Now I've got real detachment

Sid Chaplin's run of northern-outsider novels ('The Watcher and the Watched', 'The Day of the Sardines' and 'Sam in the Morning') look like they'll stay annoyingly un(der)appreciated.  Just finished 'Sam in the morning' and it's another gem: in part it reminds me of Lindsay Anderson's 'Britannia Hospital', an organisation that's dysfunctional run by (un self-conscious) 'characters'. The building (UK House) is as much a character as anything / anyone else: Sam's late-evening wanderings recall Paul Auster; he chances on an early computer (the future!), a machine for human-resourcing which has, in fact, crunched and churned him. The book's far more interesting than the all-too-easy response of pigeonholing (Chaplin) into a kitchen sink / angry, slice-of-life niche which appears to have happened. His other two novels may be more traditional outsider-in-literature statements of intent but there's a fury which isn't common. And Sam's encounters with other working-men-made-good become points of reference for his behaviour. 

One stunning sequence describes the apparent unravelling of Deputy Controller R. Walker Johnson, in what appears a stress-related, wind-down towards early / enforced retirement. But in fact he's been reading Ouspensky. And Gurdjieff. And has had enough.

'This isn't power y'know,' he continued with an expressive wave of hand and shirt-cuff. I stared. The shock was not in his words. His cuffs were filthy. 'I'm tempted to give up everything, every blessed thing. Marriage, career - I've given most of my records away, they're useless too. Time's too short as it is.' 

'I agree,' I said. 'But only on the point of time.'

'I've chucked all my books out,' continued Walker Johnson exultantly. 'So much lumber. Two or three volumes do me, now. Gurdjieff, Orage, Ouspensky; I can't eat for reading. I'm exploring every living moment.'

The wor(l)ds of Sid Chaplin (politically-engaged, 'real', northern, industrial) and of Colin Wilson (esoteric, apolitical, imaginative, resolutely non-northern) crash together as Johnson assumes the character of someone from another story completely; 'exploring every living moment' echoing Wilson's Faculty X and the exploration of the peak experience as a means of escape.

'...But I'm cured now.' 

Looking me straight between the eyes he said: 'Cured is a word that encompasses everything. You too can be cured.' Somehow it wouldn't have been so bad if he ranted like all the other fanatics. 

Instead, he spoke mildly, but with complete conviction, and the uncomfortable thing was that he seemed to be convinced that I was one who needed curing. 'I'm detached, now,' he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. 'And you're the one, you know. You started me. I used to envy you. Bluntness, courage, light-heartedness. But now, I've got real detachment.'