|
Bunch of cunts >> Children of Albion Rovers introduces new Scottish voices by JULIET WATERS
The most important thing to know is that some words have a uniquely Scottish usage. For example, cunt. In Scotland it seems to have been appropriated as a non-gendered, all-purpose noun, as in English cunts, student cunts, casual cunts and, of course, wee cunts. Every so often it emerges as a verb, as in the following passage, from a novella by Irvine Welsh: "Glue had always been Jimmy's drug of choice. He loved the stunning rush of the vapour, the way it stuck to his lungs, catching his breath. He knew that it meant he possibly wouldn't live long, but as every auld cunt in the town was as miserable as fuck, there seemed to him to be no real virtue in longevity. It was quality of life that counted and he considered that you were better being cunted than on a fucking scheme for a pittance with some red-faced toss-bag shouting at you and then paying you off after two years to make way for the next dippit cunt. If any cunt couldn't see that, then, as far as Jimmy was concerned, they didn't have a fucking brain." That said, much of the work in this anthology does turn out to be quite accessible. Welsh and Alan Warner have made names for themselves by pumping up the cryptic dialogue. But for the lesser-knowns, the Scottish slang-o-thon is more of a back beat. Gordon Legge's Pop Life, about three aging lads trying to hold onto friendship by maintaining an obsession with music, has a Roddy Doyle innocence to it. James Meek manages to maintain a quirkiness through rhythm, imagery and action instead of vocabulary, as in his opening paragraph in The Brown Pint of Courage: On the other hand, Laura J. Hird suffers from being too accessible in The Dilating Pupil. Packaged in between witmeisters like Paul Reekie and Welsh, her narrative voice is comparatively generic. Reekie is the exception to the lesser-knowns. Submission is a complicated short story within a novella that may take a few readings, but is ultimately worth the trouble. But the real surprise is Welsh's sci-fi satire, The Rosewell Incident. Anyone who's tried to make their way through The Acid House or Trainspotting is going to find Welsh surprisingly readable in this story of invasion by alien cunts. So in the end, Children of Albion Rovers turns out to be not only a good opportunity to give Scottish writing a first chance, but even a second chance. Children of Albion Rovers, edited by Kevin Williamson. Overlook Press, hc. 227pp.
|
From the introduction he writes to Children of Albion Rovers, editor Kevin Williamson doesn't seem likely to compromise the voices he's included in this anthology. The metaphor he weaves to explain the criterion behind choosing these six novellas to represent the "beats of Edinburgh" takes some work to grasp if you're not a Scottish soccer fan. But at least it prepares you for a selection of novellas, some of which will no doubt be read and reread, if only because they'll be impossible to understand the first time.