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Indelible Ink : The Shoe
It has been decided by those who decide such things that there are only ever seven stories to be told. Roughly speaking these are; The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy (otherwise known as The Misunderstanding), Tragedy (or The Fall), Defeating the Monster, Rags to Riches and Rebirth. To this can be added an eighth, ‘A […]
June 7, 2010
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Indelible Ink : The Cutting Room
At last year’s Edinburgh Book Festival James Kelman complained that genre fiction was being packaged and promoted to the detriment of ‘literary’ fiction, such as, by coincidence, his own. His argument was that we don’t properly celebrate and engage with the country’s ‘difficult’ literature preferring the comfort of genre. He is reported to have claimed […]
May 3, 2010
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Indelible Ink : Trainspotting
‘The best book ever written by man or woman…it deserves to sell more copies that the Bible.’ Rebel Inc If you’re going to grab people’s attention with a cover line, that’s the way to do it. In 1993 Irvine Welsh’s debut novel ‘Trainspotting’ was brilliantly packaged to an unsuspecting public with the title in red […]
April 5, 2010
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In praise of: Geordie
Saturday afternoon telly is nostalgia writ large. For me Saturday’s were footie in the morning on some godforsaken ash pitch, dodging dog crap and broken glass, then home for Football Focus, a scotch pie and an afternoon film.
March 27, 2010
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Indelible Ink : The Trick is to Keep Breathing
Let’s reflect on the state of Scottish literature of the 1980’s. James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, Iain Banks and Iain Rankin came to wider public attention and William McIllvaney continued to write gritty stories of West of Scotland hard men. As another cultural icon of the 80’s Frank McAvennie might have asked; ‘wherz the burdz?’
March 8, 2010
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Minstrels, Poets and Vagabonds…
I recently received a copy of Minstrels Poets and Vagabonds, the history of rock music in Glasgow from the sixties up to the present day. Written by promoter and DJ Robert Fields the book is a fascinating history of a musical genre that is at best ignored, at worst ridiculed.
February 10, 2010
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In praise of: Lloyd Cole
I think that it says almost everything about the year of Homecoming that I have almost no thoughts about it at all, but then I suppose it wasn’t for me. Some insist that the year has been successful in promoting the country around the world, but I’m not sure how such things are calculated.
February 3, 2010
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Indelible Ink : Kill Your Friends
Rarely can an epigraph have summed up the novel to come better than the Hunter S. Thompson quote that appears before John Niven’s 2008 novel ‘Kill Your Friends’. It reads as follows: ‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men […]
February 1, 2010
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A Night Out with B.A. Robertson and Billy MacKenzie
I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the Scottish Songbook concert at the Concert Hall in Glasgow last Saturday night (Thanks Chris!) I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but it was a grand evening. More contemporary than I was expecting. Performers included Karine Polwart, who was the director of the evening, Ricky […]
January 27, 2010
