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The Scottish Collection
A Green Tree in Gedde
A novel of youth and how three young men and a girl travel different roads on journeys of self-discovery.
- GenresFiction
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Alan Sharp
3 books2 followersAlan^^^Sharp
Alan Sharp was a Scottish novelist and screenwriter. He published two novels in the 1960s, and subsequently wrote the screenplays for about twenty films, mostly produced in the United States.
Sharp was raised in Greenock, Scotland, the son of a single mother, and he was adopted at the age of six weeks by Margaret and Joseph Sharp, a shipyard worker. His adoptive parents belonged to a Salvation Army church.
His first novel, A Green Tree in Gedde, was published in 1965 to acclaim and won the 1967 Scottish Arts Council Award. It was banned in Scotland for a time due to its sexual content. It was the first part of a proposed trilogy, and Sharp published the second novel, The Wind Shifts, in 1967. The third novel, which had the working title The Apple Pickers, was left incomplete when Sharp emigrated to Hollywood and focused on screenwriting.
When Sharp moved to Hollywood he said he was interested in writing detective and Western films. He wrote The Last Run, which he called "an attempt to use the melodramatic crime chase to deal with whatever the hero's preoccupations might be." He then wrote a series of Westerns, including Ulzana's Raid and Billy Two Hats. He called Night Moves "an attempt to use the classic detective format, the private eye, and then set him in a landscape in which he was unable to solve the case."
Alan Sharp was a Scottish novelist and screenwriter. He published two novels in the 1960s, and subsequently wrote the screenplays for about twenty films, mostly produced in the United States.
Sharp was raised in Greenock, Scotland, the son of a single mother, and he was adopted at the age of six weeks by Margaret and Joseph Sharp, a shipyard worker. His adoptive parents belonged to a Salvation Army church.
His first novel, A Green Tree in Gedde, was published in 1965 to acclaim and won the 1967 Scottish Arts Council Award. It was banned in Scotland for a time due to its sexual content. It was the first part of a proposed trilogy, and Sharp published the second novel, The Wind Shifts, in 1967. The third novel, which had the working title The Apple Pickers, was left incomplete when Sharp emigrated to Hollywood and focused on screenwriting.
When Sharp moved to Hollywood he said he was interested in writing detective and Western films. He wrote The Last Run, which he called "an attempt to use the melodramatic crime chase to deal with whatever the hero's preoccupations might be." He then wrote a series of Westerns, including Ulzana's Raid and Billy Two Hats. He called Night Moves "an attempt to use the classic detective format, the private eye, and then set him in a landscape in which he was unable to solve the case."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 18, 2019
Full of densely lyrical descriptions, particularly of the countryside around Greenock on the Clyde where it opens "A great field, bubbed and bronded....A small wind accomplished fluences of green, running swales, glossal licks".
The writing is Joycean in its sensuousness and at times even lubricious in its approach to life. The "West Coast Scottish preoccupation with guilt and sex and sin" appears to be much more physical than metaphysical.
This was the first of a projected trilogy, and as such, expansive and exploratory to begin with, dealing primarily with three young men and one young woman, friends and lovers or both. John Moseby, who is going to teach and going to write, appears to be the only one who is somewhat settled; he has married the innately prim Edna who often flinches with disapproval and distaste, just like her mother. John's escape will take him on the one hand to his first girl, resuming the old relationship, and second to talks with a minister.
Then there's Peter and Ruth Cuffee, brother and sister, whose incestuous attachment has been long standing and overtly indulged. They separate now, Peter to go to Paris via London with an old friend, the gentle, withdrawn Harry Gibbon, and after further erotic experiences and exposures, Harry comes back to look up Ruth while Peter stays on in Paris....
At one point these young men refer to themselves as existentialists and define the ""twin pillars of our existentialism"" as religion and sexuality.
The writing is Joycean in its sensuousness and at times even lubricious in its approach to life. The "West Coast Scottish preoccupation with guilt and sex and sin" appears to be much more physical than metaphysical.
This was the first of a projected trilogy, and as such, expansive and exploratory to begin with, dealing primarily with three young men and one young woman, friends and lovers or both. John Moseby, who is going to teach and going to write, appears to be the only one who is somewhat settled; he has married the innately prim Edna who often flinches with disapproval and distaste, just like her mother. John's escape will take him on the one hand to his first girl, resuming the old relationship, and second to talks with a minister.
Then there's Peter and Ruth Cuffee, brother and sister, whose incestuous attachment has been long standing and overtly indulged. They separate now, Peter to go to Paris via London with an old friend, the gentle, withdrawn Harry Gibbon, and after further erotic experiences and exposures, Harry comes back to look up Ruth while Peter stays on in Paris....
At one point these young men refer to themselves as existentialists and define the ""twin pillars of our existentialism"" as religion and sexuality.
September 8, 2011
I was attracted to this novel by a short review in the front pages of the Signet mass-market pb of'the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner'. I borrowed it from a local library and read it eagerly. I was only 17 and unable to appreciate the book's philosophy. All I remembered was the rather interesting incest sub-plot.
I read it again just this year at the age of 37 and immediately saw what Sharp was getting at. The restlessness of both 30-something John Moseby and the young Peter Cuffee stands in contrast to the more passive resistance put up by Peter's sister Ruth and Moseby's and Cuffee's mutual friend Harry Gibbon.
The novel begins with Moseby contemplating the barrenness of his marriage. Still, he refuses Gibbon's invitation to join he and Cuffee on a hitchhiking adventure. Moseby is a university student and aspiring writer... it seems too easy to view him as a representation of the author.
Gibbon is a gentle giant, a man slow in thought and slow to anger... He allows himself to be drawn along by Cuffee's manic restlessness and develops a romantic ideal of Ruth before ever meeting her.
Peter Cuffee is the central character, insanely confident in his own ability to come through any situation unscathed. He develops a minor attachment with Gerta, the wife of another man, but leaves her in pursuit of the equally narcissistic Uta... It is Peter's obsession with Uta and the mutual cruelty of their relationship that proves to be his undoing; both in this book and its sequel 'the Wind Shifts'.
It is hard to pinpoint Alan Sharp's position regarding his characters' behavior. He seems to condone both Moseby's adultery and Ruth and Peter's incest while at the same time condemning Gibbon's sexual ambivalence and Gerta's selfless devotion to Cuffee.
I read a review of these novels in a book on the attitudes towards homosexuality in modern Scottish fiction. Sharp was harshly judged as thoroughly homophobic and misogynist. I think that there are elements of both in 'A Green Tree in Gedde' and 'the Wind Shifts' but they are secondary to the essential premise of the novels which is the painfulness and loneliness of self-discovery.
I read it again just this year at the age of 37 and immediately saw what Sharp was getting at. The restlessness of both 30-something John Moseby and the young Peter Cuffee stands in contrast to the more passive resistance put up by Peter's sister Ruth and Moseby's and Cuffee's mutual friend Harry Gibbon.
The novel begins with Moseby contemplating the barrenness of his marriage. Still, he refuses Gibbon's invitation to join he and Cuffee on a hitchhiking adventure. Moseby is a university student and aspiring writer... it seems too easy to view him as a representation of the author.
Gibbon is a gentle giant, a man slow in thought and slow to anger... He allows himself to be drawn along by Cuffee's manic restlessness and develops a romantic ideal of Ruth before ever meeting her.
Peter Cuffee is the central character, insanely confident in his own ability to come through any situation unscathed. He develops a minor attachment with Gerta, the wife of another man, but leaves her in pursuit of the equally narcissistic Uta... It is Peter's obsession with Uta and the mutual cruelty of their relationship that proves to be his undoing; both in this book and its sequel 'the Wind Shifts'.
It is hard to pinpoint Alan Sharp's position regarding his characters' behavior. He seems to condone both Moseby's adultery and Ruth and Peter's incest while at the same time condemning Gibbon's sexual ambivalence and Gerta's selfless devotion to Cuffee.
I read a review of these novels in a book on the attitudes towards homosexuality in modern Scottish fiction. Sharp was harshly judged as thoroughly homophobic and misogynist. I think that there are elements of both in 'A Green Tree in Gedde' and 'the Wind Shifts' but they are secondary to the essential premise of the novels which is the painfulness and loneliness of self-discovery.
May 24, 2023
Wonderful story
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews