Simon Gray: Bloody Finished at Last

Abstract

Despite his early plays’ appropriation of many of the aspects of English Absurdism, Simon Gray’s work is the nearest the contemporary mainstream comes to a reworking of the territory of the well-made drawing-room comedy supposedly killed off in the mid-1950s. His characters live on their wits, and by their wit, in a world of social privilege and ease; in a world that may on occasions be seen to be in a state of decline, but is still populated by characters who, however uneasy they may be about their own personal circumstances, are united in a last stand against the values of a modern world.

Jeff: I’m English, yes, English to my marrow’s marrow. After years of buggering about as a cosmopolitan litterateur, going to PEN conferences in Warsaw, hobnobbing with Frog poets and Eyetye essayists, German novelists and Greek composers, I suddenly realise I hate the lot of them. Furthermore I detest women, love men, loathe queers. D’you know when I’m really at peace with myself? When I’m caught in a traffic jam on an English road, under an English heaven — somewhere between London and Cambridge … Oh Christ — it’s my bloody opinion that this sad little, bloody little country of ours is finished at last. Bloody finished at last.

(Simon Gray, Otherwise Engaged)