recent welsh history.
There is some gorgeous writing in this novel and it's filled with a dark humour and sly wit. It's set in the south wales valleys in the
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June 29, 2025Funny in parts and a vivid snapshot of a time and society from the mid-twentieth century that feels distant and not too far from a Soviet drama in terms of its absurdity... but equally British with all the morality and class politics.
February 26, 2014
It would be hard to read Gwyn Thomas' 1947 novel The Alone to the Alone and not admire his ability to conjure up phrases and sentences that dazzle with the kind of wit that can be biting and savage one moment and warm and endearing in another. This is a novel that displays his trademark prowess with language to the full and in which there is scarcely a page that doesn't ooze with black comic hyperbole.
And yet this isn't meant to be a novel purely of entertaining comedy. Thomas crafted it to illuminate the experience of life in the coal mining communities of South Wales during the grinding poverty of the 1930s. Set in a village community he calls simply The Terraces (a reference to the layout of housing in this part of Wales), the novel features the adventures of group known as The Dark Philosophers. They're four unemployed men who have nothing else to do but to sit on a wall each day to chew the fat. There are few subjects upon which they don't have an opinion: religion, imperialism, the profit motive, socialism; heredity and the vexed issue of Jonah and the whale are all topics upon which they feel equipped to pontificate. But love? Ah that's a different matter.
When a plain village girl called Eurona seeks their guidance on how to win the attention of the village idol (otherwise known as Rollo the bus conductor), they're both dismayed and stumped.
"That pricked us for we were proud of the little stocks of wisdom that life had battered into us with its bare knuckles. .... we were prophets of a sort whenever the discussion was about things of which experience and book reading had taught us much, particularly in discussions about the Slump. We were the oldest sons so to speak of the Slump..."
Even so, they rally around when Eurona gets a job as a domestic help outside of The Terraces and needs new clothes "because wealthy folk who hire other folk to do their dirty work are kept so busy organising a cleaner world that they have no time for anything other than first impressions."
Their attempts to help and to put her life back on track lead invariably to confusion and some magnificent set pieces including one when these philosophical giants end up plastering every conceivable wall and lamppost with advertising posters for a grocer with aspirations to build a whole chain of stores throughout the valleys. As they rest in the midst of their labours one afternoon a purplish, glowing path materialises around the corner: Eurona's father proudly parading in a new suit and bowler hat many sizes too big.
"It must, without any need for tape measure or question, have been the biggest bowler in the Terraces. ... His ears appeared to be closing in on him for they were large and made larger by the fact that when Morris was baffled beyond endurance, he had two of his children take one ear apiece and pull to make room with his skull even for the small simple thoughts that ached to have done with him as they tripped headlong in the narrow alleys of his prickly awareness. To fix the bowler at a point above his eyes he had stuffed several sheets of newspaper into it. This stuffing had been done in haste and clumsily. One strand with a legible headline about the birthrate came down over his brow as if to provide him with some quiet reading in the intervals of being admired and fainting from the strain of holding up on so slight a head a hat of such weight and size."
Such moments of humour offset the depth of Thomas' satirical take on the limits of human aspiration in a society so deeply deprived that beauty itself has been suffocated. For as one of Thomas' philosophers comments: ...."when men consent to endure for too long the sadness of poverty and decline, beauty sees no point in staying, bows its head and goes."
Gwyn Thomas was himself a native of the kind of valleys community featured in The Alone to the Alone. Born the youngest of 12 children to a coalminer, he managed to escape a life underground as a coal miner with the aid of a scholarship to study Spanish at Oxford University. Struggling to establish himself as a writer in the 1930s, he began teaching and lecturing. Success did not come until the early 1950s after which time he became a regular chat show participant and broadcaster.
And yet this isn't meant to be a novel purely of entertaining comedy. Thomas crafted it to illuminate the experience of life in the coal mining communities of South Wales during the grinding poverty of the 1930s. Set in a village community he calls simply The Terraces (a reference to the layout of housing in this part of Wales), the novel features the adventures of group known as The Dark Philosophers. They're four unemployed men who have nothing else to do but to sit on a wall each day to chew the fat. There are few subjects upon which they don't have an opinion: religion, imperialism, the profit motive, socialism; heredity and the vexed issue of Jonah and the whale are all topics upon which they feel equipped to pontificate. But love? Ah that's a different matter.
When a plain village girl called Eurona seeks their guidance on how to win the attention of the village idol (otherwise known as Rollo the bus conductor), they're both dismayed and stumped.
"That pricked us for we were proud of the little stocks of wisdom that life had battered into us with its bare knuckles. .... we were prophets of a sort whenever the discussion was about things of which experience and book reading had taught us much, particularly in discussions about the Slump. We were the oldest sons so to speak of the Slump..."
Even so, they rally around when Eurona gets a job as a domestic help outside of The Terraces and needs new clothes "because wealthy folk who hire other folk to do their dirty work are kept so busy organising a cleaner world that they have no time for anything other than first impressions."
Their attempts to help and to put her life back on track lead invariably to confusion and some magnificent set pieces including one when these philosophical giants end up plastering every conceivable wall and lamppost with advertising posters for a grocer with aspirations to build a whole chain of stores throughout the valleys. As they rest in the midst of their labours one afternoon a purplish, glowing path materialises around the corner: Eurona's father proudly parading in a new suit and bowler hat many sizes too big.
"It must, without any need for tape measure or question, have been the biggest bowler in the Terraces. ... His ears appeared to be closing in on him for they were large and made larger by the fact that when Morris was baffled beyond endurance, he had two of his children take one ear apiece and pull to make room with his skull even for the small simple thoughts that ached to have done with him as they tripped headlong in the narrow alleys of his prickly awareness. To fix the bowler at a point above his eyes he had stuffed several sheets of newspaper into it. This stuffing had been done in haste and clumsily. One strand with a legible headline about the birthrate came down over his brow as if to provide him with some quiet reading in the intervals of being admired and fainting from the strain of holding up on so slight a head a hat of such weight and size."
Such moments of humour offset the depth of Thomas' satirical take on the limits of human aspiration in a society so deeply deprived that beauty itself has been suffocated. For as one of Thomas' philosophers comments: ...."when men consent to endure for too long the sadness of poverty and decline, beauty sees no point in staying, bows its head and goes."
Gwyn Thomas was himself a native of the kind of valleys community featured in The Alone to the Alone. Born the youngest of 12 children to a coalminer, he managed to escape a life underground as a coal miner with the aid of a scholarship to study Spanish at Oxford University. Struggling to establish himself as a writer in the 1930s, he began teaching and lecturing. Success did not come until the early 1950s after which time he became a regular chat show participant and broadcaster.
April 28, 2021
A novel steeped in politics. But unlike a mere political narrative, Gwyn Thomas achieves a deeply felt account of the human cost of the industrial context with all of his characteristic humour that replays the bitterness and ironic farce of 'Oscar' and 'The Dark Philosophers'.
October 13, 2016
A humourously sly tale from the Welsh valleys which is set in the time period between the WW1 and WW2 and on the heels of the Great Depression. When four unemployed middle-aged men carry out an act of communal compassion they quickly become dishearteningly entangled in the soured revelation that their efforts have been wasted and their actions might (possibly) have a few consequences.
Gwyn Thomas offers a sharp, sarcastic witty wisdom to the dialogue of characters of Walter, Ben, and Arthur, as well as to the unnamed narrative voice. This narrative voice ingeniously uses the third person plural tense "we" emphasising the manner in which these four characters share their lives: a friendship group that have stayed together in hard times and can laugh at their dire economic situation. In many ways the inhabitants of the Terraces (Thomas' name for this anonymous Welsh valley village) look to these four characters in a manner not dissimilar to wise Welsh sages.
(And a big thanks to Parthian Books for treating me to a free copy.)
Gwyn Thomas offers a sharp, sarcastic witty wisdom to the dialogue of characters of Walter, Ben, and Arthur, as well as to the unnamed narrative voice. This narrative voice ingeniously uses the third person plural tense "we" emphasising the manner in which these four characters share their lives: a friendship group that have stayed together in hard times and can laugh at their dire economic situation. In many ways the inhabitants of the Terraces (Thomas' name for this anonymous Welsh valley village) look to these four characters in a manner not dissimilar to wise Welsh sages.
(And a big thanks to Parthian Books for treating me to a free copy.)
February 9, 2011
I just couldn't get through it....I didn't like the sentence structures, thought it ramble on a bit too much.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews