Books: Notes from the Underground

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER (176 pp.) — Alan Sillitoe —Knopf ($3.50).

I was told, continued Egremont, "that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common"

—Benjamin Disraeli: Sybil

Disraeli's truism about England's "two nations" appeared in 1845, nearly a quarter of a century before he became Prime Minister. Today, despite the leveling influences of repeated wars and the advent of the welfare state, the two nations still eye each other across a gulf nearly...