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Weekend in Dinlock
A soulful tour de force of the world of coal miners in Yorkshire, a way of life like no other
In this psychologically astute novel set in the boisterous South Yorkshire mining town of Dinlock, Davie, a young miner, paints to ease the mental and physical pain of digging coal, on his knees, two thousand feet underground. Sigal creates through Davie a microcosmic portrait of this backbreaking work, performed by men dedicated to social change. In close detail, Sigal illustrates their daily routines and surprising complexity—from the mines to the pub and back home.
Weekend in Dinlock offers an immersive account of the brutal work these miners endure and their life-affirming, sometimes violent ways of relaxing. This intensely realistic account recalls George Orwell and is illuminated by Sigal’s ability to convey working-class wit and a sympathetic yet brutalizing milieu, placing the reader in the mind and soul of the coal miner.
In this psychologically astute novel set in the boisterous South Yorkshire mining town of Dinlock, Davie, a young miner, paints to ease the mental and physical pain of digging coal, on his knees, two thousand feet underground. Sigal creates through Davie a microcosmic portrait of this backbreaking work, performed by men dedicated to social change. In close detail, Sigal illustrates their daily routines and surprising complexity—from the mines to the pub and back home.
Weekend in Dinlock offers an immersive account of the brutal work these miners endure and their life-affirming, sometimes violent ways of relaxing. This intensely realistic account recalls George Orwell and is illuminated by Sigal’s ability to convey working-class wit and a sympathetic yet brutalizing milieu, placing the reader in the mind and soul of the coal miner.
- GenresFiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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About the author
Clancy Sigal
18 books22 followersClancy 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”.
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April 28, 2024Sort of like if Conrad had set Heart of Darkness in a Yorkshire mining town. The horror!
I've heard people talk about the pride that British miners used to take in their work before, but Weekend in Dinlock conveys this idea with so much more depth: those working at the coal face, in particular, emerge here as a provincial-proletarian elite, forged in the squalid darkness of the pit. Sigal is also sensitive to how this highly developed, almost anarchistic workerism and disdain for non-miners can slide into small-minded xenophobia. The ambiguity of the character Bolton, a local trade union leader characterised at one point as a Stalinist monarchist, crystallises this point, as does the struggle of Davie, a version of the real life miner-cum-novelist Len Doherty, to reconcile his ties to the village with his artistic vocation.
Lighter and less substantial than some of the other working-class writing that was around at the time, Nell Dunn's Up the Junction is perhaps the best comparator. Also features thinly disguised fictionalisations of Edward Thompson and Doris Lessing.
I've heard people talk about the pride that British miners used to take in their work before, but Weekend in Dinlock conveys this idea with so much more depth: those working at the coal face, in particular, emerge here as a provincial-proletarian elite, forged in the squalid darkness of the pit. Sigal is also sensitive to how this highly developed, almost anarchistic workerism and disdain for non-miners can slide into small-minded xenophobia. The ambiguity of the character Bolton, a local trade union leader characterised at one point as a Stalinist monarchist, crystallises this point, as does the struggle of Davie, a version of the real life miner-cum-novelist Len Doherty, to reconcile his ties to the village with his artistic vocation.
Lighter and less substantial than some of the other working-class writing that was around at the time, Nell Dunn's Up the Junction is perhaps the best comparator. Also features thinly disguised fictionalisations of Edward Thompson and Doris Lessing.
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