So therr it is in A willny really know the score tae A see young Tony again. Bit it’s Moira in the weans, is far is A know they’ve still nae wherr tae go. A mean – nice tae be nice – know whit A mean?
James Kelman photographed in 1973 for The Scotsman newspaper. The caption read: ‘I live in a slum and drink in pubs.’
Off the Buses
An interview with James Kelman by Anne Stevenson, originally published in The Scotsman, 14 July 1973.
I met Jim Kelman over a pint in a crowded pub near Garioch Mill Road in Glasgow, where he lives with his wife and two small daughters. Jim’s first book of short stories, An Old Pub Near the Angel, has just been published in the United States by the Puckerbrush Press of Orono, Maine; so it seemed appropriate to talk to him over a hubbub of voices and the acrid smell of smoke and spilled beer.
Quiet spoken, fair, with large, expressive eyes, Jim considers himself a Glaswegian, although after being brought up in Drumchapel he has lived in California, London, Jersey and Manchester. I asked him if the material for his stories, most of which are about working-class people and written with exceptional depth and tenderness, was provided by his own life.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I want to write about real people, real things. I’m not interested in theories. A story can only be real if written through your own experience.’
We were surrounded by university students, celebrating their release from exams; so I asked him whether he thought a university education would be of much help to his writing.
‘No, not at all. I don’t think anyone should go to university before at least 25.’ (Kelman is 27.)
‘They don’t know enough. It’s training them to be officers before they’ve learned to be men.’
‘But you, yourself? Do you think now you’d like more education? Would you go to the university as a mature student?’
‘Me? No. I don’t write for educated people particularly. Of course I’m interested if they read my books, but I’m also interested in their reasons.’
‘Who do you write for, then?’
‘People,’ he said. ‘Ordinary people who might pick up the book on a news stand. Of course, I don’t expect many people will pick up this book because they don’t know about it. Half the booksellers I’ve approached won’t take it. It’s published in Maine by a small press and is only known by other writers. Writers are classless, or should be.’
‘And yet you write mainly about working-class people.’
‘I write about the working classes because I was brought up in a working-class family. I’m published in America because an American writer, Mary Gray Hughes, liked my stories. She couldn’t have known anything about working-class Glasgow. I feel I have a lot in common with black writers who have to write from the point of view of class. They can’t do otherwise. But that doesn’t mean you write for a class, if you write about it.’
‘I see what you mean,’ I said. ‘Tell me about your family and schooling. What made you want to write stories?’
‘I was born in Govan, but we moved to Drumchapel, Number One Scheme, in 1954. My father is a craftsman, a picture framer known to Glasgow artists, and he taught me to know good workmanship.
‘Drumchapel was a good place for a child to grow up, lots of fresh air and space. My brother was at a school in Hyndland, so I went there too. That was before there was a school in Drumchapel.
‘I left school at 15 to be an apprentice printer and was a member of the printers’ union. Then my father moved with the family to Pasadena, near Los Angeles in California. He thought there would be opportunities there, but after a while he got to hate the American system – master/slave relationship he called it – so he came back to Glasgow.
‘Two of my brothers stayed in the US, but I returned with my father. We didn’t have much money. The printers’ union wouldn’t have me back, so I went to work for a shoe factory in Govan. Then I was a sales assistant, a storeman and twice a bus conductor.
‘In 1965 I went to Manchester where I worked in factories, occasionally doing 12-hour shifts, six days a week. I remember working a straight 20-hour shift once. It didn’t pay very well.
‘In 1967 I came back to Glasgow and worked on the buses until August of that year, when I headed for London. There I worked as a porter and on building sites and other things. For a while I picked potatoes in Jersey. Eventually I had to do a moonlight from there back to London.’
‘Where you met your wife?’
‘Yes, we met in 1969. Marie’s from Swansea, a secretary. Shortly after we met, we married, and when we found she was going to have a baby we came back to Glasgow.’
‘Why?’
‘Accommodation’s cheaper. We couldn’t have afforded to live in London. I was working on the buses until last year, when I stopped and went on the buroo so as to have more time to write.’
‘And you’ve wanted to be a writer all your life?’
‘Well, no, I wanted to be a painter, but I wasn’t good enough. I must have been 21 or two when I wrote my first stories. One was called “He Knew Him Well”, about an old man who died without anyone knowing him. Another was called “Abject Misery”, about having no money and no job.’
‘Those are included in your book, aren’t they? I’ve noticed quite a number of your stories take place in slums or pubs.’
‘That’s because I live in a slum and drink in pubs.’
‘When did you begin to take your writing seriously?’
‘It was in 1971. Philip Hobsbaum was giving an extra-mural class in creative writing at Glasgow University. I went along. He liked my work and encouraged me. When the American writer Mary Gray Hughes visited Glasgow last year he showed her my work.’
I asked finally about his plans for the future.
‘I’ve no fixed plans. I’ll probably keep writing, though I have to get a job again in January. My wife’s supporting us now, but in January it’ll be my turn. I can’t write for television or radio. I’ll keep writing stories. I began a novel last year and had about 60,000 words down on paper, but it turned out wrong. I’ve started another’
‘Aren’t stories difficult to get printed?’ I suggested. ‘Wouldn’t it make sense to write for the media, since they pay well?’
‘Media isn’t real,’ Jim replied. ‘If I had to write something not real I’d drive buses again. Does that sound ridiculous?’
‘I don’t think so. What writers do you like then?’
‘Mostly contemporary Americans. Mostly American women writers. Especially, I think, Katherine Ann Porter, Flannery O’Connor, Mary Gray Hughes and Tillie Olsen. But of course, men too. Sherwood Anderson, Isaac Singer. The Russian, Isaac Babel.’
‘For somebody without a formal education you seem to have read quite a bit,’ I said.
‘You don’t need a formal education to read,’ Jim said.
We drank to that.
Afterword
In the spring of 1973 a postman arrived at our door with a big parcel, a cardboard box containing 200 copies of An Old Pub Near the Angel. This was payment for my first collection of stories. We were living in a room and kitchen in Garriochmill Road. I ripped the parcel apart and showed the books to Marie and our infant daughters Laura and Emma. They were mightily impressed. At the back of four next morning I resumed paid employment and drove a bus out of Partick Garage. A time-inspector punished me for running six minutes sharp on a 64 bus through Brigton Cross. I explained that I was a writer and showed him a copy of the book. He thought it looked the part. In those days I carried a copy in case somebody wanted to read it.
An Old Pub Near the Angel, and Other Stories was published by Puckerbrush Press of Orono, Maine, U.S.A. It was a one-woman operation specialising in poetry but open to short fiction. Constance Hunting was the woman. Her publication of my work came about through a sort of fluke. She was shown it by the American poet and short-story writer Mary Gray Hughes whom I had met in Glasgow the year before.
I was fortunate to meet a few generou
s older writers (and readers) when I was younger. One was poet and critic Philip Hobsbaum. Another was the poet Anne Stevenson, daughter of American philosopher Charles Stevenson and biographer of Sylvia Plath. She and Philip were partners at that time.
Philip’s influence on the literary scene of the period has been attested. He was a founder member of the group of poets known as ‘the Movement’ in late 1950s London. Others in the group included Pete Porter, John Redmond and Edward Lucie-Smith. In the mid 1960s he lectured at Queen’s University, Belfast and around him gathered a group of younger writers that included Michael and Edna Longley, Seamus Heaney and Bernard MacLaverty. He became a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow in the late 1960s and stayed for the rest of his days. In his spare time he tutored a weekly Creative Writing class for the Extra-mural Department. I attended this class during the 1971–2 academic year unless shiftwork made it impossible – one week early, one week late, and as much overtime as possible – but the class had become the highlight of my week and I was there at least once a fortnight.
It was a large class. Each session centred on the work of one or more of those present. Philip chaired the sessions. He would have had our stuff photocopied and ready for distribution the previous week. Thus people had at least seven days to study the poetry or stories properly. It was a good and thorough method. I was 25 and had been writing for three years. When it came my turn I passed five stories on to him.
This was the second time I had shown my work to anyone other than Marie. We had met in London not long after I started writing, in early 1969; she was twenty, a Swansea girl. I had begun writing only a few weeks before, and planned on returning to the U.S.A. where I had lived for a spell in my teens. I was in touch with the U.S. Embassy, had completed most of the paperwork and it appeared a formality.
Thereafter I forgot about it. Marie’s dowry comprised four albums; Nina Simone, Los Paraguayos, the seminal What is Soul? anthology, and the fourth was by The New Seekers for which she makes no apologies. My one and only album which I won in a game of cards was the 1964 Newport Folk Festival recording featuring Boozoo Chavis, Doc Watson, the Swan Silvertones and old Fred McDowell. Only the New Seekers album is missing from our current collection but dastardly practices were not involved.
All my early stories were written in longhand until 1971 when I purchased an elderly desktop typewriter. Then I used both techniques. I have longhand drafts of stories as late as ‘Nice to be Nice’ and ‘Remember Young Cecil’. Then we got a neat little portable typewriter that chased itself across the table when I pounded the keys. Occasionally Marie typed out the stories. She would not disclose if she read them. It is better not to show work to family and friends if you seek critical comment, as a general principle. I learned that from Marie. She earned a living as a shorthand typist and was very efficient. Efficient shorthand typists scan thoroughly but do not necessarily read. She gave me a certain look if I asked. Yet over the years I have heard her muttering ‘Fair do’s and all that pish’. This very line can be found in the first story I ever wrote and finished: ‘Abject Misery’. She denies she got it from me. Maybe I got it from her.
Philip Hobsbaum photocopied and distributed my five stories to the other class members. On the night he said I should select three and read them. I had expected him to choose. I read ‘He Knew Him Well’, ‘Abject Misery’ and cannot remember the third.
At these sessions a critique of the work followed the reading. Philip chaired the sessions and avoided talking too soon, otherwise his contribution would have shaped the discussion. His way allowed class members to go off on their own. When the poem or story was being read he spent the time gazing over the top of his spectacles, watching the class. Maybe he saw me watching him.
After my reading came the critique. I enjoyed hearing people discuss my stories but certain aspects began to irritate me. I appeared to be absent. ‘What Kelman should do is this.’ ‘No, instead he should do that . . .’ ‘Oh but what if he . . .’
Occasionally textual suggestions were made as though they never would have occurred to me. There was a vague assumption that the stories had just come. All I did was write them down. It was weird. I sweated blood over the damn things. Seventeen years later my novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for prizes and a member of an adjudicating panel asked if I ever revised ‘or did it just come out?’
It jist comes oot, ah says, it’s the natchril rithm o the workin klass, ah jist opens ma mooth and oot it comes. Similar to the American dancer in reply to a related question, ah jes closes ma eyes an ma feets git to movin.
Some of what I encountered from those early days prepared me for later struggles. But the blatant elitism encountered by so-called working-class writers still surprises me. I can never predict it. I assumed that anybody who thought about art and writing would know that my finished work was hard won.
During the session at Philip’s class there were lapses in the conversation, fewer people took part. Maybe some were intimidated, not only by the language of the stories but by the subject matter. It was not the stuff of literature and they were peeved, but they remained silent; I think because there had been a very positive response from Philip and at least two others.
Philip entered the discussion earlier than usual. He read aloud from ‘He Knew Him Well’. He was good at accents, in particular that of South London where for a couple of years he taught secondary school. It was an odd experience hearing somebody else speak the words and sentences so familiar to me. He brought to life the old man of ‘He Knew Him Well’. It sparked ideas. It was exciting.
Later it became clear that for some in the class my work had been an ordeal. Hostile comments arrived. A letter came from a schoolteacher of English with an antipathy to ‘the language of the gutter’. She found my stories disgusting and unreadable and did not see why they should have been forced upon her. She and her friend were among the small number who left the class never to return.
But why had they come in the first place? They had had a week to read the stories. They knew what to expect. Or did they? Perhaps they were there for the kill.
Philip was upset by their reaction. I assumed he would treat it ironically. Instead he took it seriously; he worried how it might affect me. It is true that I was unprepared. But equally I had been unprepared for his pleasure in the stories. At that time I was not prepared for much. It was my first experience of the world of letters – any response was noteworthy. I felt quite confident in what I was doing. In the face of the schoolteacher’s outrage there was little to be done other than give up writing, which by then was impossible.
Anyway, the negative stuff was insignificant in the face of one simple truth: Philip Hobsbaum, a real writer, had enjoyed my stories.
I have heard criticism of Philip over the years but he loved literature. Young writers did not scare him; he was not in competition and was generous towards them. Philip made me feel like a real writer.
Although he showed me the English teacher’s letter he did not give me it to keep. I speak from a distance of 35 years. She must have been hurt by something deeper than my five stories. Perhaps it was Philip’s response that provoked her. He was supposed to be an authority. She and others would have considered him a guardian not only of English Literature but of Standard English literary form. He could give that impression. He had the speech and mannerisms of a Cambridge professor. Yet Philip spent much of his boyhood in a working-class Yorkshire environment, and was Jewish. He knew how to assimilate: sometimes he did, other times not.
I had no experience of higher education and English Literature as a field of study but was used to discussing books and writers with various people in my various jobs since leaving school. Friends, family and workmates shared information. I read voraciously and wrote whenever possible. I never thought about my writing as part of anything. If it was I hoped it might include Albert Camus, Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevski. I had read a great many English-language writers but none had made such impact.<
br />
After Philip’s class some of us walked down the road to the Rubaiyat Bar at the corner of Byres Road and University Avenue, to continue the conversation. It was a long way home but who cared about that. And I had company for much of the walk, a colleague from the class, John Roy, who was a poet and member of the Socialist Workers Party. I was always interested in horse racing. He was antagonised when I asked what happened to horse racing after the revolution. I thought it a fair question, he thought it frivolous. What has horse racing got to do with anything?
Ah well, nay S.W.P. for me. Sir Ivor, Vaguely Noble and Nijinsky had by then retired to stud but Mill Reef, My Swallow and Brigadier Gerard had exploded onto the scene. Heady days. Their exploits got me through many a weary shift.
In the Rubaiyat Bar Philip introduced us to a few of his acquaintances, including Donald Saunders, Alasdair Gray, Catriona Montgomery and Aonghas MacNeacail. Later he and Anne Stevenson would set up a small, independent writers’ group at their home, by invitation. The four writers mentioned came along. It took place on a Sunday evening and operated in a similar format to the Creative Writing class but was separate from it. Other participants were Chris Boyce, Angela Mullane and Angus McAllister. Tom Leonard and Liz Lochhead were friends of some who attended but they did not appear until later, and not on a regular basis. I did not know them or their work. Tom and his wife Sonya were living in London at that time. After a year or so the group faded and by then I had stopped attending the extra-mural class.
Robin Hamilton was another poet who went to Philip and Anne’s group. He wrote poetry and had connections with Eboracum, a literary magazine published by students at the University of York. On my behalf he submitted the story ‘Nice to be Nice’ for publication. It was accepted but caused the students a major headache. Their printer was a fundamentalist Christian who refused to print the magazine unless they withdrew my story. He said it was blasphemous and obscene, and tried to convince other York printers to reject the job. He succeeded with most but not all. The students stayed with the battle and eventually Eboracum was published, my story included.
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