books review

James Kelman

Edinburgh International Book Festival/ The Saltire Society Event

James Kelman is perhaps one of those precise, tricky writers, whose work is not best suited to public recitals, concerned as it is with theoretical questions of textuality and syntax: the kind of man who attaches great importance to the placement of a comma. However, the passage from 'Translated Accounts' that he read gave a flavour of his techniques and concerns, a carefully-constructed political speech from a fictional liberation struggle, which transforms familiar, stirring rhetoric into something abstract and almost meaningless. Stern in his manner, Kelman ends in an impassioned appeal for Scotland to acknowledge its radical intellectual tradition and reclaim forgotten heroes in the struggle for social justice: a struggle that he, in his subtle and difficult way, wholeheartedly participates in.

RBS Main Theatre, 26 Aug, 11.30am

published: Sep-2009

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