Irvine Welsh is from Glasgow.
And I have the monopoly on elephants - at the moment, cos of my new book.
Alsdair Gray is a v good example and becoming even more of an artist than a
writer - he's done a michelangelo on a formerly disused church in Glasgow's
west end. Brilliant!
Sally Evans
http://www.poetryscotland.co.uk
http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye
http://www.myspace.com/poetsallyevans
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: New beats (???)
> 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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