Three New Literary Voices from Scotland

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MAY 01, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 050101np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Scottish Writers
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:00

MARTY MOSS-COANE, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane in for Terry Gross.

Last summer, the Scottish movie "Trainspotting" opened and sparked immediate controversy. It was a high-energy ride, filled with violence, drugs and humor that showed the squalid life of Scottish slackers. The author of Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh, is just one of a new generation of young Scots who write with a wild energy drawn from the music, drugs and slang of the youth culture they inhabit.

My guests today are three of Scotland's most adventurous writers. Irvine Welsh is best known for Trainspotting, but has also written several other books, including "The Acid House," which is also being made into a movie.

Duncan McLean is making his American debut with the new book "Bunker Man." His next book will be a non-fiction account of his musical idol, Texas swing legend Bob Wills.

And James Kelman who won Britain's most esteemed literary award, the Booker Prize, in 1994 for his novel "How Late It was, How Late." This scandalized much of British society and critics called his obscenity-drenched book, which is written almost entirely in dialect, "unreadable and a piece of crap." Kelman's latest is a collection of short stories called "Busted Scotch."

We'll start with a reading by Duncan McLean.

DUNCAN MCLEAN, SCOTTISH AUTHOR: The book's called "Bunker Man," and it's set in a small town on the east coast of Scotland. The central character is a janitor at the school there, and the other central character is his alter-ego who's a kind of mysterious figure -- mysterious to Rob, the janitor; also, of course, not mysterious to himself. And the book follows the course of Rob, the jani (ph), coming to know more about this alter-ego, this Bunker Man.

Here a scene from towards the end of the book, where they've become quite chummy. They're in the janitor's office at the school at midnight, and Rob is getting them something to eat.

DUNCAN MCLEAN, NARRATOR, READING FROM HIS "BUNKER MAN":

Rob sliced bread, spread it with marge (ph), then chopped up a couple of onions and made sandwiches. He handed one to Bunker Man and took a bite out of his own. Bunker Man was not eating. "Don't I get bit cheese in this," he said after a while. "Cheese and onion -- that's a proper flavor. Onion by itself is not."

"Rubbish," said Rob, chewing. "Bullocks (ph)! Cheese is just fat, solid orange animal fat. Who wants a slab of that in their gob? Not me. The onions are good for you -- good for the blood. It's a well known fact. All right? Aye -- onions put zing in your blood. They're famous for it. I'm always eatin' them -- onion rings, scallions (ph), French onion soup with croutons; chicken dob-eyes (ph) in the Indians. And look at my blood -- it's lopin' in my veins."

Is it?

"Go'd aye, tuck in."

Bunker Man lifted the top slice of bread and peered inside: "Are you sure?"

Rob sighed: "OK," he said. "Seein' as it's you're feast, you can have some cheese, but I wouldn't touch it with a barn's pole, on a bunker pole, come to that."

Bunker Man gazed in for a second, then shut the sandwich and took a huge bite.

"You can have cheese," said Rob.

Bunker Man shook his head, said something through a full mouth.

"It's no bud," said Rob, looking around for the Scottish cheddar.
"What do you say?"

Bunker Man took a few big chews then mumbled through half a mouthful: "It's not bad." He swallowed again. "Zing," he said.

"Aye," that's another thing, says Rob. "Onions are meant to make ya grit, right? But if you see my tears in me (ph), you understand.. No way, 'cause I eat so much of the buggers, I'm immune. I never grit any more. Onions are like a jog against gritting.

"Oh, that's good," said Bunker Man. "That's what I need."

"I'll tell you something else," said Rob, finishing a sandwich. "I saw a hypnotist once. I was on holiday in Spain and I saw this guy in an English pub. He gave a gal an onion, then he hypnotized her and told that it was an apple. And she ate the whole damn thing, saying how sweet it was. Everybody was killing themselves." "Suicide." "Eh? No -- laughing a lot. That's what 'killing yourself' means -- laughing a lot."

"Right," said Bunker Man.

"But the point is, eating an onion's nothin' to me. I just went 'so' and walked out of the (expletive deleted) place. I'd rather eat an onion than an apple any time."

Bunker Man looked around at the food spread between them, then reached forward and picked up the bag of (unintelligible). "All right," he said. "You take one of these, Jonni-man (ph), then I'll hypnotize you and convince you it's onion."

Rob looked at him, then at the apples, then at Bunker Man again. Then he bust out laughin'. He threw his head back and roared. After half a min (ph) down into a squeaky chuckle, and he gasped for breath and was back into a big hootin' laugh. He waved his hands about in front of him, helpless, then brought them up to wipe away the tears that sprung from his eyes.

MOSS-COANE: And that's Duncan McLean reading from his new novel, and it's called Bunker Man.

I know you worked as a janitor for a while. Do you identify with Rob in this story?

MCLEAN: I worked as a janitor in a village hall, which is kind of used occasionally for dances and play groups and karate clubs and stuff like that. And the janitor in this book is -- works in a school, which -- the reason I made him a janitor was I like stories about people working. You know, there don't seem to be enough of them, ever. And I wanted to make the main character in this book do a bit of work now and then, and janitorial work was a kind of work that I knew about.

When I started the book, I didn't know the guy was going to come out quite so nasty, otherwise I might have made him work at some other job, a media interviewer or something, you know, cause people keep asking me if it's autobiographical.

LAUGHTER

MOSS-COANE: Well, each of you uses language in -- in a really very powerful way, as a way to develop characters through the words that they speak. And this I'm going to put to you, or at least begin with you, James Kelman: Is there something distinctive about Scottish writing and Scottish writers to -- to develop characters so strongly through dialogue and through just literally the words that they speak?

JAMES KELMAN, SCOTTISH AUTHOR: Well, I suppose without the language, the people don't exist. And the problem, if you look at English literature or what you could call mainstream English literature, there's also stuff that gets taught in universities and through the education systems. What you find is that the people would be the subject material of our work some way don't exist at all. What you get is like about 85 percent of the English-speaking population don't exist in literature, because their -- the language in which they could come to is -- to life, for whatever reason, has been either repressed, suppressed, or oppressed over the last 100 or so years.

So, the way that we are using language, as far as I can see, and the way the other writers are using it, not only in Scotland, but also in, for example, the Caribbean, parts of Africa, and other parts of the former English empire are beginning to kind of use -- reclaim, reclaim language.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I know there's this whole controversy about whether Scottish is a language; whether it's a dialect. It reminds me, to some degree, of the controversy in this country about what American English is and what black English is. And I want to throw this back to you, James Kelman, because I know this is something that you've really wrestled with and have a lot of opinions on and passion about.

KELMAN: Well, I think if you begin by looking even just say -- look at -- look up the word "dialect" in the dictionary, the word "dialect" or the term "dialect." is always a -- the ways in which we define it are inferior. They always relate it to, again, a given language -- the language is the true way to speak and to read, so that dialect becomes an inferior form of that, some kind of offshoot is always inferior relative to it.

So if you can take, by extension, the people who use that form of -- in quotes -- "language," which is the dialect, that would then under culture be -- both become inferior relative, again, to that norm (ph), the standard one.

And what is missed in these kinds of studies is that the ways in which African-American people in different parts of the U.S. would use English and the reason, for example, different people in Scotland would use -- I mean, the three of us use English in very different ways. Although it's a very small country, we have these different ways of using English.

And if you were to examine these different ways in which we're using it, you'll find that the rhythms in which we use language actually come from languages that are not English.

So in a sense, to describe it as a dialect is just nonsense. It's obviously a -- is a language, and has all the richness of any language.

MOSS-COANE: Our guests today are Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting; James Kelman, who won the Booker Prize for "How Late It Was, How Late"; and Duncan McLean who's making his U.S. debut with "Bunker Man."

We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

Let's get back to Scottish writers Duncan McLean, Irvine Welsh, and James Kelman.

Well, let me turn to you, Irvine Welsh and have you read a story. This is -- or at least the beginning of a story. It's called "Plastic Surgery" and it's from a book of yours called "The Acid House."

IRVINE WELSH, SCOTTISH AUTHOR: Yes, this is an extended novella called "The Smart Gun (ph)" from "The Acid House" and this is a section called "Plastic Surgery."

IRVINE WELSH, NARRATOR, READING "PLASTIC SURGERY" FROM "THE ACID HOUSE":

I'm sitting holding my face together in my hands, or that's how it seems. I'm aware of people around me. Their outraged gasps indicating there is blood. I know that -- the blood falls through my fingers and hits the wooden pulp floor in steady, even drops.

Hobo (ph) and I were close mates once, a few years ago now. He didn't like me pulling him around, begging him to get me sorted out. Get in my (expletive deleted) face, Bry (ph). I'm (expletive deleted) warning you, man.

I was given plenty of warning. I never took Hobo seriously enough. Always though he was a bit of a pusser (ph) -- him hanging a bit with a (unintelligible). By keeping that company, though, you can become an (unintelligible) yourself. He's far more a man of substance than I thought.

Being proved wrong hurts almost as much as my face. My cells, my (expletive deleted) sick, junk-deprived cells hurt the most. I had a (unintelligible) carefully this weekend. Things were gettin' a bit much. I needed to pour it all out. Everything. It took one sweeping motion of the glass -- one motion. And here I'm holding my face together and Hobo's shouting defensively about junkies (expletive deleted) hustlin' them and extracting himself from the bar as a collective wrath develops.

MOSS-COANE: And that's Irvine Welsh reading from his book called "The Acid House." It's a story called "Plastic Surgery."

That's a very powerful story, and you have a way of getting into people's unconscious mind, whether it's through their own drug addiction or whether they're, as this person is, dealing with having to have some kind of plastic surgery. You -- is that a world you know?

WELSH: I don't know. It's difficult to say. You don't really kind of -- you don't really think of the world you're in in kind of abstract. In that sense, who's to say whether it's a world you know or not. I mean, it's like -- it's kind of sort of like -- kind of shopping at Habitat and all that. So (unintelligible) as well, you know, so I think you can know all different kinds of worlds and -- and I don't like the idea of, you know, something like that -- kind of being seen as this somehow other world, you know, it's just -- it's just one world and it's all -- everything goes on in that world.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I also notice in your writing -- and this has been noticed before -- is that you do use a fair amount of obscenities, and I know that this is the way the people talk. But I wonder as you write it whether you see obscenities as a form of punctuation, and -- or as a way of -- of just making this -- this realism really dance on the page. Maybe I can throw that to you, Irvine Welsh, but I'd be interested in the other two of you as well.

WELSH: Umm, yeah. I don't think I really do use any obscenities or very many, and I don't think it's punctuation either. I think it's like you have to acknowledge that language is fluid and it changes. So, like, I mean, (expletive deleted) can mean so many different things. It doesn't mean -- it can be a term of endearment. It can be a term of abuse. It can be a descriptive term. So, you acknowledge the fluidity of your language.

And I mean, it's like -- it might -- language might start off as a pejorative and sexist or whatever or about, about kind of control. But once it's been appropriated by that oppressed group, and it has a kind of myriad of different meanings. So you have to accept that as it is, and kind of -- sort of not kind of sort of get into the -- the whole censorship thing.

MOSS-COANE: Well, what I find interesting -- because I think it's true with most language or most words, if you use them over and over and over again, they either lose their power or they lose their meaning. And -- and I know, James Kelman, when you got the Booker Prize for "How Late It Was, How Late," some critic or journalist spent I don't know how many hours counting up how many times the "f" word appeared in that book. And I think they got to something like 4,000. Do you find with words like the "f" word and other obscenities that -- that they really do retain their power, and that they have multiple meanings that can be used in very expressive ways?

KELMAN: Yeah, I mean. I've been always one that told me the "ands" (ph) were in the books. And I'm not (unintelligible) denying it. The whole ways in which we cannot discuss the use of the so-called "obscenities" in relation to literature was kind of devalued as a way of talking about language about 70 years ago. I mean, if a two (unintelligible) -- responsible for two revolutions in the way we look at language alone, you know, and there these other people who have been working in language for the last, well, around 70 years, then why are we still talking about language in this way, as though somehow there is the word, you know.

Maybe there's some kind of religious thing; the word was handed down and all that. But as far as a -- the world in science school is evolution, I mean, the word begins from sound. The word was handed down on a plate, you know. You know, and once we can grasp that point, there is no fixed meaning. When you see that words lose their meaning, it's not that you've already kind of infused that word with a precise meaning. But for any -- I mean, language doesn't exist until it's used. And once people are using it, it becomes a function of how they use it whether or not they can describe as obscene. You know, as has been said, the so-called "obscenities" can be used to express beauty, as the others -- as one of the most common ways of using these so-called "obscenities."

MOSS-COANE: Duncan McLean, how do you grapple with language and the kinds of words that you use?

MCLEAN: I don't think I do grapple on those kind of -- I noticed you saying that Jim "wrestled" with such issues. I led on the idea of us all sitting at our desks, you know, kind of "Whoa!

LAUGHTER

That language has got me! Half-nelson!

LAUGHTER

The problem -- all your questions, you know -- have been asking us to kind of look at the language we use, the words we use, what we write, from the outside, as if we can sit down and say to ourselves: Well, will I use obscenities today or will I not? Will I write in a dialect today or will I write in a language? As if we can kind of sit -- sit apart from it and decide what we're gonna do.

But, for me at least, and I think the others as well, it's just thoughts -- just not a kind of thinking that comes into your head at all. You sit down and you try and tell a story. You use the language that is in your head or in your mouth. And that language is the language that, you know, that you grew up speaking or that your neighbors speak or your friends speak, your family speaks.

And you don't -- you don't, kind of, attach all these separate little labels to it and make little value judgments about this bit that or any other bit of it. You just think, this is the language that I use, and this is -- and this is the story I'm going to tell with the language that I use.

MOSS-COANE: There is a sense, I think, through the stories and through interviews as well, is that many people in Scotland feel that they have been marginalized by England. And I wonder if you even look at the school system -- whether there's a way that -- that literature and English and languages are taught that -- that -- that makes Scottish people feel as if they are less than. And I wonder if I can put that to you, Duncan McLean?

MCLEAN: This -- Certainly, my experience -- and I should think everybody in Scotland probably still -- certain (unintelligible) -- was that what -- what we were taught, the first thing -- the first thing we went to school at age of five or six was about the language that we were speaking was somehow inferior, and had to be got rid of. I remember very, very clearly being told by a teacher when I was five or six that certain words I was using did not exist. She didn't even...

MOSS-COANE: Such as?

MCLEAN: There was a word "bricks" (ph) which is what I would have naturally for what, in England, would be "trousers" and still more or less "bricks." I remember very, very clearly the teacher saying to me, there's no such word as "bricks." So it wasn't even that you were told it was bad or inappropriate or wrong or something. It was that what you'd been speaking for -- what you'd been brought up speaking was something that did not exist.

And that's a very widespread experience, and that little bit there is kind of symptomatic of a lot of being educated in Scotland.

KELMAN: Still the same -- you can't ...

MOSS-COANE: James Kelman.

KELMAN: ... for example, kids now -- kids in school just now are not allowed to use the word "aye" in the classroom. You have to use the word "yes." They can't use "aye." So there -- the kids just know in school, and their still punished. It's not only an issue for Scottish children, although, you know, is the case now, but it also happens in other parts of the United Kingdom you know. So I'm sure Yorkshire kids are not allowed to use "ye" instead of "you" or, you know, these kind of things.

MOSS-COANE: Let me just jump in here, only because I want -- I'm keeping an eye on the clock, and there's still lots that I'd like to talk to you about, including a little bit about each of your growing up and that kind of a thing. So let me just shift gears here slightly. And if I can begin with you, James Kelman, what kind of a family did -- did you grow up in? And where did you grow up in Scotland?

KELMAN: I grew up in Glasgow, and just like -- well, I came of ordinary sort of family, really, from an ordinary Glasgow experience, which is a poor sect (ph) in World War -- a housing scheme. There was about...

MOSS-COANE: Like a housing project?

KELMAN: Yeah, there was about 45,000 people lived in the housing scheme in which I was brought up in and which was called Dun (ph) Chapel in Glasgow.

And these were kind of treated there like townships. In a way, that's a way to a township -- that the people weren't really -- it became an economic kind of problem. In order to travel into the center of the city, there were no resources, no amenities, that kind of place. There's many of these in the states.

MOSS-COANE: Yeah.

KELMAN: That was a sort of a -- which was an ordinary background, you know?

MOSS-COANE: Mmm-hm. You began to write at around the age of -- of 21 or so. What inspired you?

KELMAN: Well, I was unemployed and I was finding at that time that the only times I could actually contemplate writing -- I thought about writing for quite a while. Or rather, I didn't think about it in any reflective way. I just sort of took it for granted that one of these days I would begin writing. And I wasn't kind of a -- I was single at the time, so life could be exciting if you had money. So what -- I staged when I was without money, I began to write.

MOSS-COANE: Scottish writers James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, and Duncan McLean will be back with us in the second half of the show.

I'm Marty Moss-Coane and this is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane.

Let's continue our conversation with Scottish writers James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, and Duncan McLean.

Duncan McLean's latest novel is called "Bunker Man." He's working on a book about his travels through Texas in search of his musical hero, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. James Kelman won the Booker Prize in 1994 for his novel "How Late It Was, How Late." His newest book is a collection of short stories called "Busted Scotch." Irvine Welsh made a name for himself with the publication of his novel "Trainspotting," which was made into a movie last year. His latest book is called "Ecstasy."

To you, Irvine Welsh, tell us a little bit about the family you grew up in.

WELSH: Landed gentry.

LAUGHTER

WELSH: It's quite similar to Jim's really, it's a similar experience, like, sort of, kind of Bottom Leaf, which is the likes of old poor of Edinburgh, which was likes of half demolished in the '60s, and Wilmodette Mulhouse (ph), which was like really a village compared to (unintelligible). It was only about 30,000 instead of 45,000 there, but it still didn't have a public toilet or a pub until much later on.

And so, it was like -- it was basically like kind of vericained (ph) archetype of central Scotland, so background, really. And -- and that was basically me.

MOSS-COANE: You wrote "Trainspotting" -- your -- your first novel, on a bus ride between New York City and Los Angeles, is that right?

WELSH: Well, I wrote the original notes that became Trainspotting on that -- just 'cause that was the first writing I'd ever done because I was so bored on this, sort of, bus journey. It was such a -- you know, you couldn't really anything. And so, I just started writing -- filling these big notebooks and making up, kind of, new stories to amuse myself, basically, for that long sort of trip.

And I put them away for years and years, and never thought about them until I just decided to -- to, kind of, sort of, write them up, you know?

MOSS-COANE: And when you wrote "Trainspotting," which, of course, has been made into a film which came out last year in the states, the reaction was -- was interesting, because, on the one hand, reading the book, you certainly don't judge people who use drugs and you certainly don't glorify them. But I think many critics use that as a way of saying, because you don't condemn drug use and drug users, that it was a -- a novel or a story that glorified drugs. What -- what was your reaction to that?

WELSH: I think that's just nonsense. I mean, it's like I think that you have to start off from the -- if you -- if you're writing about things and you're writing about life, you can't really sort of selectively say what is and what isn't in the culture. Things that are in the culture are in the culture because they're there. I mean, it's like -- if somebody wrote a book, and you've seen so many tiresome books about people saying, oh, drugs are horrible, drugs are evil, and drugs destroy and drugs kill. They're boring.

If somebody else wrote a book saying, oh, drugs are great, this is brilliant, this is fantastic, drugs, drugs, drugs, wow, let's have some more, boring, tedious, you know, because both these books are starting off from some kind of agenda, you know? What you're doing is that you're writing about -- you're just writing about what you see and what's there, and the characters and situations, what people go up (ph) to, and without necessarily, you know, but what's -- why, meaning, if you wrote a book about horses, you don't have to say that horses are brilliant or horses are crap, you know. Or if you write a book about -- I don't know. So, you know, it's like anything else. What's the point? It's nothing to do -- it's nothing to do with it. I mean, your values should have nothing to do with it.

MOSS-COANE: Were you ready for the kind of publicity that -- that came from the novel, then the play, then -- then the movie?

WELSH: Not really, no. It was a little bit freaky at the time. But I was fortunate that I managed to escape most of it, 'cause I was living in Amsterdam. And when -- it was like, you know, when the -- when the book just started to take off in Scotland, I was in Amsterdam in Holland. And then when it took off in the states, I was over there. And -- But I moved over to London and it died down a little bit. But it was kicking off in Europe and in Amsterdam at the time. So I kind of missed sort of being right at the, kind of, the heart of the storm, which was good 'cause it wouldn't have been a particularly comfortable place to be.

MOSS-COANE: With the kind of publicity -- I think it's still being generated about Trainspotting and some of the controversies about the -- the story. What kind of effect has it had on you as a writer? I know you've written several other books since that time, but has it -- has it made it easier or harder to write?

WELSH: It's made it a lot easier in a lot of ways because now it's made me -- it's put me in a kind of sort of financial sort of (unintelligible) and a kind of, sort of, sales profile. That means that you don't really have to sort of worry about where the next money -- money's coming from, which is great, sort of unusual -- quite a luxurious position for a writer to be in.

So that's happened with my first book, really. So it's quite, a kind of, sort of, it's quite a sort of good thing for me.

There's always this kind of idea that you should follow and write a kind of Trainspotting II, and all that. So there's a pressure to do that, which is quite -- more of quite negative thing. And, you know, there's -- I'm quite fortunate that the second book I've done, "The Acid House," is getting made into a film just now and it's being filmed in Scotland. So, I think that's going to be quite a big film and quite, sort of, highly sort of a rated film.

So what I think it will do is it will kind of generalize a bit more, rather than me being seen as a kind of the "Trainspotting" guy, you know. It'll make it sort of a bit more kind of, sort of, give that kind of work a bit more for balance. And the rights have gone for the third book to be filmed as well. So, I think these things will give a kind of more sort of a balanced profile.

I mean, "Trainspotting" is a very, very good book to have as a first book. But it is the kind of book that does cast a shadow over you. I'm glad that my other stuff's being filmed, and translated into theater as well, so that kind of pushes up into the light a bit.

MOSS-COANE: Will your next book have drug use in it?

WELSH: I don't know. It might have horses in it.

LAUGHTER

But I'm not really sure 'cause it -- you kind of do see an advantage. You kind of go say, I'll have loads of drug use in the next book.

LAUGHTER

WELSH: Although there probably will be, you know. There's no, sort of, kind of, getting away from that. I mean, the reason I sort of, like, the reason I like writing about drugs is because, apart from the fact that just about everybody that I know takes loads of drugs, that it gives you a way into, sort of, -- I like kind of extremity in writing. And it gives you a way into different sort of states of consciousness. It gives you a way into different states of behavior.

MOSS-COANE: I'm speaking with Irvine Welsh, author of "Trainspotting"; James Kelman who won the Booker Prize for "How Late It Was, How Late"; and Duncan McLean who's making his U.S. debut with "Bunker Man." We'll talk more after a short break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

Let's continue our conversation with Scottish writers Duncan McLean, Irvine Welsh and James Kelman.

Let me turn now to you Duncan McLean, and tell us a little bit about the family you grew up in?

MCLEAN: Different from Jim and Irvine. I grew up very much in the country, and Aberdeen (ph) in the northeast of Scotland in a community of about 45 people, as opposed to...

MOSS-COANE: Really!

MCLEAN: ... to 45,000. So that probably shaped me quite a lot. And also ...

MOSS-COANE: How so do you think? How so do you think?

MCLEAN: Well, it was a pretty homogeneous -- homogeneous place. There wasn't really big class distinctions between different folk. You knew everybody personally, that was one of the reasons why. And if somebody had more money than somebody else, that was down (ph) to, you know, the individual. Well, that's how it seemed when I was growing up, anyway.

So it was quite a big shock to me when I went to the city for the first time when I was 18, when I went to University in Edinburgh, 'cause that was like a completely different world for me, going to live in the city was quite a shock to my system.

MOSS-COANE: You were part of a comedy troupe that toured Scotland called "The Merry Macs (ph) Fun Show"? What was your ...

MCLEAN: I'm sorry -- that's how -- that's how I got started in writing because I was obsessed with music when I was a kid and I still am, to an extent. And for years, I had this dream about being a musician, and the Merry Macs were a kind of comedy-musical group. And we did -- we played all sorts of venues, from big theaters, community centers, youth clubs. Then we played worker centers. We bussed on the streets with television-radio. We did that part time for a couple of years, more or less, weekends for a couple years after that.

And this is really how I got into writing, writing songs first of all, and then kind of patter for between the songs, which gradually evolved into sketches which then evolved into full-length plays.

MOSS-COANE: Do you like performing?

MCLEAN: Yeah, I -- I do like performing, but I got fed up of the lifestyle that goes with the performing lifestyle, like I found it's a bit like, being on this tour, actually. You know it's kind of very artificial life when you're a performer or the kind of music that I was doing, 'cause you would start work at like 10:00 at night. And you would -- it's like being in a permanent night shift; you wouldn't get to see any daylight and you wouldn't get to see any of your friends then a lot, 'cause you wouldn't get up until 3:00 in the afternoon or something like that. And then go to bed at 6:00 in the morning, because you worked doing the late night gigs somewhere. And it drove me a bit mad after a while, I think, I had to go (unintelligible).

And, you know, there's so much -- to begin with, it was more the performer, and then I got more and more into the writing side of it. And I wanted to concentrate on the writing, rather than having to put on a show every night. Ultimately, I found that a pain in the neck.

Of course, I keep going back to it and trying it for a while, though I mostly do fiction these days. I -- every six months or so I seem to get tangled up in some theater project or other -- and, you know, with high hopes...

LAUGHTER

MCLEAN: ... easily regretting it profoundly after about five minutes.

MOSS-COANE: Well, I know that you are a great big fan of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. How did you first hear this group?

MCLEAN: When I was -- growing up in Scotland, you know, you -- country music was the big thing when I was living in rural parts. And I think it's probably seen a lot of bits of Scotland. A lot -- I had a lot of that when I was a kid -- Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. I also had an awful lot of traditional Scottish music -- the northeast of Scotland's a kind of hotbed of boddy (ph) ballads and folk songs, and so on.

But of course, being naive, it was also very into it -- kind of pop music of the time. So there was all these different kinds of music I was in to. And I listened to all of them for years. And, quite by chance, I came across a record in a junk shop in Edinburgh, nearly 10 years ago now, of this guy called Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

I thought that that was the stupidest name for a band that ever happened to live (ph).

LAUGHTER

MCLEAN: It looked vaguely countryish, which I quite liked, so -- the guy had a stetson on -- so, I bought it, listened to it. I was blown away.

MOSS-COANE: How come?

MCLEAN: 'Cause Bob Wills played all those types of music. He played -- he played traditional fiddling tunes and he played jazzy stuff. He played blues. He played country songs -- every kind of music I'd ever liked seemed to be being played simultaneously by this big band he had. And just from that very first record, I've been hooked, you know, and what started as an interest in that one record has led me to this incredible situation where I find myself back in Texas for the third time in two years -- just searching ever more esoteric regions of the music.

KELMAN: I get any Bob Wills, he'll be on James' desk, so, when you're down in Texas...

LAUGHTER

MCLEAN: Go, go. Bob Wills is -- How did you get into Bob Wills?

KELMAN: Bob Wills is still looking.

WELSH: (Unintelligible) was to written

LAUGHTER

And then, again, he was -- to find he was in a pornography -- a gay porn movie recently.

MCLEAN: Bob Wills was in a gay porn movie?

WELSH: No -- Aye, Bob Wills...

KELMAN: My God. Now, I know....

LAUGHTER

MOSS-COANE: Let me -- let me jump in here.

LAUGHTER

Well, obviously, for you, Duncan McLean, music is real -- has been an important part of, I assume, even -- even your writing. And I wander to go back to you, James Kelman, whether there's some kinds of music that you've found important to -- to being a novelist, whether, even if you write, you need to have music on just to hear all those rhythms at work?

KELMAN: You know -- you know -- before the -- music was -- has been really important to me, and right now. I became aware that, recently -- but rather at what to owe the (unintelligible), the explosion that was going on amongst the white working class youth in Britain that come from the blues, say, and country music. That -- that kind of (unintelligible) was very influential on me.

Really, I think the influence was sort of responsible for all these great bands of the early and mid-'60s in Britain, the great R&B bands. These are the influences that were on me. It was just like a -- you have the right creative art. What's your -- what's your art? It's it music, is it literature? What is it? Go ahead and do it?

MOSS-COANE: And put it all together.

KELMAN: Yeah. Does it do it?

PENKAVA: Irvine?

MCLEAN: Yeah, I mean it's like -- I mean, music's been everything to me in terms of what I've done. I think if it hadn't been for the sort of the whole acid (unintelligible) explosion in 1988, I would never have thought about writing seriously. That was the kind of thing that kind of opened me up to, one, to express myself in different ways. And it's like kind of, one, trying to (unintelligible) -- it's just really kind of, sort of, a corruption of that kind of excitement of -- of the best (unintelligible) music just kind of fire it in, sort of.

So, turning over and having the -- the -- perhaps in the inner ear, like the DJs, not particularly an important figure. Just having the character speaking for themselves and getting into the heart of it.

MOSS-COANE: What's it like for you all to be touring together, so to speak, as -- as you make your -- your way around the United States? Do you feel like a rock band, or something?

WELSH: Yeah, we feel like "Brotherhood of Man," I think.

LAUGHTER

WELSH: Yeah, "Scottish Space Girls" and "Space Boys."

MCLEAN: Remember, this is our very first interview. I haven't seen our friend Jim until about half an hour ago.

MOSS-COANE: Is that right?

MCLEAN: 'Cause we've all -- we all kind of traveled here separately, because we had different commitments in different places, so I'm still quite enjoying it at the moment, but I expect it will be downhill from now on.

LAUGHTER

WELSH: First the honeymoon period (unintelligible)

MOSS-COANE: So we got you on the upswing, then. Well, we are out of time, and I want to thank all three of you for joining us today on FRESH AIR. Thank you very much.

MCLEAN: All right. Thanks.

WELSH: Thanks.

KELMAN: Thank you.

MOSS-COANE: Duncan McLean's novel is called "Bunker Man." James Kelman's book is a collection of short stories called "Busted Scotch." And Irvine Welsh's latest short story collection is called "Ecstasy."

Duncan McLean just told us about his affection for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Coming up, Ed Ward has a profile.

This is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Marty Moss-Coane, Philadelphia, PA; Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Duncan McLean; James Kelman; Irvine Welsh
High: Marty Moss-Coane talks with three of Scotland's most prominent writers. Irvine Welsh is the author of "Trainspotting," which was recently adapted into a movie James Kelman won the prestigious Booker Prize for his 1994 novel, "How Late it Was, How Late." And Duncan McLean is the author of "Bunker Man." The writers talk about their backgrounds and their careers.
Spec: Art; Culture; Drugs (Narcotics); Economy; Lifestyle; Literature; Scotland
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Scottish Writers
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