It took me forever to find a copy of Escape to an Autumn Pavement—well, forever in Internet time. Thank you to an online educational bookshop (Books Direct) that had a copy (does this mean it’s on the syllabus somewhere?).

Born in Panama to Jamaican parents, Andrew Salkey spent his childhood in Jamaica before moving to London, where he attended university. Salkey was part of an emerging cadre of Caribbean writers who had emigrated to Britain. I want to tell you I’d heard of Salkey — who also wrote poetry and children’s books and died in 1995 at the age of 67 — but if not for Backlisted (that podcast again), I would have been ignorant of his work. And that would be a shame because while parts of Autumn have not aged well, what it says about the immigrant experience in Britain is, sadly, as pertinent today as it was then. (I post this during a week of anti-Muslim riots in the UK).

The novel is narrated by Johnnie Sorbert who left a middle-class life in Jamaica for the grit, grime, and racism of London. It’s assumed that Sorbert came to Britain for a better life (unlike Salkey, he’s not there to study at university). His mother — through her letters — certainly thinks that’s the case. But Johnnie’s situation isn’t entirely optimal, residing in a “small Hampstead sitter” where he’s loathed by the landlord (a cranky old woman) and several of the tenants, including a young Indian woman (and student) who hates everything about Johnnie. At night, he works as a waiter in a Soho club catering primarily to West Indian clientele. 

To say that Johnnie is an ambivalent young man would be the understatements of understatements. He’s conflicted about his birth country — Jamaica — he’s conflicted about his sexuality — he’s having an affair with Fiona, the girl-friend of one of the tenants who hates him, and he has feelings for Dick, another tenant — and he’s conflicted about what he should make of his life — he’s an intelligent man wasting his twenties collecting tips in Soho. Then there’s the racism that he confronts regularly, mainly in the form of political pamphlets calling for “Negros” to be sent back from whence they came. 

It’s maybe not surprising then that Johnnie is cynical and rude. He treats Fiona like garbage, he’s horrible to Biddy, the barmaid at the Soho club, and he leads Dick on, unable to admit his feelings. On the latter, I am sympathetic to Johnnie; this novel is set in 1960, and being gay was a crime (I’m sure being gay and black was worse). His misogyny is harder to excuse, but then his attitude toward women only reflects the attitude of those around him, like Larry, the barber or the men he encounters at the Soho club. And, to be fair to Salkey, he’s not asking us to relate to Johnnie but rather to realise that the young man isn’t equipped to deal with these contrasting emotions.

If I didn’t love Escape to an Autumn Pavement, I did appreciate it. The almost Joyceian quality of Johnnie’s thoughts has a poetry and rhythm that brings many of the novel’s contradictions to the fore. Whereas the dialogue — of which there’s quite a bit — has a biting wit, Johnnie can be pretty savage when he’s in a mood. For all its rawness and character flaws, this novel has moments of extraordinary lyricism. It’s certainly worth hunting for.