Something that I found very striking in both How Late it Was, How Late and Hotel World was the representation of marginalized people. Perhaps it is my Americanized brainwashing, but when I think of the homeless and those drawing from welfare, I don't tend to think about educated people.
I think, perhaps distantly, I have a concept of some educated people falling on hard times, that something has happened to them and has rendered them incapable of leading lives that "contribute to society." That, if they get better or are able to find a job (jerb), they'll be able to once again become functioning members of society. I know this is flawed thinking, but I think there is a distinct lack of representation in our media that portrays marginalized people in a different light. Take Law and Order, for example. Homeless people are crazy, unfortuante people who tend to always happen to witness truly awful crimes because they're not doing anything better with their lives than sitting in squalor and watching the world. And any given show on Tru TV about court cases tends to portray welfare benficiaries as soceital leeches.
I found it quite different, then, reading about Else who studdied shorthand in order to become a secretary and knows just about anything you could ask about birds, their eggs, and their nesting habits. But she made some bad choices in life, and had some truly distrubing incidents happen to her. However, while those instances may have thrown her off course so to speak, they didn't kill her desire to read and learn. She spends time in the library not just to get a warm place to sleep, but to actually read. She looks up words she doesn't know. She reads books there, and learns about current events. Yes, she isn't particularly contributing to society, and spends her days huddled against a hotel wall. But she's also not dumb. She's not necessarily mentally ill. She's simply stuck in an unfortunate situation, and perhaps might be a bit too proud to get the right help. At least she has some form of freedom. She also doesn't seem to be chained to material possessions too much, and doesn't seem to want the lives of the people in the houses she watches at night, but more to speculate on their cookie-cutter lives.
A similar theme pops up with Sammy. After he is rendered blind he mentions that the one thing he'll probably miss most about sight is reading. There are several instances in the text where he mentions reading books and news papers, and how it was something that he did to pass the time. He's not illiterate, and he could have navigated the world of the dss prior to his sightloss. He is a bit lazy, in truth, and that makes him just a little less sympathetic than Else. He might not have had the thirst for knowledge that Else seems to exhibit, but he did enjoy reading, and it was his favorite pasttime. I don't think it's a trait he would display in an American novel.
I wonder if it's a sign that Europe, and England in particular might not be more progressive in their thinking about the disadvantaged members of society. Else's narrative discusses the different things that people say to her about her homeless status, many of which are similar to what might be heard in our own country. However, the narrative shows a different side to the story, and I think it's far more compelling. More "Reality TV" and even novels should take a page out of these books and show the actual lives and hardships that marginalized people face. I think it might lead to people being just a bit more compassionate.
It is useful that you have put Sammy and Else into a category, because it neutralizes the ways in which Sammy can be alienating to the reader. Instead, you seem to be identifying the ways in which these novels expose the structural and cyclical conditions of poverty and social marginalization. And furthermore, by making Sammy and Else central and essential to their respective novels' narrative engines, do Kelman and Smith effectively undo the marginalization to which characters like this would be subject in the "real" world?
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