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| Hearsay: |
Scotland is divided over the astonishing and brave Kelman rant from last week, as you’d expect. Some people want to look at it as a genre/lit fiction divide, but here’s a piece looking at the greater social implications for a post-colonial literary tradition. No wait, don’t switch to that bubble game you play for hours when you think I’m not looking. It’s actually more interesting than that sounds.
There is an unspoken rule among Scottish writers that we don’t slag each other off in public. The rule runs thus: coming, as we do, from a small, colonised nation, we automatically find ourselves marginalised by literary London and must fight doubly hard to gain the recognition abroad that is granted to English writers. While we may express private reservations about the work of another writer, we don’t scupper their chances by saying this publicly. After all, each of us takes enough of that from critics.
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There is another to level to this, however, about the ways in which any country’s indigenous literature – especially those of smaller or post-colonial nations – is threatened by the commercial imperative to produce page-turning, airport-friendly thrillers. A third level concerns the collusion of the literary establishment in this. It’s certainly the case that the books editors of broadsheet newspapers will bemoan the fact that we’re not all reading Tolstoy, while providing acres of coverage to crime writers. Genre fiction doesn’t need highbrow attention in order to sell by the bucketload, yet editors must cover it precisely because it is so visible. This crowds out more risk-taking writers, for whom a single review from a perceptive critic can provide a career breakthrough.It is galling, then, that a country like Scotland, home to an enormous, bristling, experimental tradition which includes James Hogg, Alexander Trocchi, Hugh McDiarmid, Muriel Spark, Edwin Morgan, Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway, Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Ali Smith, James Robertson and Kelman himself, is marketed to tourists as the home of Rebus and Potter.
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August 31st, 2009 at 10:17 am
And to think some people are just happy that it’s Rebus who’s so popular, a character who digs a little deeper into the (sometimes very unpleasant) Scottish soul than most crime writers.
We could use a Rebus in Canada.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I prefer an Ian Rankin or J. Robertson rather than ivory tower genre fiction. I think it’s because I prefer substance.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:39 am
“It is galling, then, that a country like Scotland, home to an enormous, bristling, experimental tradition … is marketed to tourists as the home of Rebus and Potter.”
It’s only galling to literary snobs. What kind of moron thinks marketing internationally known cultural figures as a tourist inducement is a bad thing? Could Canada attract tourists with its writers? Really?
September 1st, 2009 at 10:43 am
NL does.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 am
+1 George. NL writing is a tourist draw. Witness Crummey’s book launch at the Ship a few nights ago…50/50 tourists and the literary ilk (not to be confused with elk, also in abundance in NL). The support of other writers in attendance such as Lisa Moore, George himself (you still calling yourself a writer?;-) and others add to the draw.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:52 am
Great! So it’s a good thing, right? Unless it’s crime or sf writers, then it’s shameful, right? Thanks for straightening me out on that. Wouldn’t want to be shunned for reading (or writing) the wrong books.