Literary Scotland torn apart over Kelman spat
Outburst about genre fiction divides normally sedate world of letters

By Jasper Hamill in the Sunday Herald.

IT STARTED with a brutal put-down from James Kelman,(pic left), one of Scotland's greatest writers, directed towards the likes of JK Rowling and Ian Rankin. Now it has turned into one of the country's biggest literary spats with some of Scotland's best-known writers lining up on both sides - some taking pot shots at Kelman, others backing the outspoken novelist.

Kelman, a Booker Prize winner, made his blistering attack at the Edinburgh Book Festival by deriding Scotland's obsession with "upper middle-class young magicians" and "f****** detective fiction". He went on to target the whole of the Scottish literary establishment.
Singling out this country's failure to embrace its "radical traditions" and its insistence on doling out praise to "mediocre" writers, he bemoaned a commercialised literary scene in thrall to Harry Potter and Rebus.

"If the Nobel Prize came from Scotland they would give it to a writer of f****** detective fiction, or else some kind of child writer, or something that was not even new when Enid Blyton was writing The Faraway Tree, because she was writing about some upper middle-class young magician or some f****** crap," he said.
Contemporary literature, he said, was "derided and sneered at by the Scottish literary establishment" who were "Anglocentric" and bent on ignoring the edgier talent that is right under their noses - citing poet Tom Leonard as an example of one such cruelly marginalised Scot.
The outburst has caused bitter divisions in the normally sedate Scottish world of letters. Chief among the opponents of Kelman's position is Michael Schmidt, an acclaimed poet and writer as well as the founder of Carcanet Press, the editor of the PN Review, and professor of poetry at Glasgow University, as well as the convenor of the university's prestigious creative writing programme.
Schmidt said: "His whole approach does sound exceedingly Stalinist. It so disparages the common reader. People who like Rankin and the Harry Potter books genuinely read them for pleasure.
"We all hate the commercialisation of literature, but Ian Rankin writes very competently and the Harry Potter books are very entertaining. I don't know if we should feel they are in any way degrading to the high culture we find ourselves participating in and advocating."
Schmidt also claimed Kelman cannot get excited about new writers, instead constantly name-checking friends in his close circle, made up exclusively of working-class Glaswegians.
Schmidt added: "When you get a really major figure like Alistair Gray, you don't see him fulminating like this. Instead, you find him a very generous spirit excited by new writing. He does not surround himself with rancour.
"There is a parochialism that says Scotland first, and there is an internal parochialism that says Glasgow first, and then Glasgow working-class first. Each time you get into a smaller parochialism, the more authoritarian the feel of the language is."

Kelman's main target was so-called "genre fiction" - writing that sticks to well-known conventions, such as the detective story - and generally avoids experimentation with form or language. Many fear genre fiction is now Scotland's greatest literary export, crowding out more cutting-edge work.

Read the full piece here.