That first audience member, asked the question about the translation aspect of Kelman’s influences, asked exactly what I wanted to ask. Then Kelman doesnay answer, bangs on about class instead.
Clark Maxwell was a great physicist. It had fuck all to do with him being Scottish. This Scottish thing is why I walked away from the literary scene 30 odd years ago. Every time Kelman opens his mouth some polemical grievance crawls out. It is my view having been acquainted with him for some time that his basic problem, the reason for the alienation that haunts his work is precisely that (like me) he isn't working class but like some ugly duckling keeps hanging around them only to feel excluded. Alasdair Gray is the least working class man who ever lived. Tom Leonard is working class, that's Professor of the Working Class Tom Leonard of Glasgow University (a reference to one of his poems).
Maxwell's achievement might have something to do with his education in the democratic intellect, with its attention to principles, epistemology, etc. I agree with the rest of your post.
Kerman’s problem is that he keeps writing about the 70s whatever decade he’s nominally writing about. In his Glasgow there’s no such thing as drugs and sectarian bigotry is just an ugly rumour. He doesn’t actually capture how Glaswegians speak that well - what he does capture is how people talk to themselves. He does need to get over his notion that the world is an organised conspiracy against him. It is a bit daft to tell people that you can’t ‘really’ understand Hogg without a knowledge of Scottish philosophers. A book you need another book to understand is a failure, and Hogg never is one. Kelman is a bit slow to acknowledge the tradition of working class writing in America and Britain: Lawrence, Sillitoe, Hemingway, Carver.
