Going Away: A Report, a Memoir

by Clancy Sigal

The National Book Award–nominated masterpiece that deconstructs and redefines 1950s America and the existential road trip


The year is 1956, and a blacklisted Hollywood agent sets off on a cross-country adventure from Los Angeles to New York City. Along the way—stopping at bars, all-night restaurants, and gas stations—the twenty-nine-year-old narrator, at once egotistical and compassionate, barrels across the “blue highways” to meet, fight with, love, and hate old comrades and girlfriends, collecting their stories and reflecting on his own life experiences.

Driven by probing stream-of-consciousness prose and brutally honest self-analysis, Going Away is a sprawling autobiographical journey into a kaleidoscope of American mindsets; most significantly, that of its radical narrator. Crammed with acute social and political observations, this urgent novel captures the spirit of its times, so remarkably like that of today.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Travel, Literature

635 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Clancy Sigal was the child of a love affair between two idealists. His parents Jennie Persily and Leo Sigal were labor organizers. Jennie, a single mother, raised Clancy on her own. Chicago-born, he was an ordinary street kid until the army sent him overseas. He attended the Nuremberg war crimes trial, and then enrolled at UCLA where his classmates included the later Watergate conspirators, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Blacklisted by a movie studio, and chased by the FBI, he lucked into a job as a Hollywood talent agent for clients like Humphrey Bogart. He slipped into Great Britain as an illegal immigrant and had a years-long affair with the writer Doris Lessing. Intending only a tourist weekend, he stayed in London for 30 years where, as well as broadcasting for BBC, he collaborated with the ‘anti psychiatrist’ R.D. Laing in the care and feeding of “incurable” schizophrenics. Relocating to Hollywood, he co-wrote “Frida” (Kahlo) and the Hemingway love story “In Love and War”.

Reviews

[David R · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished reading this. I agreed with one of the other reviewers that you had to plug along through a lot of dross, waiting for a page of good prose. The snapshot into the 50's, the Left, the Labor Movement and McCarthyisim is priceless. The picture of the state of American society is great too, especially in comparison to "On the Road". Less appealing is the plodding writing style and the solipsistic, purile, sententious and basically odious protagonist/narrator. These could have worked as a kind of theme e.g. "Catcher in the Rye", except that the author seems not to notice it. Other people in the book did notice, and they kept asking the protagonist to please leave now! Ironically, early in the book the narrator mentions a writer whose style shows to much influence of writing for "The Movies". So much stuff happens to the protagonist on an average day that it's exhausting! So many, and such precipitous highs and lows! Everyone wants to confide in him, all the "girls" want to have sex with him! People want him to stay for dinner, then people want him to go! My overall feeling is that a great part of it is the most annoying kind of drunken, late night, dorm room bull session, followed by waking up in the morning and hating oneself. I recommend it for the history and the politics, and the angst, but it's a bit of a slog.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The obvious comparison here is to On the Road, but this reminded me, more often, of Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. Peopled with literally hundreds of characters, it's not just one story but a thousand. It's a novel made of digression, memoir and mini-bios. It also serves as a pretty good history of the leftist labor movement of the 40s and 50s.

[Frank Duke · Rating 1 out of 5]

An exceptionally hard book to read. Written in a stream of consciousness form popular in the 1950s, the semi-autobiographical book tells of a blacklisted studio agent's drive across country from Los Angeles to New York. He recounts stories of the former comrades in the Communist Party USA he meets along the way. Not my cup of tea.

[Paul Swithers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to digest at times. Riddled with awkward prose and narcissistic rants, this stream of consciousness trip through mid-century America is still fascinating for its revelatory view into the disintegration of the New Deal depression era workers-rights union movement.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting insight into the unions and people who ran them in the middle of the 20th century. I missed a story arc, but it was a good stream-of-consciousness memoir.

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1962 Going Away is the iconic road trip/political memoir by Clancy Sigal. In 1956 Sigal, a radical young blacklisted Hollywood writer, took off driving across the country from Los Angeles to New York City. Going Away is written in a stream of consciousness style and was a contender for the 1963 National Book Award. Along his road trip, Sigal talks with a wide variety of people about their political views and life itself.

This is one of those classic novels that marks a very specific time in history and a look inside the labor movement. Sigal does an excellent job capturing the political nuances of the period and the collapse of the American left, while trying to find meaning, and some humor, on his road trip. This book was originally called autobiographical fiction but since the subtitle is "a report, a memoir" clearly the material has always been based on Sigal's real travels. In fact, after writing Going Away, Sigal was said to be the "cartographer of America."

Stream of consciousness writing isn't easy for everyone to read, especially in memoirs, but the historical perspective, looking back at what he wrote, makes this an interesting. This is also a well written account. Anyone who is interested in political history and /or road trip novels of the mid century (Kerouac On the Road) will want to read Going Away now that it is being re released. Highly Recommended

Excerpt

www.scribd.com/doc/156022103/Going-Aw...

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of via Netgalley for review purposes.
http://www.netgalley.com/

[Rebecca Garcia · Rating 1 out of 5]

i'm marking this book as finished even tho I technically have a handful of pages remaining. I will read those pages because I've travelled this far with this book and i'm determined to make it thru. this book reminds me of the lure of gambling. how you keep plugging in those coins and once in awhile the stars align and you win a jackpot of coins back. you trudge thru pages and pages and then finally there's a page of very nice prose going on as your considerably well deserved reward. increasingly tho you tire of waiting for that return. I learned a few things from this book about the McCarthy years, prior, thru and just after that I hadn't been aware of previously but it's not a course of study i'd recommend anyone else follow. most of the time, even as i'm reading along trying to put this book to rest, i'm wondering why i'm still reading it which is about the best thing I can say here. there'd be more enjoyable ways to learn about that time frame i'm sure.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

magnificent! This is a political autobiographical novel..... Guy takes offer to drive a car from L.A. to NYC in 1956. He had been in the Communist Party. Khrushchev has just made his speech denouncing the crimes of Stalin. Our narrator visits friends and relatives and asks strangers who they will vote for in the presidential (Eisenhower or Stevenson) so he can discuss politics with them. He keeps up with the rebellion in Hungary on the radio. He is still a radical but has been critical of the CP and the Soviet Union for some time...Stream of consciousness. Perceptive view of the U.S. left...

[Ricky Kimsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Post War America

This memoir gives the reader a picture of what life in America was like after World War II. The author who was a Hollywood screen writer tells of his journey across America.

[Michael Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

awesome charting of the mid-20th century decline of the left in the form of a road novel

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story.