Edinburgh International Book Festival: James Kelman with Liz Lochhead

At times, James Kelman and Liz Lochead’s contribution at the Book Festival wasn’t so much a performance as a fireside chat. Kelman read a mesmerising section from his new book, Mo Said She Was Quirky, featuring a woman weighed down by worry. As Lochead observed, the book has some incredibly tense passages, amplified by the female protagonist’s internal monologues.

Some of the reviews have made much of Kelman writing in a woman’s voice. For the author himself, it’s no big deal. He’d been working on the idea for twenty years, and simply decided it was time to bring it to completion. It’s an approach Kelman takes with much of his writing, likening it to the works-in-progress scattered round an artist’s studio. The visual arts have always been important to James Kelman, and he acknowledged his teenage heroes, the impressionists and post-impressionists, particularly Cezanne, Renoir and Pissarro.

The conversation took on something of a trip down memory lane, with Lochead and Kelman reminiscing about their early writing and the influence of figures such as Philip Hobsbaum and Tom Leonard. We were projected back to the present with Kelman’s response to a question about whether Scottish books should be included in school set texts. “We must be the only country that asks itself, should we study our country’s literature?” As for reviews, Kelman observed that once artists put their work – themselves – out there for public scrutiny, they have to devise a strategy for dealing with criticism. Kelman’s own approach to reviews – good and bad – is to turn to the next piece of writing. “You’ve got to switch off, and get to work.” [James Carson]