It is always embarrassing to see a writer, especially one considered among the most vital we have, make a fool of himself in public. James Kelman announced this week that his new novel will be published by Canongate. This is undoubtedly a coup for the Edinburgh publishing house but the happy news — for Canongate and, if you like, for Scottish publishing — was tarnished by Kelman’s attack on the London publishers who have supported his work for most of the past 30 years.
According to Kelman, his books deserve a “separate marketing strategy for Scotland” that his London publishers could not appreciate, far less deliver. He complained that the London literary establishment cannot perceive of Scotland as “a distinctive culture and not a region of England”. Moreover, he says: “When they treat [Scotland] as a region, they treat it with a kind of ‘home counties’ respect. This can be quite elitist.” According to Kelman, the London literati consider Scottish writing “regional and provincial and ultimately not as important” as “metropolitan” work.
This is pretty rich, frankly — not least because no evidence is offered to support his contention. Kelman travelled the long road to London for the same reason that most Scottish writers have, given the opportunity, preferred to have their work published outside Scotland: money. No “literary” novelist could make a comfortable living if their income depended upon their Scottish sales. This may be a disagreeable truth; it remains the reality.
No one, not even a novelist, is owed a living, of course. But Kelman’s remarks are a reminder that Scotland’s national sport is not football but grievance-seeking. One might think that winning the Booker prize, as Kelman did in 1994 for How Late It Was, How Late, would suggest that the “elitist” London establishment was capable of affirming the importance of his work, but this may, of course, be too simplistic a view. Similarly, it must now be considered regrettable that Kelman’s London publishers have, for 30 years, patronised his work in both senses of the term. How dare they?
The only thing worse than being ignored is being flattered. It is a peculiarly Scottish whinge-cringe. Literary fashions come and go and Kelman, like other Scottish writers, benefited from the vogue for “new” Scottish voices that was a feature of the latter part of the 20th century. If Scotland has a thriving literary culture it is, at least in part, because Scottish writers’ stories have not been limited to a Scottish audience.
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Kelman’s work is important not least because, as perceptive and sympathetic critics have noted, his work gives a voice to citizens whose lives — and struggles — are rarely the subject of high-class fiction. Few of his characters are the types of people likely to be readers themselves. He is a writer interested in the dispossessed and the marginalised. A voice, in short, for the voiceless.
This often makes him a challenging writer. He is not minded to make life easy for his readers. It is, doubtless, simplistic to suggest that most of his readers enjoy more comfortable lives than those he writes about, but there is sufficient truth in the observation to make it worthwhile. Kelman, to put it bluntly, illuminates life on the margins of society for the benefit of a middle-class readership. This is not “poverty porn”, it is important work that — taking alienation as its greatest theme — is more universal than is sometimes allowed.
Yet Kelman’s world view is choked with resentment. As he has written: “In an occupied country indigenous history can only be radical. It is a class issue. The intellectual life of working class people is ‘occupied’.”
Well, perhaps. Most Scots, however, do not consider themselves colonised or occupied and most Scots are right. The temptation to suggest “get over yourself” is acute.
It sometimes seems as though a certain kind of Scottish sensibility cannot find happiness except in unhappiness. Hence the annual complaint at this time of year that the Booker prize is in some mysterious fashion biased against Scottish writers.
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The evidence for this is that Kelman is the only Scottish novelist to have won the prize. But many fine novelists who are not Scottish have not won the Booker either, and a book that wins in any given year might very well have failed to have won in another, given that, unlike the Oscars, the Booker is awarded by a judging panel that changes every year. Such is life.
“London” is asked to pay attention to Scotland and then, when it does, is told it cannot possibly understand Scotland. Heads we win, tails they lose and, either way, this mysterious “they” can take the rap. This isn’t the sign of a confident culture; it is evidence of a wearisome and self-congratulatory parochialism.