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Towards the End of the Morning
Michael Frayn's classic novel is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street, John Dyson, a mid-level editor, dreams wistfully of fame and the gentlemanly life -- until one day his great chance of glory arrives. But does he have what it takes to succeed in the exciting world of television?
244 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
Michael Frayn
119 books248 followersMichael Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. His works often raise philosophical questions in a humorous context. Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
June 13, 2020
The Council Estate
Before the internet in Britain, there was a thing called Fleet Street. This was as much a culture as a location. It sat culturally and geographically midway between the commercial city of London and the seat of government in Westminster. It produced something called newspapers, an artefact that had political and commercial importance. But it was adept neither at managing nor governing its own affairs. It was trapped by its technology and its traditions and was slowly suffocating. But while it lasted it produced characters as intriguing as those of Dickens; in fact most of them would have felt quite at home in Dickens’s London.
And Michael Frayn can do cultural comedy just about as good as Dickens. Towards the End of Morning (one of several titles the book has accumulated) rates with The Pickwick Papers in its appreciation of the idiosyncrasies of a passing culture seen from the inside. Like Dickens, Frayn was a journalist in his youth who also saw the limitations of the profession. And like The Pickwick Papers, his book is an institutionally posthumous record of the days when the only thing Fleet Street had little interest in was itself and its painful forthcoming demise.
Frayn seems at home regardless of genre - stage plays, drama, and here genuine but gentle English comedy. To the extent the book is about anything of general interest, I suppose it recounts how we all fiddle with daily trivia as Rome burns around us. What else can anyone do but fall in line with silly, archaic aspirations, suffer annoying neighbours, maintain peace with one’s colleagues, and avoid drinking too much at lunch. The mysteries of what goes on in the editor’s inner sanctum, much less the rest of the world, are unfathomable.
Journalists, like philosophers, pretend to know a great deal. In fact, if they’re good at their jobs, if they “write like an angel”, they need to know very little about anything. At least that was the case once upon a time. Perhaps now they don’t even need to do that. Since they’ve all moved out of Fleet Street to make way for the likes of Goldman Sachs the Third Estate seems to have gone even further downmarket.
Before the internet in Britain, there was a thing called Fleet Street. This was as much a culture as a location. It sat culturally and geographically midway between the commercial city of London and the seat of government in Westminster. It produced something called newspapers, an artefact that had political and commercial importance. But it was adept neither at managing nor governing its own affairs. It was trapped by its technology and its traditions and was slowly suffocating. But while it lasted it produced characters as intriguing as those of Dickens; in fact most of them would have felt quite at home in Dickens’s London.
And Michael Frayn can do cultural comedy just about as good as Dickens. Towards the End of Morning (one of several titles the book has accumulated) rates with The Pickwick Papers in its appreciation of the idiosyncrasies of a passing culture seen from the inside. Like Dickens, Frayn was a journalist in his youth who also saw the limitations of the profession. And like The Pickwick Papers, his book is an institutionally posthumous record of the days when the only thing Fleet Street had little interest in was itself and its painful forthcoming demise.
Frayn seems at home regardless of genre - stage plays, drama, and here genuine but gentle English comedy. To the extent the book is about anything of general interest, I suppose it recounts how we all fiddle with daily trivia as Rome burns around us. What else can anyone do but fall in line with silly, archaic aspirations, suffer annoying neighbours, maintain peace with one’s colleagues, and avoid drinking too much at lunch. The mysteries of what goes on in the editor’s inner sanctum, much less the rest of the world, are unfathomable.
Journalists, like philosophers, pretend to know a great deal. In fact, if they’re good at their jobs, if they “write like an angel”, they need to know very little about anything. At least that was the case once upon a time. Perhaps now they don’t even need to do that. Since they’ve all moved out of Fleet Street to make way for the likes of Goldman Sachs the Third Estate seems to have gone even further downmarket.
May 22, 2011
Fictional account of journalists working on Fleet Street. I liked it, don't get me wrong but Frayn's updated introduction was more enjoyable than the whole book. The first couple of chapters were fine concentrating on the journalists on Fleet street & gave a pretty good rendition of how newspapers worked - not to mention the long pub lunches, but the end pretty much petered out with the domestic lives of the main characters, and recounting of John's airline screwup of his Persian Gulf trip. I guess I was hoping for more action, more journalistic action. Dialogue and characterisation were good. The end was just a bit meh. Having worked at Fairfax in the 80's this seems incredibly slow, almost Victorian & tame to me, except for the guy dying at his desk and noone noticing (which could have easily happened in the Fairfax reading room)!. In any case I really wanted to give this 4 stars - the writing was good enough, there just wasn't enough plot.
1 of 25 books bought today for $10 (the lot).
1 of 25 books bought today for $10 (the lot).
January 23, 2010
This novel, originally written in 1967, is an icredible capture of Fleet Street in London at the end of the 1950s. Fleet Street was the centre of newspapers and this is set in the crosswords section of an unnamed paper. It preserves an era of journalism that is both well dead and lovingly missed. Frayn is a marvelous novelist who got his start in newspapers and there is a quality of nostalgia about the book that is quite moving. As with all of Frayn's work it is about something and something else as well. It is about the practice of journalism and about the inevitable dissapointments of life. The story is filled with marvelous characters and wonderful set pieces.
July 15, 2018
Divertido, incluso he soltado un par de carcajadas
July 16, 2010
On the cover of my copy of "Towards the End of the Morning" is a quote from Christopher Hitchens: "The only fiction set in Fleet Street that can bear comparison with 'Scoop'."
That’s a nice blurb. But I don’t know how one would go about comparing the two novels. Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 classic, following an accidental foreign correspondent covering a civil war in Africa, is a satire of sensation journalism. Michael Frayn’s 1967 novel, on the other hand, is a thoroughly domestic affair and doesn’t even have much to do with London newspapering. The plot follows two newspaper editors – John Dyson and Bob Bell – who stumble through their lives in various states of drunkenness, despair and confusion. Dyson tries to get on TV and does battle with his garbage-throwing neighbors; Bob sucks on toffees and drifts toward marriage to an anxious young woman he doesn’t seem to like very much. Frayn, best known as a playwright, luxuriates in sterotypical English social awkwardness and class pretensions.
To be sure, it’s very funny, especially if you like your comedy with a wicked strain of melancholy running through it.
That’s a nice blurb. But I don’t know how one would go about comparing the two novels. Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 classic, following an accidental foreign correspondent covering a civil war in Africa, is a satire of sensation journalism. Michael Frayn’s 1967 novel, on the other hand, is a thoroughly domestic affair and doesn’t even have much to do with London newspapering. The plot follows two newspaper editors – John Dyson and Bob Bell – who stumble through their lives in various states of drunkenness, despair and confusion. Dyson tries to get on TV and does battle with his garbage-throwing neighbors; Bob sucks on toffees and drifts toward marriage to an anxious young woman he doesn’t seem to like very much. Frayn, best known as a playwright, luxuriates in sterotypical English social awkwardness and class pretensions.
To be sure, it’s very funny, especially if you like your comedy with a wicked strain of melancholy running through it.
April 5, 2024
Selbstfindung eines jungen Autors, der im Verlauf des Romans sein Talent für den Boulevard entdeckt.
Das erste realistische Drittel erschien mir fast schon als Roman ohne Handlung, bei dem allenfalls die Charaktere das Interesse wach hielten, ehe das Werk in die üblichen Modi des 60er-Boulevard verfiel.
Ausführliche Rezi später
Das erste realistische Drittel erschien mir fast schon als Roman ohne Handlung, bei dem allenfalls die Charaktere das Interesse wach hielten, ehe das Werk in die üblichen Modi des 60er-Boulevard verfiel.
Ausführliche Rezi später
February 6, 2017
Really quite a likeable period piece, this. I came to it after Andrew Marr mentioned it in 'My Trade' as capturing the atmosphere of Fleet Street in its slow declining days. I'm surprised it was never made into a series. Think: Lucky Jim crossed with a reliable seventies sitcom.
Touches upon class (this being the age of grammar school boys rising and toffs donning gangster accents); TV (feels very accurate), gender (lots of her indoors) and domestic (the ambition to buy somewhere crap and for the area to pick up was there 50 years ago). Oh and the booze - the endless lunchtime booze. There's a prototype of Marsha, the terrorising landlady from Spaced here too in the form of Mrs Mounce. I also like the early glimpses of a more modern London: those meals on 'a biryani' and eating a 'Cypriot'.
A little slapstick towards the end, but feels like a classic of sorts. Like a run of 'The Good Life', say. Gentle, comic and - impressively - not in the least bit irritating.
Touches upon class (this being the age of grammar school boys rising and toffs donning gangster accents); TV (feels very accurate), gender (lots of her indoors) and domestic (the ambition to buy somewhere crap and for the area to pick up was there 50 years ago). Oh and the booze - the endless lunchtime booze. There's a prototype of Marsha, the terrorising landlady from Spaced here too in the form of Mrs Mounce. I also like the early glimpses of a more modern London: those meals on 'a biryani' and eating a 'Cypriot'.
A little slapstick towards the end, but feels like a classic of sorts. Like a run of 'The Good Life', say. Gentle, comic and - impressively - not in the least bit irritating.
June 29, 2012
This book reeks of newsrooms smells from before computer screens and photo-setting - anyone who worked in newspapers of that era would recognise not just the characters and the events, but the wasteful, unworldly pace of journalistic life before proprietors were replaced by shareholders and the double tsunami of broadcasting and the internet swept away print journalism as it once was. This book is funny and farcical. And more than a little sad for some of us....
August 26, 2019
Perfect example of its type - a realistic portrayal of a very English sensiblity of woolly-minded middle-class liberal floundering through life. You just want to take each of the characters in turn and give them a good shake! Achingly well observed and with dialogue of the highest order, and just slightly tipping over into caricature - enough to make it hilarious, but not so far as to sever its links to painful reality. Modern Classic.
September 17, 2018
Novela sobre el mundo del periodismo de la vieja escuela. Escrita a mitad del siglo XX, ha sido muy fácil disfrutar con su humor irónico y sarcástico.
http://miviajeliterario.blogspot.com/...
http://miviajeliterario.blogspot.com/...
May 16, 2012
There’s a quote on the back of my edition of this book from a review in The Spectator which reads: ‘A sublimely funny comedy about the ways newspapers try to put lives into words.’ Let’s break out our blue pencil: funny, yes. This is a very funny book. Sublimely? Not in the Burkean sense, no. And the newspaper bit? No, it isn’t really about that at all. In fact the quote is flat-out wrong in that respect. Which is odd, because this is commonly described as one of the great novels about the pre-Murdoch, pre-digital era of British journalism. And yet there’s actually very little journalism in it. In fact, there’s arguably more of the late nights and typewriters and boozy lunches and printing presses and overbearing unions in the author’s introduction to this edition, which came many years later. After all, this was published in 1967 – how was he to know at the time that we’d one day feel nostalgic for all that junk?
Actually what it resembles now is an early slacker novel. The protagonists, John Dyson and his colleague Bob, work in the obscure department of a fictional newspaper. They mostly spend their time in the pub or complaining or sleeping or eating toffees when they ought to be working. And then John goes home to his wife and kids in a leaky old house and Bob goes home to a damp bedsit and the unrequited affections of his landlady and a slightly unhinged relationship he’s having with an undergraduate who is maybe half his age. That's basically it. It's character-driven, but it's hardly social realism.
Their work lives are dull and their personal lives are dull. But what lifts this novel above the average is the writing; it has an ingenious, imaginative, glimmering edge to it, often most serious even when it is being so damn funny. It has a somewhat skewed approach to approaching the world through metaphor that so many other books of this author’s generation have (I’m thinking in particular of Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’ here) where it’s almost like certain images come to dictate the existence of the characters beyond what we would normally expect in a realistic novel. It’s not only that metaphor is defined by the subjective experiences of the characters here, but it’s as though the literary device is an experience which is waiting out there in the world for these slightly dull and perfectly ordinary men to stumble across it.
Here is Bob in bed:
‘Bob felt himself swooping down again into the great soft darkness of sleep. Somewhere down there he stubbed himself against an ill-defined but hard mass of fact, and brought himself up to the surface to examine it…’
‘...Bob tried to remember why he hadn’t told her...But he couldn’t really remember the reason. It was already lost – part of the jetsam of discarded immemorabilia which disappeared astern all the time. From hour to hour one’s life slipped away into the haze, before one had really looked at any of it properly...
‘He looked at his watch in the firelight. It was a quarter to twelve. Well, it felt like four. And four and a quarter hours later, when it actually was four, and the bedclothes both above and below were a mere conglomerate heap, and Tessa’s strapping behind had pushed right across the bed, and Bob was cold and stiff from hand to foot, and had neither been asleep nor awake for a moment, it felt as though the solar system had finally run down and stopped, and closed off the ever-renewing spring of pure, fresh time for good and all...’
This is good stuff: on one hand, the English comic tradition in the vein of Wodehouse with the flashes of clever wordplay amongst the select concrete details; but then you also have this intriguing reflectiveness with its roots in all the kind of dirty Joycean unpleasantness that Wodehouse would never have even dared write about. For all its humour, this really is a dark novel. Perhaps its defining image remains that of a frantic Dyson in its opening pages, apparently set in a deeply weird nether-London where: ‘the sky grew darker and darker as the morning wore on’ – ‘Oh God!’ he exclaims, ‘Will somebody please put the lights on in here before we all go blind? I honestly think I’m heading for a crack-up in this place.’
All this is interesting because we don’t usually associate the sixties with this kind of thing. These narratives of boredom. I mean, we’ve basically reduced 1967 to the Summer of Love, and there’s little or nothing of that world in this book: at one point Bill goes to a nightclub with some people and there are fleeting references to a short-skirted doe-eyed vaguely Dusty Springfield-alike pop singer, but all our man can muster is a vaguely envious kind of disinterest. Dyson has dreams of fame, but in truth the author’s heart is closer to Bill’s: what’s awful to him is not so much his jealousy that these incredibly flat and slightly weird people are in the music biz or on television as it is that they’re actually doing something with their lives. It’s that same old, same new feeling of having reached one’s mid-thirties with nothing to show for it and yet being surrounded by horribly youthful talent.
Actually what it resembles now is an early slacker novel. The protagonists, John Dyson and his colleague Bob, work in the obscure department of a fictional newspaper. They mostly spend their time in the pub or complaining or sleeping or eating toffees when they ought to be working. And then John goes home to his wife and kids in a leaky old house and Bob goes home to a damp bedsit and the unrequited affections of his landlady and a slightly unhinged relationship he’s having with an undergraduate who is maybe half his age. That's basically it. It's character-driven, but it's hardly social realism.
Their work lives are dull and their personal lives are dull. But what lifts this novel above the average is the writing; it has an ingenious, imaginative, glimmering edge to it, often most serious even when it is being so damn funny. It has a somewhat skewed approach to approaching the world through metaphor that so many other books of this author’s generation have (I’m thinking in particular of Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’ here) where it’s almost like certain images come to dictate the existence of the characters beyond what we would normally expect in a realistic novel. It’s not only that metaphor is defined by the subjective experiences of the characters here, but it’s as though the literary device is an experience which is waiting out there in the world for these slightly dull and perfectly ordinary men to stumble across it.
Here is Bob in bed:
‘Bob felt himself swooping down again into the great soft darkness of sleep. Somewhere down there he stubbed himself against an ill-defined but hard mass of fact, and brought himself up to the surface to examine it…’
‘...Bob tried to remember why he hadn’t told her...But he couldn’t really remember the reason. It was already lost – part of the jetsam of discarded immemorabilia which disappeared astern all the time. From hour to hour one’s life slipped away into the haze, before one had really looked at any of it properly...
‘He looked at his watch in the firelight. It was a quarter to twelve. Well, it felt like four. And four and a quarter hours later, when it actually was four, and the bedclothes both above and below were a mere conglomerate heap, and Tessa’s strapping behind had pushed right across the bed, and Bob was cold and stiff from hand to foot, and had neither been asleep nor awake for a moment, it felt as though the solar system had finally run down and stopped, and closed off the ever-renewing spring of pure, fresh time for good and all...’
This is good stuff: on one hand, the English comic tradition in the vein of Wodehouse with the flashes of clever wordplay amongst the select concrete details; but then you also have this intriguing reflectiveness with its roots in all the kind of dirty Joycean unpleasantness that Wodehouse would never have even dared write about. For all its humour, this really is a dark novel. Perhaps its defining image remains that of a frantic Dyson in its opening pages, apparently set in a deeply weird nether-London where: ‘the sky grew darker and darker as the morning wore on’ – ‘Oh God!’ he exclaims, ‘Will somebody please put the lights on in here before we all go blind? I honestly think I’m heading for a crack-up in this place.’
All this is interesting because we don’t usually associate the sixties with this kind of thing. These narratives of boredom. I mean, we’ve basically reduced 1967 to the Summer of Love, and there’s little or nothing of that world in this book: at one point Bill goes to a nightclub with some people and there are fleeting references to a short-skirted doe-eyed vaguely Dusty Springfield-alike pop singer, but all our man can muster is a vaguely envious kind of disinterest. Dyson has dreams of fame, but in truth the author’s heart is closer to Bill’s: what’s awful to him is not so much his jealousy that these incredibly flat and slightly weird people are in the music biz or on television as it is that they’re actually doing something with their lives. It’s that same old, same new feeling of having reached one’s mid-thirties with nothing to show for it and yet being surrounded by horribly youthful talent.
March 22, 2024
I really enjoyed this. I was laughing (inside) from the very beginning and by the end was even snorting here and there (unusual for me). But what elevated the book further for me were the insights into Bob, John, Tessa, Jannie and even Morris, introduced quite late into the novel, teleported in from the Thatcherite, capitalist 80's and providing a vivid contrast to the semi-comfortable mediocrity of the bumbling others.
As a lifelong newspaper reader (sadly, a dying breed along with the dying newspaper world), it makes me want to read Scoop from an earlier era, but also other novels contemporaneous with Frayn's taking place in the world of Fleet Street.
As a lifelong newspaper reader (sadly, a dying breed along with the dying newspaper world), it makes me want to read Scoop from an earlier era, but also other novels contemporaneous with Frayn's taking place in the world of Fleet Street.
February 21, 2017
I did not want to read this - I have a pile of books next to my bed that I'm dying to get into but this was my February book club read and I had to read it for the meeting - but I wasn't happy about it!
As it was, it was quite good fun. Towards the End of the Morning is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street. The book is evocatively written and I could imagine the cigarette smoke and typewriters of the newsroom.
It was amusing in places but not hilarious as a fellow book clubber described it. Luckily it was short so I was able to skip through it quite quickly.
As it was, it was quite good fun. Towards the End of the Morning is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street. The book is evocatively written and I could imagine the cigarette smoke and typewriters of the newsroom.
It was amusing in places but not hilarious as a fellow book clubber described it. Luckily it was short so I was able to skip through it quite quickly.
July 16, 2024
In a word, droll.
The 2024 parade of 3-star books continues. Partly it's that I'm doing a course on 20th century novels and therefore not picking what I read (well, we vote, so it's semi-democratic, but as the only non-Brit I do notice the literary landscape reflects that). So I've read an unusual number of light comic novels (this, Laughing Gas, Cold Comfort Farm), not my usual forte.
Anyway, this is about Fleet Street scribes in the '50s or early '60s. It is quite funny in places, a touch of Mad Men in the white male entitlement and ever-available alcohol, though a better reference point might be the old British TV show Rumpole of the Bailey, minus any serious drama. The frequent issue of low stakes in the comic novel arises again, and in the latter stages the story rather peters out, as if Frayn never figured out what he wanted to do with these characters. I guess I'd say if this is the sort of thing you like, then you'll enjoy this. For me it's a trifle, well written and observed but it won't stay with me.
The 2024 parade of 3-star books continues. Partly it's that I'm doing a course on 20th century novels and therefore not picking what I read (well, we vote, so it's semi-democratic, but as the only non-Brit I do notice the literary landscape reflects that). So I've read an unusual number of light comic novels (this, Laughing Gas, Cold Comfort Farm), not my usual forte.
Anyway, this is about Fleet Street scribes in the '50s or early '60s. It is quite funny in places, a touch of Mad Men in the white male entitlement and ever-available alcohol, though a better reference point might be the old British TV show Rumpole of the Bailey, minus any serious drama. The frequent issue of low stakes in the comic novel arises again, and in the latter stages the story rather peters out, as if Frayn never figured out what he wanted to do with these characters. I guess I'd say if this is the sort of thing you like, then you'll enjoy this. For me it's a trifle, well written and observed but it won't stay with me.
January 12, 2017
Some review or other of this book mentioned "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" by Orwell. That is a good reference point for this work. The cover review quotes of this book mention jokes and humour. I can see the parts of the book where I'm supposed to laugh. I managed a couple of stifled grunts. I wonder if my reaction to the book is my own cynicism or simply the gap in the cultures of the 1970s where things were somehow still "jolly" and 2017 marked by war all the time, the growing gap between the people and the capitalist class and the shift to the populist right. The book was written when the defeat of fascism in Europe was still fresh in the memory and post-modern capitalism was still a young beast.
The story concerns a bourgeois idiot and other characters around him. Vacuous existence abounds here. The women are unhappy and seek something else. The men "don't mind really, whatever you say..." Docile, unquestioning fools, dead fish going with the flow, a preening egotistical nonentity.
I really love this book in its detached observation of the uselessness of peoples lives. I love the depiction of the period. I really like that I need to pick up the book while the potatoes are boiling on the stove because it grips me and pulls me in to the story. If I could change one thing about the book it would be to remove the attempted humour that sometimes seems to be there in order to sell the book as a screenplay (the authors own yearnings to get on the telly?) and instead frame it more in the style of Orwell or a Mike Leigh film.
It isn't really a book about fleet street. It is just based in fleet street. I guess the literary writers of fleet street brayed so much about it in the 70s that it is now pigeon holed there.
The title "towards the end of the morning" I guess means waiting to go to the pub at lunchtime, but even that isn't a highlight. "I suppose we should go to the Dog and Duck..." I like that they drink halves. In 2017 you aren't a man if you don't drink pints....
The American title is "Against Entropy". That is what the book is about, entropy of existence. It is a quite brilliant book. Four and a half stars out of five. Ideal for reading groups who could bang on for hours about the themes therein.
The story concerns a bourgeois idiot and other characters around him. Vacuous existence abounds here. The women are unhappy and seek something else. The men "don't mind really, whatever you say..." Docile, unquestioning fools, dead fish going with the flow, a preening egotistical nonentity.
I really love this book in its detached observation of the uselessness of peoples lives. I love the depiction of the period. I really like that I need to pick up the book while the potatoes are boiling on the stove because it grips me and pulls me in to the story. If I could change one thing about the book it would be to remove the attempted humour that sometimes seems to be there in order to sell the book as a screenplay (the authors own yearnings to get on the telly?) and instead frame it more in the style of Orwell or a Mike Leigh film.
It isn't really a book about fleet street. It is just based in fleet street. I guess the literary writers of fleet street brayed so much about it in the 70s that it is now pigeon holed there.
The title "towards the end of the morning" I guess means waiting to go to the pub at lunchtime, but even that isn't a highlight. "I suppose we should go to the Dog and Duck..." I like that they drink halves. In 2017 you aren't a man if you don't drink pints....
The American title is "Against Entropy". That is what the book is about, entropy of existence. It is a quite brilliant book. Four and a half stars out of five. Ideal for reading groups who could bang on for hours about the themes therein.
January 20, 2019
First published in 1967 this could be seen as bit of a museum piece now in its fictional depiction of live in the media. I say media rather just a newspaper as it also touches on radio and TV. It does leave aside the hard news side of both broadcast and print media, but there are plenty of others who have trodden that path.
This fictional focus on the features, fillers and analysis side of things in the Sixties is endearingly quaint and it is a quick and entertaining read. Yes I have used the word fictional twice which might make one think that this may perhaps stray far from the reality of sixties' media but I think author Michael Frayn’s own extensive media credentials means that we can assume that this tale is well grounded in the reality of that time and place.
Curious how even those seemingly far slower times in the world of press, with far longer processes and far more people to deliver the product, still manages to provide plenty of opportunities for the author to depict a believable life of almost constant stress, panic, and frustration for at least two of his media characters. Life can always find a way to make even the most languid situation feel almost impossible, particularly when change is itself slowly beginning to make itself felt…
This fictional focus on the features, fillers and analysis side of things in the Sixties is endearingly quaint and it is a quick and entertaining read. Yes I have used the word fictional twice which might make one think that this may perhaps stray far from the reality of sixties' media but I think author Michael Frayn’s own extensive media credentials means that we can assume that this tale is well grounded in the reality of that time and place.
Curious how even those seemingly far slower times in the world of press, with far longer processes and far more people to deliver the product, still manages to provide plenty of opportunities for the author to depict a believable life of almost constant stress, panic, and frustration for at least two of his media characters. Life can always find a way to make even the most languid situation feel almost impossible, particularly when change is itself slowly beginning to make itself felt…
September 25, 2016
I have read and enjoyed several of Michael Frayn's works. I especially loved the wonderfully inventive Headlong, which I would recommend to anyone. This, I'm afraid, I didn't enjoy very much. It seems very dated in style and although that may well be because he is writing about a pre-Maxwell, pre-Wapping era of newspapers and journalism in Fleet Street, it all seems a bit, well, unimportant. I didn't really find any of the characters engaging. I'm afraid I couldn't really have cared less what they did or what happened to them. The satire seems a bit toothless, to be honest and I felt the ending was abrupt, as though the whole thing had just run out of what little steam it had in the first place.
It has been highly praised. I can't see why. Great author, but this didn't really work for me.
It has been highly praised. I can't see why. Great author, but this didn't really work for me.
September 25, 2017
I enjoyed Michael Frayn's Booker shortlisted Headlong so much when I read it 18 years ago now that I have periodically been tempted to go back to him. The problem is that I've never been entirely satisfied. A great introduction to this book that tells of the pubs and alleyways of Fleet Street in their heyday - an area I myself was to find myself working in at the turn of the millennium - promised much but this turned out to be light satirical fayre when I would have loved to get my teeth into a more serious, but still comic 450 page + novel. Frayn is good on observational humour and his tales of obsession with which areas of London are fashionable remain prescient today. The action quickly moves beyond the newspaper offices themselves into the home lives of the characters and the action becomes skittish and inconsequential.
August 14, 2015
High 3. A humorous and poignant look at the decline of old-fashioned print journalism in the face of the challenge of television broadcasting. The reader is parachuted into the mundanity of John Dyson's work as sub-editor of the crosswords and nature notes department of an unspecified newspaper. In the middle of a mid-life crisis, he is deperate to escape this journalistic backwater and establish his credentials as a broadcaster. Frayn mercilessly pokes fun at Dyson and his office colleagues' failed hopes for professional advancement as they devote hours in their favourite watering-holes bemoaning the class structure of the time as well as the situation at the office. Great dialogue and good satire.
October 30, 2021
Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn is a Fantastic Novel (to quote Morris –‘Sure, sure’) from the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
10 out of 10
This reader has had the chance to read Spies by Michael Frayn http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/s... and has been enthused by it, therefore the fact that Towards the End of the Morning is such a spectacular beano should not be a surprise, except while Spies is just about as ‘serious and grave’ as it could be, Towards the end is often hilarious.
As the author explains in the introduction, the novel is based on his own experiences as a journalist and he even indicates the real life man on whom John Dyson – probably the second most important character in the story – is based, given that the newspaperman had passed away at the time when this segment has been written…
This fabulous, but alas forgotten (it only has a few lines on Wikipedia) Magnum opus describes the shenanigans, procrastination, heavy drinking, leisurely pace of the life of journalists decades ago, in the glory (is that the appropriate term to use I wonder) days of Fleet Street, before the catastrophic years when many have been eliminated from the market, leaving tabloids and some extremist media outfits (Murdoch empire) to rule the arena…
John Dyson and Robert Bell aka Bob work in the same office, where John is the older, more experienced and the one in charge (until Erskine Morris arrives that is), a journalist who aspires to be on television, for he has been invited and thinks this would be a clear move up in his career, setting it on an upward trajectory (at the more enthusiastic moments he feels this will skyrocket), making considerably more money…
Indeed, the under signed has had a brief flirt with this profession, for he met Michael Meyers from Newsweek (and is proud to have been included in the article on the fall of Ceausescu, about three decades ago, when he was a hero of the revolution), then James Wilde from TIME, some others from Radio Sweden and various media channels and could see the big difference between the budgets and operations of those with television networks and the rest of the journalistic crowd, who had had lesser material, financial means
Dyson has tried to get an Early Victoria house, near the center, in an area which will see prices rise, once they will have bought it, but he eventually moves to Spadina Road, the residence they could afford was only 1883 and miles away, in a dubious neighborhood, where one of those living next to him throw garbage in his garden…which he throws back, although he is not sure who has been the perpetrator…
John Dyson Invites the surveyor that lives in the area for dinner, ‘but whatever it was the man surveyed, it was done mostly through the bottom of a glass’ and later on, there would be hopes that maybe Bob will move nearby, once he is engaged with Tessa – here there was a misunderstanding, for the two young people (he is twenty nine, and I am not sure if we know what her age is) had been invited for dinner, and during that, the two sons of the hosts had had an argument and in the confusion, generated by the noise and misapprehension, it seemed that the two of them intend to get married.
Albeit this a phenomenal chef d’oeuvre and outstanding comedy, there are very dramatic aspects to it, such as the relationship between Tessa and Bob, for if the former is deeply in love with the man (writing for him dozens of pages in the letters she sends), he is clearly only mildly attracted to her and whenever he sees an attractive alternative, he would be ready in a flash to follow that different road…
Mrs. Mounce is an added complication to the picture (she ‘holds a cigarette in her special, sophisticated way, with the whole flat of the hand upraised beside the face, as if for a one handed salaam’) and when Tessa arrives in London to visit the man she loves, there is a stranger in the apartment and she is very scared that this could be a mistress…which she had tried to be for quite some time (Mrs. Mounce).
John Dyson has the chance to be in a television studio, for a discussion on the ‘color problem’, on which he is supposed to be some kind of expert, he prepares for the appearance, informs everybody, drives with the family to see aunts and other relatives, calls all those he knows, prepares some notes, but when it comes to the evening of the big day, he drinks too much and if the effect is on the one hand salutary, for he is intoxicated and has lost all fear (while the other guests are febrile), on the other hand, he is clearly unable to contribute anything to the discussion, except ‘this is very interesting’
This being a satire, the professionalism of The BBC is questionable, when after this sorry and hilarious episode, another program invites the same ‘expert on the color issue’ for a new representation…when asked if they saw the previous program, the woman who is moderating now admits that nobody on the team is familiar with it, only this time there may be another formula for this show…
‘George God strikes again’ and John is to travel to the Middle East, on a trip organized by an agency called Magic Carpet and arrive just the day before the television program is to air live and thus he could manage both endeavors, or so he thinks, for the trip to the Orient is a marvelous disaster (for the readers, it is the occasion to laugh out loud) for the journalist that are expected to write flattering reports…
All that can go wrong turns out worse than expected…and again, personal experience supports that idea, for I have been working for AT&T, at a time when they were the fifth biggest company in the world, not that they are puny now, and all they cared for this reader was to get him to work as a slave for $ 250 per month and then forget him in the airport of Vienna, from which he could not exit for about 24 hours, since at that time he required a visa, and the friendly Austrians of course obliged and…refused it, while the connecting flight was only the next day
10 out of 10
This reader has had the chance to read Spies by Michael Frayn http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/s... and has been enthused by it, therefore the fact that Towards the End of the Morning is such a spectacular beano should not be a surprise, except while Spies is just about as ‘serious and grave’ as it could be, Towards the end is often hilarious.
As the author explains in the introduction, the novel is based on his own experiences as a journalist and he even indicates the real life man on whom John Dyson – probably the second most important character in the story – is based, given that the newspaperman had passed away at the time when this segment has been written…
This fabulous, but alas forgotten (it only has a few lines on Wikipedia) Magnum opus describes the shenanigans, procrastination, heavy drinking, leisurely pace of the life of journalists decades ago, in the glory (is that the appropriate term to use I wonder) days of Fleet Street, before the catastrophic years when many have been eliminated from the market, leaving tabloids and some extremist media outfits (Murdoch empire) to rule the arena…
John Dyson and Robert Bell aka Bob work in the same office, where John is the older, more experienced and the one in charge (until Erskine Morris arrives that is), a journalist who aspires to be on television, for he has been invited and thinks this would be a clear move up in his career, setting it on an upward trajectory (at the more enthusiastic moments he feels this will skyrocket), making considerably more money…
Indeed, the under signed has had a brief flirt with this profession, for he met Michael Meyers from Newsweek (and is proud to have been included in the article on the fall of Ceausescu, about three decades ago, when he was a hero of the revolution), then James Wilde from TIME, some others from Radio Sweden and various media channels and could see the big difference between the budgets and operations of those with television networks and the rest of the journalistic crowd, who had had lesser material, financial means
Dyson has tried to get an Early Victoria house, near the center, in an area which will see prices rise, once they will have bought it, but he eventually moves to Spadina Road, the residence they could afford was only 1883 and miles away, in a dubious neighborhood, where one of those living next to him throw garbage in his garden…which he throws back, although he is not sure who has been the perpetrator…
John Dyson Invites the surveyor that lives in the area for dinner, ‘but whatever it was the man surveyed, it was done mostly through the bottom of a glass’ and later on, there would be hopes that maybe Bob will move nearby, once he is engaged with Tessa – here there was a misunderstanding, for the two young people (he is twenty nine, and I am not sure if we know what her age is) had been invited for dinner, and during that, the two sons of the hosts had had an argument and in the confusion, generated by the noise and misapprehension, it seemed that the two of them intend to get married.
Albeit this a phenomenal chef d’oeuvre and outstanding comedy, there are very dramatic aspects to it, such as the relationship between Tessa and Bob, for if the former is deeply in love with the man (writing for him dozens of pages in the letters she sends), he is clearly only mildly attracted to her and whenever he sees an attractive alternative, he would be ready in a flash to follow that different road…
Mrs. Mounce is an added complication to the picture (she ‘holds a cigarette in her special, sophisticated way, with the whole flat of the hand upraised beside the face, as if for a one handed salaam’) and when Tessa arrives in London to visit the man she loves, there is a stranger in the apartment and she is very scared that this could be a mistress…which she had tried to be for quite some time (Mrs. Mounce).
John Dyson has the chance to be in a television studio, for a discussion on the ‘color problem’, on which he is supposed to be some kind of expert, he prepares for the appearance, informs everybody, drives with the family to see aunts and other relatives, calls all those he knows, prepares some notes, but when it comes to the evening of the big day, he drinks too much and if the effect is on the one hand salutary, for he is intoxicated and has lost all fear (while the other guests are febrile), on the other hand, he is clearly unable to contribute anything to the discussion, except ‘this is very interesting’
This being a satire, the professionalism of The BBC is questionable, when after this sorry and hilarious episode, another program invites the same ‘expert on the color issue’ for a new representation…when asked if they saw the previous program, the woman who is moderating now admits that nobody on the team is familiar with it, only this time there may be another formula for this show…
‘George God strikes again’ and John is to travel to the Middle East, on a trip organized by an agency called Magic Carpet and arrive just the day before the television program is to air live and thus he could manage both endeavors, or so he thinks, for the trip to the Orient is a marvelous disaster (for the readers, it is the occasion to laugh out loud) for the journalist that are expected to write flattering reports…
All that can go wrong turns out worse than expected…and again, personal experience supports that idea, for I have been working for AT&T, at a time when they were the fifth biggest company in the world, not that they are puny now, and all they cared for this reader was to get him to work as a slave for $ 250 per month and then forget him in the airport of Vienna, from which he could not exit for about 24 hours, since at that time he required a visa, and the friendly Austrians of course obliged and…refused it, while the connecting flight was only the next day
May 10, 2012
This is a very "American" novel set in London in the early '60's. "American" because it has as one of its concerns the very American quest for personal transformation. Everyone in this novel is desperately trying to transform themselves. An editor into a TV personality, a reporter into a novelist, a finishing-school (can't get much more transformational than this!) girl into a wife, a housewife into anything but a housewife, a graduate into a press baron.
Fans of the play "Noises Off" will be reminded of Frayn's gift for farce, and people who haven't seen "Noises Off" should get off their bums and rectify that situation, I mean, really.
Fans of the play "Noises Off" will be reminded of Frayn's gift for farce, and people who haven't seen "Noises Off" should get off their bums and rectify that situation, I mean, really.
April 27, 2016
If you enjoy watching Ealing Comedies or reading novels by the likes or Stella Gibbons or David Lodge then this is a good book to choose. It is a gentle, unassuming and very British humour that might not play well to people who are expecting something extravagant. Personally I found some of the scenes featuring the awful Mrs Mounce hilarious, as was the scene featuring the TV performance. I could vividly picture the characters and the whole thing played out like one of the early Ealing or early Carry On films. This is definitely a book that I can only picture in 1950's black and white, but it loses nothing from this lack of garish colour. A gentle joy to read.
September 25, 2014
I read this in preparation for my first Book Club meet. When I read the blurb it did not appeal and the Sunday Times review '...one of the funniest novels about journalists ever written.' gave me a sinking feeling so I was determined not to enjoy this microcosm of life in the crossword and times past section of a minor league newspaper! However after struggling with the first couple of chapters I gradually grew fond of egotistical Dyson and his fumbling sidekick Bob. Mrs Mounce is also a cleverly drawn character. So I am happy to have my first impressions squashed....but I still would not choose to read a similar book!
September 6, 2014
Having read and been rather disappointed with Skios, I wanted to read an earlier "comedy" of Frayn's to see if it rated with other books, such as Spies and Headlong, both of which I thought were very good. Everything was going along splendidly until the end, which I found very weak and which spoiled the book for me.
September 2, 2007
N.R.'s hire at the Guardian; weekend in Louth.
June 8, 2022
A bit disappointing. It was intermittently interesting but also quite rambling and fundamentally I just didn't find it funny and I think I was meant to.
July 9, 2021
Libro con apariencia de comedia que gira bruscamente al drama. Los personajes pasan de ser cómico a trágico con un hábil giro por parte del autor que, no obstante, siguen manteniendo los recursos humorísticos que hacen más trágicos a los personajes.
El libro se lee fácilmente y engancha si bien a mediados del mismo hay un pequeño bajón de ritmo que no afecta en demasía al resultado final.
El libro se lee fácilmente y engancha si bien a mediados del mismo hay un pequeño bajón de ritmo que no afecta en demasía al resultado final.
October 8, 2021
Contrary to the blurb on the front of my copy, Towards the End of the Morning does not rank with Scoop. But it is a good and funny read. Written at a time when television was, to many, the content-free equivalent of today's social media, it tells the tale of a jaded cast of characters in a Fleet Street newsroom. If you're a journalist (rather than a PR person) - this book is for you.
July 8, 2020
Made me laugh as much as any book ever has, but with poignancy amongst the humour. Having only ever experienced Michael Frayn through Noises Off at the theatre I'll definitely be reading more of his novels.
May 9, 2020
A little slow to start with, but the story developed into a well observed and amusing take on Fleet Street in the 1960's.
A really enjoyable read.
A really enjoyable read.
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