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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 […]
Alistair Braidwood
June 7, 2010
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Interview with Allan Guthrie
Allan Guthrie writes dark (and sometimes comic) crime fiction. He was born in Orkney, but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life. He is also the author of the award winning ‘Hard Man’ and his latest novel is Slammer. Our friends at Byker Books recently shared a pint with Allan in Glasgow:
Pete Reid
May 21, 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 […]
Alistair Braidwood
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 […]
Alistair Braidwood
April 5, 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?’
Alistair Braidwood
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.
Alistair Braidwood
February 10, 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 […]
Alistair Braidwood
February 1, 2010
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Indelible Ink : Be Near Me
Andrew O’Hagan’s Booker nominated 2006 novel Be Near Me tackles themes which are common in modern Scottish literature, but in a manner which is very much of his own styling. Religion, politics, bigotry, class, nationality and sexuality are explored in the novel but with a more considered eye than many of his contemporaries. There is […]
Alistair Braidwood
January 4, 2010
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Indelible Ink : Morvern Callar
In the first of his monthly columns on Scottish Literature, Alistair Braidwood takes a closer look at ‘Morvern Callar’ by Alan Warner, the 1995 novel that was later made into a film by Lynne Ramsay. Next month Alistair will examine Andrew O’Hagan’s ‘Be Near Me’.
Alistair Braidwood
December 7, 2009
