A REVIEW OF BOY BY JAMES HANLEY

Boy by English novelist James Hanley (1897-1985) was published by Boriswood in London in 1931. After the publisher was fined in 1935 for thereby “publishing an obscene libel”, only expurgated editions were published until 1990, when André Deutsch published a new unexpurgated with an introduction by Anthony Burgess.

I have never been able to believe that a searchlight on a scab was anything less than normal
by J. M. Thian
12 July 2024

Hanley’s novel created an uproar in Britain at the time of its first publication. The book had to be withdrawn when a jury found its publishers guilty of issuing an obscene libel which possessed “pederastic tendencies”. The book was consequently seized by the police and burned.^[1]  

Boy tells the story of 13-year-old Arthur Fearon who, driven by his unhappiness at home, stows away on a ship bound for Alexandria. The boy is bullied by the crew, sexually assaulted by the sailors during his first night on board, sentimentally exploited by some members of the crew, experiences his first heterosexual initiation in an Egyptian brothel during the stop-over in Alexandria and finally lands in a situation far beyond his managing, unable as he is to escape his plight and go back home to his parents.

Hanley himself went to sea as a boy, but claims that the novel is not at all autobiographical. He wrote Arthur Fearon’s story from personal observation and in a rage of indignation against the romanticising of life at sea.^[2] Hanley portrays ignorant and brutal men who mistreat the boy badly, bully him, insult him, make him work more than he can endure but, he keeps saying, “they don’t mean it.” Indeed, Hanley does not judge, he understands, he shows compassion for both men and boy, except for the representative of authority, the captain of the ship, a mean old drunkard who brings the boy’s plight to its tragic end. The only respite for young Arthur Fearon were his conversations with Larkin, an engineer:

The man seemed quite a lunatic person, though the boy suspected there was a warmth and kindness beneath the apparent sourness and incivility. Larkin had asked him why he had stowed away. The boy in the few minutes allowed him had explained why and how. “Come to my room one evening,” Larkin had said. And he had gone to his room. Fearon got to like the man. [...] Larkin appeared quite genuine. It amazed Fearon, for it was rare indeed when an officer condescended to invite a rating to his room for a friendly chat. It was talked about at the mess-table by the other officers, all of whom put one construction upon the affair. Riley, the third officer, said what they were all thinking in their minds, that “Larkin always thought boys better than women.” ^[3]

The book was highly praised by T. E. Lawrence.^[4] In a letter to Hanley in 1934, he wrote: “Parts of Boy are very painful: yet I think your sanity and general wholesomeness stick up out of your book a mile high”.^[5] To which Anthony Burgess adds: “[The readers] will undoubtedly be shocked, but the shock will have nothing to do with the titillations of the pornographic.”^[6]

James Hanley indirectly talked about Boy in a short story he wrote later ^[7]: “It took me ten days [to write Boy] . Now I realise that it should have taken me much longer than that. So shapeless and crude and overburdened with feelings. And in any case it struck some Northerners^[8] as something less than normal and some critics as rather odd. I have, however, never been able to believe that a searchlight on a scab was anything less than normal, or anything that one might call odd.”

I share this opinion, of course. I thought the book beautifully written, honest and really heartfelt: Hanley calls a cat a cat, the boy’s despair is described with sensitivity and true compassion and the sexual passages are written without the author using any metaphors to cover his tracks so as to avoid censorship. True, Boy is extremely hard to read at times: the softy I am kept hoping the boy would at one point find a helping hand, somebody to talk to, somebody who would advise him on how to get the hell out of the nightmare he is in. But nobody came to the rescue: even Larkin, the engineer, betrayed him and abandoned him in the end, leaving him alone, desperate, unable to cope with the situation he had put himself in...^[9]

^[1] This, which the modern readers will surely find astonishing, is described in the 1990 edition in a foreword by James Hanley’s son Liam, and in an introduction by Anthony Burgess.

^[2] For a novel bearing the same themes (brutality, pederasty, bullying, etc.) read the first part of The Marine Vice, written in 1905, some 30 years, before by Jean Bosq.

^[3] 1990 hardback edition, page 117.

^[4] Thomas Edward Lawrence (6 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.

^[5] Letter 556 and 581 in David Garrett’s The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, sent to Boriswood, who published the first edition of Boy, in connection with the case against Boriswood for issuing an obscene libel.

^[6] Anthony Burgess was a British writer, musician and linguist. He was born on 25 February 1917 in Manchester and died on 25 November 1993 in St. John's Wood, London. He is the author of Clockwork Orange, a dystopian satirical black comedy novella published in 1962. 

^[7] The name of the short story is Odd Fish. It can be found in James Hanley’s Don Quixote Drowned, published by McDonald in 1953.

^[8] The Northerners referred to here are a taxi driver, who borrowed the book from a library, and his wife, who read only the blurb and took the book to the police. The police in their turn brought the charge of obscene libel. Source: Liam Hanley, 1990 edition of Boy, page XVI.

^[9] For more information about James Hanley, see Franck G. Harrington’s James Hanley – a Bold and Unique Solitary (1987). For a more detailed analysis of the book, go to Joseph Pridmore’s beautiful article at http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/prose/boy.htm