An interesting question, Robin. I suspect, that aspect was read (it
certainly was by me) as, yes, local, but also a socio-cultural aspect
of the 'past' in that future that we had to take as given, & as a given
for the development of the future(s) he constructed in those 4 novels.
MacLeod is such a good writer, creates such interesting characters who
battle with each other & with the social developments they face, that
the story carries one through.
But of course I didn't really understand that history, just what he
showed me, in context...
Doug
On 15-May-05, at 11:07 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> I kept on meaning to ask Doug Barbour this from the minute he turned
> me on
> to Ken McLeod but somehow never got round to it, but maybe the way this
> thread is going, it might be worth throwing out generally (as well as
> obviously to Doug in especial) ...
>
> ... but what hit me the minute I began to read McLeod was just how
> *local*,
> both in time and space, some of his references were -- Glasgow
> University in
> the seventies, but. It was so detailed that it actually threw me that
> McLeod's experience of the QM Union wasn't the same as mine. (Mine
> would
> have been about ten years earlier.)
>
> But what I wondered was just how much of this travelled -- I mean, I'm
> not
> sure how far it would travel in Scotland even. (What would they know
> about
> the Queen Margaret Union -- the ladies' union, physical space, not
> organisation -- in Edinburgh, even?)
>
> I'd walked much the same walk as McLeod, but even then ... It wasn't
> that
> his politics weren't the same as mine, but given that ten year
> difference,
> it was pretty bloody obvious that the very *nature* of student
> politics up
> the Hill had shifted.
>
> So anyway, I had this weird sensation that a bit of what McLeod was
> writing
> simply wouldn't make *sense* outside a narrow range of his readers.
>
> So anyway, if this ramble makes any sense, what do people elsewhere
> make of
> this side of his work?
>
> Robin
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
There are places named for
other places, ones where
a word survives whatever happened
which it once referred to. And there are
names for the places water comes and touches.
But nothing for the whole.
Bill Manhire
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