A Disaffection

Ah dear, another one of those Kelman books which, if it doesn't lull you into the Scottish, Glaswegian dialect of the endless verbal circumlocutions of our very disaffected schoolteacher protagonist, of sorts - one Patrick Doyle - isn't going to catch your fancy. A pity, for this is really quite a lovely book. No, it doesn't pack the wallop of Kelman's later, Booker-winning masterpiece "How Late it Was, How Late," but this is as it should be. This book - despite the ambience of grim Glasgow in the 1980s - brims over with humour, sweetness and light. Doyle plods around Glasgow and its environs, mooning over a fellow schoolteacher he's never going to get (She's married.). He obsesses about all manner of recondite lore including Pythagoras and the German Romantic poet Holderlin, dragging the reader along with him down these esoteric byways with no end in sight. One is never quite sure as to which way the narrative is going to turn until it veers into the kitchenette in brother Gavin's and sister-in-law Nicola's flat. But I'll leave that scene for the reader to discover. Some might say that this is a meandering, nearly solipsistic, navel-gazing exercise in gazing into the past. To which Pat Doyle would make reply: "But this is because he was a single chap and single chaps are single persons ergo they dwell on the past and there is nothing wrong in dwelling on the past. How can you dwell on the future? There is nothing to dwell on! It doesni exist. It is a blank. Everything has yet to take place. This is what the future is, the place where things have yet to occur. So how can you dwell on that? You're cheating. Okay but just think of it as an empty room. No. Well then.... " And he goes on and on. And if the reader didn't at least notice a wee smile crossing his/her face whilst reading this excerpt of Pat's musings, then this book is nae for the likes of him/her!

I guess there's no easy way into a James Kelman novel. He is not the most accessible of writers to non-native readers because he uses the language of the vernacular to capture the essence of daily thought and speech patterns of the Scottish working class. Authentic it may well be, this style of writing is nevertheless limiting in its readership appeal. Thus, it was with some reservation that I began on "A Disaffection", my first Kelman novel. After stumbling around a bit with familiar looking words spelled funny and expletives that scream at you from nearly every line, I got into a rhythmn and found myself on the way to a strange journey that's not without its appeal. Kelman's stream of consciousness style means that we stay very much within the confines of our hero Patrick Doyle's mind. Nothing much happens but that's the point. Pat is a university graduate from a working class background, who hates and despises his job as a teacher, believes he is polluting the minds of the children he teaches with useless capitalist thoughts, secretly falls for Alison, a fellow teacher who's married, but is too scared to declare his intentions, and ends up being transferred to another school but cannot remember having asked for the transfer. It's bad enough that he's paralysed by inaction, his elder brother, Gavin, an unemployed builder, harbours a secret resentment against Pat for being the educated one in the family, not realising his lonely plight. The novel begins with two sets of pipes that Pat finds at the back of the Arts Club, intending to use as musical instruments. He never gets round to it. That's the story of his life. The pipes are a symbol of his private ambitions. They are painted and shiny but he never gets round to playing them at the nightclub after work. "A Disaffection" is remorseless in its pessimism and criticism of the state of Scottish society but it's also infused with so much good humour and honesty you leave the embattled scene not necessarily unscarred but alive. My first taste of Kelman may have been fraught with some initial difficulties but you get the hang of it and the final verdict is a thumbs up.