I re-read this old favourite comic novel over the past couple of days. I had lost my original copy from 1978, and so I needed to buy another.
This is one of those things about the embarrassments and foibles among the upper middle classes (apparently all Cambridge University graduates) - in this case, mostly "Fleet Street" (i.e. London) journalists and their wives and girlfriends.
This sounds utterly unpromising (and ultimately it is), but there are some very good life-observations of the kind that stay with you permanently; and some laugh-out-loud funny set pieces that are the equal of anything.
The main character's experience doing a television talk-show is so funny that I can recall sitting somewhere like an airport lounge or a place waiting for a ferry, and laughing literally uncontrollably, so that dozens of other passengers were turning and staring at me as if I was insane or having a seizure - but I just couldn't stop myself.
So, TTEOTM is worth reading.
But I also found it a profoundly nihilistic book; at times (when it gets serious) the narrative actually expresses this explicitly - that Life is purposeless and meaningless; and overall and especially as Life unfolds: it is a pretty miserable and hope-less business.
In this respect, the author Michael Frayn epitomizes (for evidence: read his Wiki entry) the trajectory of Western Culture since WWII. He was one of the first generation of upper middle class atheist-leftists who took over the Mass Media in those decades; and by the time this novel was published (1967) this takeover was all-but complete.
Journalism had been a mostly lower/middle class job, done by grammar school boys who left at about 16 and served an apprenticeship; as depicted in Michael Green's (excellent) autobiographies The boy who shot down an airship, and Nobody hurt in small earthquake.
But by the 1960s print media was dominated by upper class boys and girls arriving straight from university, especially Oxford and Cambridge. Newspapers (and broadcast media) shifted from being about news; to being "opinion" concerning all aspects of society, politics and culture (i.e. leftist propaganda).
And the new generation of upper class, public school, and university media people; brought with them the New Leftism - focused on promoting the sexual revolution, antiracism, feminism - and the rest of it.
Michael Frayn is a good example, because he was (unlike modern Leftists) genuinely very intelligent, very talented - and able to be very funny.
He was successful as a journalist, novelist and playwright - and was generally supposed to be, not just clever, but a deep thinker; because he had studied philosophy, and even published an academic book on the subject!
Frayn is one of the reasons why the mainstream modern culture of hedonic nihilism happened - he was talented, trendy, admired; he made the new ideology seem cool, fun, exciting...
And by contrast Frayn, subtly and by insinuation mainly, made all-that-stuff about God, creation, the world of spirit, existence beyond death etc. seem... childish, silly, obsolete, low status^.
In retrospect; it is obvious that Frayn was not a creative thinker - but was instead a highly-able exponent of standard-mainstream ideology; a founder-member of the "chattering classes"; one who took all his primary assumptions from his niche social milieu, and was unable (or uninterested) to seek or understand beyond this.
And this is manifested in Towards the End of the Morning because - well, it doesn't really end. There is no sense of satisfaction or closure, it just stops*.
The simple reason for this, is that it is an honest account of how Frayn saw Life: for Frayn (and his numerous ilk) Life is something that goes on for a while; one tries to get as much amusement from living as possible; one works to attain an interesting, enjoyable and well-regarded existence... For a while.
And, then... Life Just Stops.
^. The given-rationale for getting rid of that religion stuff, was that it stood in the way of a life devoted to optimizing the emotions. This was especially necessary if life in reality was nothing-but these emotions (as "science" had apparently proved).
*Note added: It is significant that a novel of broadly the same genre as TTEOTM from about a decade earlier was Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim; has a traditional kind of ending - with the hero getting the girl and - in effect - striding off into the sunrise of a glorious future. Amis was born earlier enough to have been conscripted into the Second World War, and (although firmly of the materialist-atheist generation) was more of a transitional figure into modernism than Frayn.
