The Orton Diaries
by Joe Orton
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”To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature.” When Joe Orton (1933#150;1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed in Orton’s skull with a hammer before show more killing himself. The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades#151;at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him. Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Wasn't a big fan of this on the whole. It veered between quite dull sections on the night by night performance of his plays at the theatre and joyless sex scenes - in particular with the kids in Morocco. On the other hand I liked the gossipy, conversational bits where people like Kenneth Williams popped up, and it was quite morbidly fascinating reading it, all the time knowing how it ends, and looking out for the warning signs in their relationship.
Read this book ages ago and I am currently re-reading it. I like reading journals and this is a cracker, the descriptions of people, places is wonderful.
Joe Orton led a life that was interesting and what seems completely over the top. I could relate to the theatre parts of the book and the characters, the look into Orton's family life I found fascinating but what I found missing in the early sections was his interaction with his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. It is telling that see only the rarest of glimpses of how these two men shared their lives.
2014 - I have read the diaries again. I am still in awe of the candour of the writing. This time I have seen the more destructive side of Orton and Halliwell and that certainly gives a great show more deal of pause and thought. show less
Joe Orton led a life that was interesting and what seems completely over the top. I could relate to the theatre parts of the book and the characters, the look into Orton's family life I found fascinating but what I found missing in the early sections was his interaction with his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. It is telling that see only the rarest of glimpses of how these two men shared their lives.
2014 - I have read the diaries again. I am still in awe of the candour of the writing. This time I have seen the more destructive side of Orton and Halliwell and that certainly gives a great show more deal of pause and thought. show less
A very entertaining read unless you are homophobic. In his brief career Orton wrote several West End theatre successes until murdered by his gay lover in 1967. His diaries tell it very much as it is, with sex on his mind almost continuously, and almost as frequently being acted out, sometimes with graphic detail. One wonders what he might have achieved had his lifestyle left more time and energy for writing - and not been cut off so early (age 34) by that lifestyle.
If this is to be counted i think Puppies from John Valentine is a better buy but Halliwell was a douche
Gripping.
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Author Information
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Born in Leicester, Orton trained as an actor but soon turned to writing plays instead. Before his career had barely begun, however, he was murdered by his homosexual lover, apparently in a fit of jealousy over his success. Orton's shocking murder is too easily made the biographical focus for discussion of his plays, devoted as they are to the show more grotesque, the perverse, and the violent. A more relevant landmark in the playwright's life might be the jail term he served for the bizarre crime of defacing library books, replacing illustrations with uproarious collages, and rewriting jacket blurbs in "mildly obscene" parodies of journalistic cliche. Assaulting the cultural consumer by transposing familiar icons and vocabulary was the key to Orton's theatrical method. But it was supplemented by a growing verbal power and stage imagery with aspirations to myth. As Orton's literary powers grew, so did the outrage of social response. The Pinterian ambiance and language of his first works, Entertaining Mr. Sloan (1964) and the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair (1966), were well received. Sloane was chosen best new British play of 1964 and won the blessing of Terence Rattigan himself. But Loot, joking with death, religion, sex, and family, proved more disturbing (it involves a slapstick charade centered on a corpse and a coffin). The first production, directed by Peter Wood, closed on tour without reaching London. It was not until 1966 that the play was staged, to acclaim, in Charles Marowitz's fringe theater. In 1969, What the Butler Saw failed in the West End, despite a cast of many famous names, including Ralph Richardson. Only the Royal Court revival of 1975 gave Orton's undoubted masterpiece its due. But by then the playwright had been dead for eight years. In the phallic epiphany with which Butler ends, as in his version of Euripides' Bacchae, The Erpingham Camp (1965), Orton calls attention to his Dionysian ambitions, his serious use of farce as a means of disruption and liberation. His last plays, in which violent animal spirits subvert dialogue of extreme, even Victorian, formality and outrageous authority figures, represent probably the greatest comic achievement of contemporary British drama. show less
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Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Orton Diaries
- Original publication date
- 1986
- People/Characters
- Joe Orton; Kenneth Williams; Kenneth Halliwell
- Important places
- London, England, UK
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, LGBTQ+
- DDC/MDS
- 828.91403 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English miscellaneous writings English miscellaneous writings 1900- English miscellaneous writings 1900-1999 English miscellaneous writings 1945-1999 Diaries, journals, notebooks, reminiscences
- LCC
- PR6065 .R7 .Z467 — Language and Literature English English Literature 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 582
- Popularity
- 50,646
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.73)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 8
