James Kelman, Saturday 13th October 2012, 7.30pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation
I had not entirely known what to expect when I set off to spend my Saturday evening at a reading of James Kelman’s new novel Mo Said She Was Quirky. I knew the work of Irvine Welsh who has been compared with Kelman, but little about the man himself. The reading which was part of the Manchester Literature Festival was held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in a fairly small brick-walled room. Seats were laid out for about sixty people and the majority of these seats were filled five minutes in advance of the event. I was only about a five meters from the stage and even the back row must have been less than ten meters away, which worked very well for the intimacy of the reading that followed.
Kelman was introduced by Simon Kövesi, author of James Kelman (Contemporary British Novelists), who also chaired a question and answer session after the reading. Kelman began by reading some short stories from his 1998 collection Busted Scotch. The first story he read gave its name to the collection, possibly because of its conclusion which encompassed the dark humour that was shown in much of the readings that Kelman gave. Four more stories were read, including That Thread which was a personal highlight of the evening. All the stories used working-class dialect in some form and it was clear to see the importance of Kelman to writing realistic idiomatic dialogue. There was a good audience response to all the stories but the transition between each could have been helped; it was sometimes like he was trying to get to the next story in a hurry.
At about ten to eight Kelman finished reading his short stories and moved on to an extract from his recently published novel Mo Said She Was Quirky. Kelman was humorously honest when he said he would read the first few pages so that he “didn’t have to explain anything”. The reading was very engaging due to the quality of the writing and because Kelman seemed to become more animated as he read more. He never left his quite sombre tone but began to act out the dialogue a little more which was a welcome addition to the performance. It was obvious after twenty minutes of hearing the opening that prejudice and inequality were large themes in this text. The political overtones of his reading were expanded on later in the Q&A session. It was largely silence in the audience whilst he read but the large applause afterwards confirmed that it was a mood of concentration on the novel.
The Q&A began immediately after the reading from the novel had finished. It kicked off with a series of questions from the chair, Simon Kövesi. The first was whether Kelman had to change anything stylistically to write a female protagonist, as he did in his most recent novel?. Bluntly but humorously Kelman answered “no, there wasn’t any stylistic changes”. The audience questions moved the talk onto the political situation of Scotland and Kelman’s passion became even more evident with the much applauded statement that it “still amazes [him] that we have a monarchy”. There is a clear connection between his politics and his works, in response to a question he described himself as a “libertarian socialist” and the works he read contained numerous convincing working-class characters.
At the close of the event the applause really highlighted the good feeling towards Kelman’s works and probably to his political sentiments. The reading was consistently interesting for the hour and a half it lasted and was varied enough to interest someone with no knowledge of his works at all.
James Horrocks