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Head to Toe
1986, American hardcover edition, St. Martins Press, NY. Novel, 187 pages, by the famous playwright Joe Orton, who was murdered in 1967, at the age of 34. His first play was broadcast in 1964. Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot established and maintained his reputation. His novel Head to Toe, was published in England in 1971. Interestingly, his film script, Up Against It, commissioned for The Beatles, never reached the screen; it was, however, published in 1978. Head to Toe is an Alice in Wonderland type of story for adults. Our hero falls in the clutches of Connie, a gender-bending policewoman. We meet grotesques, much eroticism, and a war between the Left and Right buttocks. This tour de force is not for the faint of heart. "Worthy of Swift."
187 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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159 people want to read
About the author
Joe Orton
46 books87 followersJohn Kingsley ("Joe") Orton was an English playwright. In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death in 1967, he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is now used to refer to something characterised by a dark but farcical cynicism.
Joe Orton began to write plays in the early 1960s. He wrote his only novel: posthumously published as Head to Toe, in 1959, and had his writing accepted soon afterward. In 1963 the BBC paid £65 for the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair, broadcast on 31 August 1964. It was substantially rewritten for the stage in 1966.
Orton had completed Entertaining Mr. Sloane by the time Ruffian was broadcast. The play premiered on 6 May 1964 directed by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage. It lost money in its 3-week run, but critical praise from playwright Terence Rattigan, who invested £3,000 in it, ensured its survival. Sloane tied for first in the Variety Critics' Poll for "Best New Play" and Orton came second for "Most Promising Playwright." Within a year, Sloane was being performed in New York, Spain, Israel and Australia, as well as being made into a film and a television play.
Orton's next work was Loot, written between June and October 1964. The play is a wild parody of detective fiction, adding the blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. It underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. Codron had manoeuvred Orton into meeting his colleague Kenneth Williams in August 1964. Orton reworked Loot with Williams in mind for Truscott. His other inspiration for the role was DS Harold Challenor. The play opened to scathing reviews. Loot moved to the West End in November 1966, raising Orton's confidence to new heights while he was in the middle of writing What the Butler Saw. Loot went on to win several awards and firmly established Orton's fame. He sold the film rights for £25,000 although he was certain it would flop. It did, but Orton, still on an absolute high, proceeded over the next ten months to revise The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp for the stage as a double called Crimes of Passion; wrote Funeral Games; wrote the screenplay Up Against It for the Beatles; and worked on What the Butler Saw.
The Good and Faithful Servant was a transitional work for Orton. A one-act television play completed by June 1964 but first broadcast by Associated-Rediffusion on 6 April 1967. The Erpingham Camp, Orton's take on The Bacchae, written through mid-1965 and offered to Rediffusion in October of that year, was broadcast on 27 June 1966 as the 'pride' segment in their series Seven Deadly Sins.
Orton wrote Funeral Games from July to November 1966 for a 1967 Rediffusion series, The Seven Deadly Virtues, It dealt with charity--especially Christian charity—in a confusion of adultery and murder. Rediffusion did not use the play; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company Yorkshire Television, and broadcast on 26 August 1968.
On 9 August 1967, Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at his home in Islington, London, with a hammer and then committed suicide with an overdose of Nembutal tablets. Investigators determined that Halliwell died first, because Orton's body was still warm. Orton was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, his coffin brought into the chapel to The Beatles song "A Day in the Life". Harold Pinter read the eulogy saying "He was a bloody marvellous writer."
In his hometown, Leicester, a new pedestrian concourse outside the Curve theatre's main entrance is named "Orton Square." John Lahr wrote a biography of Orton entitled Prick Up Your Ears in 1978. A 1987 film adaptation directed by Stephen Frears starred Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay.
Joe Orton began to write plays in the early 1960s. He wrote his only novel: posthumously published as Head to Toe, in 1959, and had his writing accepted soon afterward. In 1963 the BBC paid £65 for the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair, broadcast on 31 August 1964. It was substantially rewritten for the stage in 1966.
Orton had completed Entertaining Mr. Sloane by the time Ruffian was broadcast. The play premiered on 6 May 1964 directed by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage. It lost money in its 3-week run, but critical praise from playwright Terence Rattigan, who invested £3,000 in it, ensured its survival. Sloane tied for first in the Variety Critics' Poll for "Best New Play" and Orton came second for "Most Promising Playwright." Within a year, Sloane was being performed in New York, Spain, Israel and Australia, as well as being made into a film and a television play.
Orton's next work was Loot, written between June and October 1964. The play is a wild parody of detective fiction, adding the blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. It underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. Codron had manoeuvred Orton into meeting his colleague Kenneth Williams in August 1964. Orton reworked Loot with Williams in mind for Truscott. His other inspiration for the role was DS Harold Challenor. The play opened to scathing reviews. Loot moved to the West End in November 1966, raising Orton's confidence to new heights while he was in the middle of writing What the Butler Saw. Loot went on to win several awards and firmly established Orton's fame. He sold the film rights for £25,000 although he was certain it would flop. It did, but Orton, still on an absolute high, proceeded over the next ten months to revise The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp for the stage as a double called Crimes of Passion; wrote Funeral Games; wrote the screenplay Up Against It for the Beatles; and worked on What the Butler Saw.
The Good and Faithful Servant was a transitional work for Orton. A one-act television play completed by June 1964 but first broadcast by Associated-Rediffusion on 6 April 1967. The Erpingham Camp, Orton's take on The Bacchae, written through mid-1965 and offered to Rediffusion in October of that year, was broadcast on 27 June 1966 as the 'pride' segment in their series Seven Deadly Sins.
Orton wrote Funeral Games from July to November 1966 for a 1967 Rediffusion series, The Seven Deadly Virtues, It dealt with charity--especially Christian charity—in a confusion of adultery and murder. Rediffusion did not use the play; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company Yorkshire Television, and broadcast on 26 August 1968.
On 9 August 1967, Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at his home in Islington, London, with a hammer and then committed suicide with an overdose of Nembutal tablets. Investigators determined that Halliwell died first, because Orton's body was still warm. Orton was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, his coffin brought into the chapel to The Beatles song "A Day in the Life". Harold Pinter read the eulogy saying "He was a bloody marvellous writer."
In his hometown, Leicester, a new pedestrian concourse outside the Curve theatre's main entrance is named "Orton Square." John Lahr wrote a biography of Orton entitled Prick Up Your Ears in 1978. A 1987 film adaptation directed by Stephen Frears starred Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 18, 2014
I have read some pretty bizarre books in my time but Orton’s effort really takes top place. I have long been a fan of Orton’s works having read and seen his plays. I have even read his journals which I thought were fascinating.
In Head to Toe, Orton has us follow Gombold who travels around a rather large creature. Gombold meets up with an array of characters and situations from an assassination, to the war between buttocks and being in prison.
There is no easy way to classify this novel or what it is all about. It is quite difficult to review because when you finish it really is what the f*ck have I just read. The story and concepts are completely out there and you find yourself caught in a world that makes no sense at all. Yet the novel is compelling to read, easy to lose yourself in and for some explicit reason you want to know what happens to Gombold.
The one thing that I am sure of that is that Orton has lampooned people known to him and historical characters in this book. I am sure of that because the characters are all depicted as parasites on a host body. Orton really does poke fun and is quite cruel in his depictions of some of the characters.
The writing is concise and the descriptions are really wonderful. Orton’s imagination is running at full speed and you are carried into realms that come across as plausible.
I really enjoyed the novel and its many layers of puzzles. If you are looking forward to a novel with a standard beginning, middle and end then this will fail you dismally. If you are willing to take a chance, suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride, this will not disappoint.
In Head to Toe, Orton has us follow Gombold who travels around a rather large creature. Gombold meets up with an array of characters and situations from an assassination, to the war between buttocks and being in prison.
There is no easy way to classify this novel or what it is all about. It is quite difficult to review because when you finish it really is what the f*ck have I just read. The story and concepts are completely out there and you find yourself caught in a world that makes no sense at all. Yet the novel is compelling to read, easy to lose yourself in and for some explicit reason you want to know what happens to Gombold.
The one thing that I am sure of that is that Orton has lampooned people known to him and historical characters in this book. I am sure of that because the characters are all depicted as parasites on a host body. Orton really does poke fun and is quite cruel in his depictions of some of the characters.
The writing is concise and the descriptions are really wonderful. Orton’s imagination is running at full speed and you are carried into realms that come across as plausible.
I really enjoyed the novel and its many layers of puzzles. If you are looking forward to a novel with a standard beginning, middle and end then this will fail you dismally. If you are willing to take a chance, suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride, this will not disappoint.
February 3, 2015
Like if Kafka wrote Alice In Wonderland. Very funny, very surreal, very fun to read. For a book as unique as it is it sure has managed to fly under the radar for a long time. I was lucky enough to stumble upon the book accidentally. Highly recommended for fans of books that work on dream logic, stream of consciousness, surrealism, the work of Franz Kafka.
January 7, 2023
Head To Toe is a curious document, one of the handful of novels Joe Orton wrote before his violent death in 1967. None of those novels were published in his lifetime, and it's unclear whether Orton would have wanted this particular book published at all.
As it stands, it fits well with the late 1960's British counterculture, where drug-influenced randomness was incorporated into a number of art forms. Much of that material doesn't stand the test of time, and Head To Toe suffers the same fate. There are individual moments that shine with creative insight, as with this paragraph from the beginning of chapter 5, where the protagonist finds himself imprisoned in a privy:
"And then, he studied how he might liken this house of ordure to the world: first, the pissoirs - they were the mob, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle into infinity. And the lavatory pans were the politicians - there were fewer of them and these came in the same shape and size but not colour. The chains were artists and thinkers - pull one and release a fresh shower of water, cleaning away the shit. Industrialists were toilet paper - some of the cubicles (which he took to be countries) had too much, some hadn't any, in one he had to push his way through festoons of the stuff. These ideas flowered in him; his head almost burst; he did not know where they came from, they were inexhaustible."
But overall, the clever notion of human communities thriving on the living body of a giant (and the hero's exploration thereof) begins to get a bit repetitive. With no plot to speak of, Head To Toe is at times amusing and colorful, but ultimately it doesn't amount to much more than that.
As it stands, it fits well with the late 1960's British counterculture, where drug-influenced randomness was incorporated into a number of art forms. Much of that material doesn't stand the test of time, and Head To Toe suffers the same fate. There are individual moments that shine with creative insight, as with this paragraph from the beginning of chapter 5, where the protagonist finds himself imprisoned in a privy:
"And then, he studied how he might liken this house of ordure to the world: first, the pissoirs - they were the mob, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle into infinity. And the lavatory pans were the politicians - there were fewer of them and these came in the same shape and size but not colour. The chains were artists and thinkers - pull one and release a fresh shower of water, cleaning away the shit. Industrialists were toilet paper - some of the cubicles (which he took to be countries) had too much, some hadn't any, in one he had to push his way through festoons of the stuff. These ideas flowered in him; his head almost burst; he did not know where they came from, they were inexhaustible."
But overall, the clever notion of human communities thriving on the living body of a giant (and the hero's exploration thereof) begins to get a bit repetitive. With no plot to speak of, Head To Toe is at times amusing and colorful, but ultimately it doesn't amount to much more than that.
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April 18, 2021One of the most bizarre and unusual books I have ever read.
August 1, 2023
A fantastic playwright; in my eyes probably the best British dark comedy playwright of the 20th century, but this, his one and only novel, was a bit of a mess to be honest. I'll quickly forget it, and later in the year look forward to reading his diaries; getting to heart, hopefully, of who he was as a person.
December 11, 2009
'is there a way out of this wood?' gombold asked.
'it isn't a wood,' o'scullion said.
'is there no way out?' repeated gombold, already regretting that he had spoken.
o'scullion tapped the enormous trunk beside him.
'i expect you think this is a tree.'
'as a matter of fact i don't. it's a hair.'
'whoever heard of a hair seventy feet long. you must be simple.'
this remark was made in such an unpleasant tone that gombold turned and walked away.
'that path leads nowhere,' o'scullion called as he plunged into the undergrowth.
gombold came back.
'you may as well sit down.'
'which direction is best?'
o'scullion pushed the mattress into a hollow between the roots of the tree and lay down.
'it depends upon where you want to get to,' he said closing his eyes.
'i don't care.'
'then it doesn't matter which path you take.'
'but i want to get somewhere. i don't want to be lost in a wilderness for ever.'
o'scullion raised himself on one elbow.
'why are you asking me? do you imagine for one moment that i would be here if i knew the way out?'
'if we pool our resources we could help each other.'
'what a ridiculous suggestion. i have no resources. have you?'
gombold hesitated.
'no,' he said at last.
'then kindly don't waste my time,' said o'scullion lying down and closing his eyes once more.
'it isn't a wood,' o'scullion said.
'is there no way out?' repeated gombold, already regretting that he had spoken.
o'scullion tapped the enormous trunk beside him.
'i expect you think this is a tree.'
'as a matter of fact i don't. it's a hair.'
'whoever heard of a hair seventy feet long. you must be simple.'
this remark was made in such an unpleasant tone that gombold turned and walked away.
'that path leads nowhere,' o'scullion called as he plunged into the undergrowth.
gombold came back.
'you may as well sit down.'
'which direction is best?'
o'scullion pushed the mattress into a hollow between the roots of the tree and lay down.
'it depends upon where you want to get to,' he said closing his eyes.
'i don't care.'
'then it doesn't matter which path you take.'
'but i want to get somewhere. i don't want to be lost in a wilderness for ever.'
o'scullion raised himself on one elbow.
'why are you asking me? do you imagine for one moment that i would be here if i knew the way out?'
'if we pool our resources we could help each other.'
'what a ridiculous suggestion. i have no resources. have you?'
gombold hesitated.
'no,' he said at last.
'then kindly don't waste my time,' said o'scullion lying down and closing his eyes once more.
February 21, 2012
This is an extremely odd little book. I can't remember where I heard about it but it reminds me of other absurd fiction I've read--books like The Third Policeman and even Ridley Walker. The premise of the book is that the protagonist finds himself traveling over the body of a giant that supports various parasitic societies (such as the warring residents of Left Buttocks and Right Buttocks). He explores the territories while also finding himself caught in strange relationships. While hard to describe, I found the book surprisingly readable and compelling. I'll be very interested to see more reviews of this one.
March 18, 2019
Amazing how I've forgotten so many books and their content. I liked film and theatre portrayals of Orton's work, and biography etc I found fascinating if not pretty distressing: his murder by his lover. They lived not far from where I do now. Amazing how it was regarded in the 60's as shabby and rundown. There would be no change from millions on the property price now.
This book I don't recall beyond that it was weird..........maybe. I'll revisit; it's only 186 pages.
This book I don't recall beyond that it was weird..........maybe. I'll revisit; it's only 186 pages.
December 8, 2007
Weird nightmarish stuff. Ridiculous and angry.
December 10, 2020
Ugh. Orton was a much better playwright.
May 3, 2022
WEIRD! This reads like a dream, literally - one of those dreams where very strange things happen, but they seem normal at the time. Like a town where the residents spend part of the time as one sex and part as the other. Or the town where some people have horse's bodies and some have dog's heads. There's definitely some satire here, for instance, the queen, universally admired, who does not say anything at all without consulting her advisors. Or the revolution that breaks out where even the organizers don't know what they stand for. I'm not sure I would recommend this, but I'm not sorry I read it...
February 29, 2024
This book has such a fasted pace, imaginative narrative that i personally find too tiresome to follow. For example, in a series of a few sentences the main protagonist (a male) is convinced to be a woman, then decides he is again a male, then sets off to assassinate the president. With no background whatsoever about who anyone is, anyones motives and why this narrative is on a large giant human..
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 24, 2024
Very weird and very fun. If Alice in Wonderland and The Magic Faraway Tree had a crack-addicted love child.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews