Scottish Fiction

You know when you're in a different city and you want to do things the way they're done in that city?

When blessed with a two hour window in which I could “do” Glasgow last week, I found myself in an Oxfam Books & Music.

They had a section of the shop set aside for Scottish fiction. This section was further subdivided into “Classics” and “Contemporary”.

Ho, was I determined to get myself some Scottish fiction there and then.

Apart from Zola, Balzac and the few remaining works by Dickens I'm yet to obtain, I've all but stopped buying classics. This is because I've a shameful shelf full of such life-affirming works as purport to contain humanity itself. Many of them are unread. A dent must be made before I can haunt the “literature” sections of shops once more.

But seeing as they can often be devoured in a single coach or train journey, and seeing as I'm so often on the coach or train these days, I can buy as many contemporaries as I want.

Yet nothing jumped out from that dedicated shelf in the Glasgow Oxfam. Many of them had the word “kilt” in the title. Now, I'm no expert when it comes to this sort of thing. Indeed, I haven't got a clue. But something tells me that the content of a book of Scottish fiction with the word “kilt” in the title will be in some way lacking.

I might be wrong, and I almost certainly am. But it just felt too obvious. So that was that. Despite the fact that elsewhere in the store was a pristine gatefold edition of ELP's Brain Salad Surgery and a copy of Thor on DVD, I left-empty handed. Idiot: It was Scottish fiction or nothing. I was in a different city!

So I went to Waterstones.

I once had the opportunity to meet AL Kennedy, but didn't take it. She was hosting a special-guest seminar on my creative writing course. I didn't go. In retrospect, that feels like the academic equivalent of leaving the Glasgow branch of Oxfam Books & Music without having purchased the  pristine gatefold edition of ELP's Brain Salad Surgery. Or Thor, for that matter.

She's wonderful. She really is. Don't believe me? Oh. Well, perhaps you haven't been reading her excellent Guardian Books blogs? Onwards.

Despite having dedicated herself so fully to her art that she may have significantly damaged her health, she still manages to present the act of writing as the most noble and psychotic of all pursuits. Usually, by the end of even the second paragraph of any one of her articles, I'm reminded already of where this burning desire of mine to write comes from.

Beyond her journalistic work, all I've read of her is the mind-bending WW2 identity drama Day. My copy fell victim to a printing error. There were about sixty pages missing, and in their place was a rehash of a few preceding chapters followed by the remaining few hundred.

It's definitely more a testament to my general lack of intelligence than anything else that I didn't notice until it was too late. I was just thinking – hey! Modernism. But it probably also says something about her style, doesn't it? Doesn't it? It does. I think. Disjointed. Freewheeling. Busy. Stunning.

Ali Smith's There but for me I chose because

a) It too can be classed as Scottish fiction (I was in a different city!)
b) I really liked The Stranger and Other Stories and Other Stories
c) It was in a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer.

I've not started either book yet. I've still got about 400 pages of Stephen King's The Stand to go.

I've already read 832 pages. It's quite long.

Yes, I write about books now, too. Don't look at me that way. This was always coming.

Glasgow Smile

I'm in Glasgow. It's great to be sitting in a hotel room in the only country in the world in which Coca-Cola is not the best-selling soft drink. This morning a group of Italians gathered around the coffee machine. It wasn't going to happen, so I enjoyed a can of the national beverage in lieu. Irn Bru is increasingly hard to find in England, and I'd forgotten all about that strange eggy aftertaste.

As you know, I'm tedium itself. As a result, I listened to Belle & Sebastian and The Delgados on the way. You know: To get myself in the mood. This was followed by some Mogwai, but I was getting so bored I had to stop.

Because I'm here on business, I've not had much time to have a proper look around. I wanted to go to the Kelvingrove, but with the time it would have taken to get there, I'd have been looking at a window of around six minutes in which to have my horizons expanded. So instead, I went to the GOMA.

The Gallery of Modern Art claims to host a collection of works which belong to the people of Glasgow. It being free to get in, I can sort of see what they're getting at. However, had I tried to purloin Peter Fischli's rubber sculpture of a vinyl, I'm sure that no false defence of “I live here” would have worked in my favour.

The main gallery is dominated by a unique video installation by Fiona Tan. Entitled Disorient, it features two high definition films projected on facing screens. One screen shows a series of slow pans across a sort of depot filled with various Oriental artefacts. Incense, spices, statues, picked pig foetuses – the sort of space in which anyone of a curious nature could happily spend the best part of the day.

The other screen shows a disjointed montage of library footage detailing life, work, war and misery – is this the real “Orient”?

The two films were silent, but a constant soundtrack lilted through the room of readings from Marco Polo by a guy who sounded just like Liam Neeson. Marco Polo, of course, quite likely fabricated much of his travels. This narrow-minded misinformation, coupled with the fact that it was impossible to take in both screens at once, was the whole point: Your perception of culture, history and people is skewed. There's no way to get the full picture without having lived in a place since birth, and all that you can possibly learn is prejudice by either stereotype, prejudice or a cynical desire for ratings.

Hey, readers: Does the fact that the film was projected on two screens entail that it can count as two entries in my 2012 Film Challenge? No? No. Just one then.



But I did see two films. Upstairs I found myself enthralled by Peter Fischli's The Way Things Go. The most elaborate Rube Goldberg I've ever seen, this should be required viewing for anybody who's ever moaned about 'elf and safety. Such alarming disregard for self preservation is demonstrated that at times you genuinely fear for the cameraman's life.

There are grounds for calling shenanigan. It probably doesn't count as a “proper” Rube Goldberg machine as it wasn't a continuous shot; there were a few obvious scene changes. However, I've never seen such an orchestrated ballet of cause and effect to use so many lethal chemical reactions. Events were triggered by various caustic substances and fire; lots and lots of fire, which burned in every colour it's possible for fire to burn.

As a bunch of fireworks attached to a tyre sit in a pile of combustible powder towards which a trail of sparks is making inexorable process, there's nail-biting tension of which Hitchcock could only ever have dreamed.

Traditionally, Rube Goldberg sequences have a punchline – the whole thing having been engineered to fulfil some trivial task. Not so here. The picture simply faded out. Perhaps the cameraman died? Still, I'm not complaining. No film in which a Catherine Wheel is dropped into a bucket of phosphorous can ever be described as “ultimately disappointing”, as what could possibly live up to that?

At one point, the deadly sequence even creates a temporary tin society of phuttering zeppelins and sauntering robot tight-rope walkers, and I demand a lifetime supply of whatever red powder burns with magical glowing sparks which resemble terrible sci-fi SFX.

If the criteria for “favourite film” is determined by the sort of visuals which you could happily take in on a permanent loop for the rest of your days, I think we have a new winner.

The video above, it must be noted, is not complete. It can be watched here in its entirety, but it does have a "bonus" Aphex Twin soundtrack. That's not a problem for me, but if might be for you.

I like Glasgow. Their central subway line is known affectionately as The Clockwork Orange.