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Journey without maps
Scott Hames's book points up the confused direction of Scottish literature post-devolution, says CALUM BARNES
INNOVATOR: James Kelman
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The Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution
by Scott Hames
Edinburgh University Press, £24.99
THE COMMONLY held narrative of Scottish literary studies is that after the failure of the 1979 referendum on the founding of a Scottish Parliament, writers like Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Liz Lochhead filled the political vacuum by revitalising a national culture that paved the way for Scottish devolution in 1999.
In The Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution, Scott Hames calls this romantic vision of the campaign for a Scottish Parliament “the dream,” while he dubs the other more mundane story of the cut-and-thrust of machine politics “the grind.” Yet these two narratives are not in competition, each shaping the other in symbiosis.
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