From: "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
> I'm not trying to start a class war, Judy.
Hey, can I chuck in a *really contentious comment here?
The fifties generation of English working-class novelists (Braine, Sillitoe,
Colin Wilson, et alia) "betrayed their roots", in the sense that they came
out of a working-class environment but had to "repudiate" it finally in
their writing to succeed.
[Well, Colin Wilson didn't repudiate his roots, he simply went
barking mad. But then so did Blake, and for the same reason -- nobody was
bothering to listen.]
Even as late as Tony Harrison, in England a university education surely
screws things up for writers.
It wasn't quite the same in Scotland.
Um... I suspect I better simply wait for the Wrath of God to descend on my
head over that.
But it seems to me that the Scottish writers from the late sixties on
managed to negociate this much better. And play a much more sophisticated
game.
I suspect that, as so often, Alasdair Gray is the elephant in the room in
this area.
.... and I reluctantly include (as they're from Edinburgh) Ian Rankin and
Irvin Welsh in this remit.
As {Bill} Clinton said, "It's [the] education [system],stupid, in'tit?"
R.
(And the more I think on it, the more I see Christopher Brookmyre as
unique -- who else *can't be typed as *either a Glasgow *or an Edinburgh
writer?
If you dig deep enough, even Iain M. Banks [who virtually abolishes the
provincial from his SF novels] is distinctively Glasgow.
R.)
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