Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

Product Information

Billy Liar is a 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse [1] that was later adapted into a play, a film, a musical and a TV series. The work has inspired and been featured in a number of popular songs. Billy is an employee in an undertaker. He spends the first part of his Saturday morning at work, as everyone did in that era. He strolls around town, goes to the pub, meets a girlfriend or two and then comes down to earth. It’s a special day for Billy because he’s convinced himself that he is about to enter the big time as a comedy writer for a name in London. From start to finish, however, Billy is deluding himself. The film adaptation is very faithful to the book (although the endings are subtly different) so there were no real plot surprises. A Yorkshire "Catcher in the Rye", only funny. Billy Fisher is a 19-year-old boy trapped in a small town in Yorkshire, desparate to escape to London. His life is divided between fantasy and anxiety (about his family, about his love life (including his multiple fiancées) and about his job (and whether or not his employers will find out about certain... misdemeanors...)), the latter largely self-inflicted as a result of his tendency to lie continuously and blatently. Billy feels as though he is drowning in the inauthentic cliché and rote behaviour that surrounds him, but struggles to find any response to it all beyond sterile absurdism. His credits, many with lifelong friend and collaborator Willis Hall, include satires such as That Was The Week That Was, BBC-3 and The Frost Report during the 1960s; the book for the 1975 musical The Card; Budgie; Worzel Gummidge; and Andy Capp (an adaptation of the comic strip).

Billy also finds himself attracted to his former girlfriend Liz ( Julie Christie), who has just returned to town from Doncaster. Liz is a free spirit who, unlike anyone else in town, understands and accepts Billy's imagination. However, she has more courage and confidence than Billy, as shown by her willingness to leave her home town and enjoy new and different experiences. Under pressure, Billy ends up making dates with both Barbara and Rita to meet each one on the same night at the same local ballroom. There, the two girls discover the double engagement and begin fighting with each other. All of Billy's lies seem to catch up with him as it's announced publicly that he is moving to London to work with Danny Boon, and Billy's friend scolds him for lying to his mother.

Interesting Clues

Billy dreams big - of becoming a famous scriptwriter, of leaving behind his drab existence and running away to London and of making it with the wonderful free spirit played by Julie Christie in the film. And, somehow, w

As well as the scripts there was a growing list of novels, along with every conceivable award for his newspaper columns and his regular contributions to Punch. Although much of his work was comedy, like many professional humorists, Waterhouse hated people telling him jokes. He loved pubs and Soho drinking clubs, Gerry's in particular, but he dreaded bores, whom he savaged with a grumpy impatience. Billy Fisher is a 19-year-old suffocating in a small fictional Yorkshire town and this book covers one day in his life. Billy works as an undertaker's clerk, is nagged by his mother and shouted at by his father, is engaged to two girls but is in love with a third and dreams of becoming a hit comedy writer. Feeling trapped by the monotony of his everyday life Billy frequently disappears into a world of daydreams and lies. Inevitably, Billy's compulsive lies begin to catch up with him. His work for the theatre was equally successful, notably Mr and Mrs Nobody and Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell - based on his former drinking colleague's weekly columns in the Spectator - which opened in London with Peter O'Toole in 1989.

Possible answer:

Billie Liar by Keith Waterhouse provided the latest foray into the world and mores of the late fifties. It’s yet another novel that resides firmly in northern English working class life. But unlike Alan Sillitoe, John Braine or Stan Bairstow, Billy Liar lives almost entirely in the comic. Until, that is, when it doesn’t. As you can see there is a rather large and influential history behind this book and having finally gotten around to reading it I can see why. Despite taking place over just the one day this is still a coming of age tale, it brings us in to Billy's life as he becomes aware that he has to make changes and the events that transpire in that day are enough to help him work some things out in his mind, if not necessarily making those changes. I've seen comparisons to The Catcher in the Rye and I would definitely agree with those only Waterhouse gives us a wonderful almost python-esque comedy at the same time making for a much more enjoyable and accessible read. Find sources: "Billy Liar"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( May 2013) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Keith Waterhouse was born in Hunslet, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He performed two years of national service in the Royal Air Force.

Unusually, almost all the main characters are children; the film attempts to show the world through the eyes of an innocent child. Keenan, John (11 August 2009). "Fifty years on, Billy Liar has not grown old". The Guardian . Retrieved 4 November 2021. Some people may feel that "Billy Liar" is nothing but a comic diversion. How could a novel about a rather bumbling and ineffectual dreamer with a tendency to twist the truth be a mirror reflecting the issues and concerns of an entire generation? In my opinion, that is exactly what Keith Waterhouse managed to do here. All the while, he was churning out sometimes serious, often humorous newspaper columns - working every day on his trusted Adler typewriter. We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a newreadership."