Room at the Top, Unlikeable Protagonists, and Gin

There’s a lot of differences between British writer John Braine’s hit novel Room at the Top, and the classic American novel, Catcher in the Rye, but I found myself thinking of the later while reading the former because they both feature main characters that aren’t always likable. In the last few years, I’ve read a lot of articles even saying Holden Caulfield is a brat, or annoying, or even just an example of white male privilege, and thus unworthy of anybody’s time. Fortunately, I’ve seen some more recent pushback, mainly pointing out that this ‘annoying’ guy is (checks notes) a child, one who was abused by a teacher, and whose beloved brother died of leukemia a few years prior to the start of the book. Maybe the haters missed that, since it would require a little something called “reading comprehension” instead of just knee jerk performative bloviating.

That being said: I sometimes wondered if I could finish Room at the Top, because the character was often unlikable. He’s older than Holden for one thing, so he doesn’t get the benefit of being a child as way of explanation. And he’s way more focused on criticism of women than men.

So here’s the general plot of Braine’s breakthrough novel: a young veteran of WWII—orphaned and raised in poverty— leaves his hometown and moves to a bigger, slightly wealthier city to make it. He is both envious of the wealthy, landed gentry and despises them for being part of a carefree club he feels he’ll never be part of. He wants women to love him, but he treats them like trophies to be won, and ranks both men and women by number systems.

He ends up falling for an innocent young woman (Susan) whose father is a factory owner, and a verging-on-middle aged married woman (Alice) who is in a loveless, sexless marriage. While Alice is like a soulmate, who calls him on his B.S. (“Why do you have such a chip on your shoulder? You think you’re the only one who has suffered?” etc), he wants Susan because she represents the life he never had growing up.

It would be easy to hate a character like this, even if it takes place in 1947 and so is “a product of its time” or whatever. But it’s also easy to hate him because the causes for sympathy aren’t blared across every page. Braine doesn’t write maudlin paragraphs aimed at manipulating the reader to feel bad for him! He mentions a couple key experiences, here and there, and in their sparse descriptions they invite you to put two and two together yourself: his parents were killed when an errant bomb fell on their house during WWII; while in the military he saw unbelievable carnage. So while Braine never says, “Hello! My protagonist may seem like a jerk, but he has his reasons!” it’s pretty clear that all his troubles stem from this horrifically tragic origin story and, relatedly, the way the wealthier classes seem not to care one bit about it.

This doesn’t mean Braine lets him off the hook either. Without giving away anything, suffice to say that when the main character ‘wins’, he also kind of loses.

I’ve continued to go to a homemade martini as my summer drink of choice. I can only have one because it’s very strong, but it’s so cold and refreshing. I use Farmer’s Gin and Martini dry vermouth.