JAMES KELMAN AT HILLHEAD LIBRARY

James Kelman is quite hard to get into if you are not from Glasgow , he uses the Glasgow vernacular of the middle part of the last century as his contribution to honour and keep the culture alive from suffocation by formal English.

This may seem like a cheap position to take , but as he correctly points out minority groups within a colonial set-up must keep their culture alive or else they will be wiped off the face of the earth , the way to protest is to keep your language alive , keep your identity from being smothered and pushed out of existence.

The same thing is happening today as the Palestinians try to keep their culture alive in the form of poetry , whilst the colonialists try to silence it as an essential step to crush Palestinians as an entity all together.

Keeping Glaswegian alive may not seem as essential or dangerous a task as the plight of the Palestinians , but , as he argues there is a modern market corporate pressure to dispense with Glaswegian in order to maximise the market by watering down the culture , to ultimately produce a mass appeal musac that sells volumes , whilst selling the soul of local experience.

Despite being a very local writer there is no doubt that Kelman is a world class author.In my favourite Book of his You Have To Be Careful In The Land Of The Free he keeps the reader captivated for a full 95 pages as the main character considers whether he should order another Pint or go for a Pish.The reader is riveted as the proponent weights the pros and cons of the decision , in the end one is on the end of his seat as both the character and reader are bursting , bursting to be free of the tension and pressure.

To Kelman , writing is like sculpture or painting , requiring constant revision , careful refining , patient manipulation.Done properly, writing is a cultural tool to fightback imperialism.Writing is an aesthetic to be harnessed , dont even think about the market.




His newest Book is a brilliant conception , he tells the story from the point of view of a boy from the age of 4 , and the Book ends when he is just about 13.For a Glaswegian from the 60s , his images are immediately familiar , from "scrambles" at weddings , to being at Football matches when you can hardly see if front of you , to being chased by rowdies in and out of closes.

The reading he gave was mesmerising , read like a prose poem , layer apoun layer of vibrant bursting excitement , all the enthusiasm of a small boy , yet told with such precise concise language.A quite inspirational performance from a truly wonderful artist , a master of his craft.

Here is a review of his latest Book.