Kelman's Early Days

Nicola and I are going to see James Kelman at the Mitchell Library this evening. So I thought I would link this good piece from The Guardian from last month. In it Kelman discusses his early days of writing and his attempts to get his books into bookshops.

Some of what I encountered in those early days prepared me for later struggles. But the blatant elitism encountered by so-called working-class writers still surprises me. I can never predict it. I assumed that anybody who thought about art and writing would know that my finished work was hard won.