Lest I feed into the perception of red readers as a churlish bunch, here's a happy note. I said there were a couple good moments in the most recent New York Times Book Review and this is one: There's a new James Kelman novel out. Hooray!
Kelman is a Scottish writer with a good strong socialist bent and, hallelujah, his writing channels it beautifully. His novels and short stories are mostly set in the world of his upbringing--that is, among the workers and poor in Scotland--and when they travel elsewhere they're still inhabited mainly by Scottish working-class characters. They are written in Scots English and often directly address the issue of the destruction of the original language resulting from British occupation of Kelman's country.
I've read two Kelman novels: How Late It Was, How Late and You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free. I loved them both. Another, Translated Accounts, has been on my night table pile for a while. Now I'll add this new one, Kieron Smith, Boy to the to-read list. Sunday's NYTBR review by Marcel Theroux was lukewarm--filled with damning-with-faint-praise formulations like "Still, this isn't a bad book"--but that doesn't deter me at all. I'm glad for the review because it alerted me about the book and, well, that's about the extent of its use.
There's something unique in my relationship with Kelman's writing. His are the first and only novels written by a man in which the protagonists consistently use the "c" word and it doesn't make me toss the book away in disgust. This is because this word, the epitome of misogyny in every other context I've ever seen, becomes in Kelman's books merely a catch-all swear word that characters like these, men beaten down by poverty, by the British occupation, by life under capitalism, must use if there's to be any verisimilitude. Granted, the fact that the ultimate anti-woman word is the basic, ubiquitous epithet is itself a telling societal marker, but when I read these stories somehow I don't hold that against characters who use it. It's just how they talk. If you want to hear them talk you've got to get used to it. I never thought I'd make such an allowance but in the case of Kelman and his ever so sympathetic male protagonists, I do, willingly. Also, I should note, these characters, especially the lead in You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, are aware of and actually struggle with their sexism, something you rarely see in fiction by male writers. I must also say that You Have to Be Careful has many moments of humor. Its main recommendation, though, along with the wonderful writing and rip-roaring story, is that it is a lacerating, vituperative, no-holds-barred indictment of U.S. society--written in the wake of September 11, 2001, no less, when everyone else was busy sympathizing with the imperialist homeland. Which makes Kelman a courageous artist, and me eager to read his latest.
