“Dispossessed White Trash”
Change, Distance and Disaffection in
Contemporary Working Class Literature
Tim Lott Rumours of a Hurricane
James Kelman A Disaffection
and How Late It Was, How Late
Irvine Welsh Trainspotting
MA Thesis Western Literature and Culture, Utrecht University
Vera van Schagen
Introduction
The popularity of authors who deal with the working class have altered British literature altogether. Since the 1980s, a renewed class consciousness has been visible within literature, giving individuals belonging to the working class an entirely new voice. By a critical assessment of novels of Tim Lott, James Kelman and Irvine Welsh in this study, this renewed class consciousness is made clear. The notion of change, distance and disaffection are recurring themes in working class literature after the 1980s, and show the engagement of working class individuals within a post-industrialist middle class society. The novels of Lott, Kelman and Welsh have altered the notions of aesthetics within literature, have appealed to a new reading public and have given individuals who were ignored in literature before the 1980s, an authentic voice. This remarkable achievement by all three authors shows that working class literature has attained a respectable position within contemporary British literature.
Through a discussion of four novels by Lott, Kelman and Welsh, a wide overview of different working class individuals after the 1980s is given. This study will address these individuals and their philosophies, hopes and dreams, fears and irritations and their relation to the working class as a social group. The ambiguity of the term working class is discussed, as well as the position of the working class within contemporary British society. The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 marked a different approach to working class literature. Together with a reconsideration of political and economic forces within Britain, a new approach to class differences were on Thatcher’s political agenda. This resulted in radical changes and had its effect on installing a new identity, particularly for the working class. The notion of change – whether this is the resistance to it, or the pursuit of it – is a recurring theme within contemporary working class literature from the 1980s onwards. The resistance or inaptitude to change often causes an estrangement and disaffection from society, which is vigorously portrayed in Lott, Kelman and Welsh.
In modern day mass media, the working class is a popular subject in films, music, television series and literature. It seems that the interest in the working class is greater than ever, making a status as working class individual fashionable and even desirable to successfully express oneself artistically. The success of the working class as represented in popular culture is visible in the amount of awards received. An example of popular culture dealing with the working class is musical artist Mike Skinner – also known as The Streets – who was pronounced Best British Male Artist and Best Breakthrough Artist in the 2002 Brit Awards. The 1997 British film The Full Monty, which deals with unemployed steel workers turning Chippendales, was awarded with a USA Academy Award in 1998 and three 1998 British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA). The popular television series Shameless, dealing with a lower class family in Manchester was also awarded a BAFTA in 2005 for Best Drama Series. This is only a mere handful of examples of internationally praised working class related popular culture.
The novels of Lott, Kelman and Welsh are considered part of popular culture and have also been received with much praise. Renewed class consciousness since the 1980s has proven to be a fruitful source of inspiration for their novels. Even though working class literature is not a new genre , the depiction and style of writing is innovative within this genre. The use of language, subject matter, and simply giving working class individuals a voice instead of relating to them by an omniscient narrator in the fiction of Lott, Kelman and Welsh, has not only changed literature, but also the reading public. Lott’s Rumours of a Hurricane (2002), Kelman’s A Disaffection (1989) and How Late It Was, How Late (1994), and Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993) are novels which appeal to people who have waited for honest, fervent, critical and often recognisable accounts of modern day society through the eyes of working class individuals. To understand why the working class is such a popular theme in various media, it is important to get an idea of the class system in Britain since the 1980s.
Chapter one will address the political and social changes in society in the period of Thatcher’s reign (1979-1990). Although the social divisions of working, middle and upper class always changed throughout history, the greatest social changes in respect to class in Britain have occurred within the last 25 years. Since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Britain experienced radical changes, socially and economically, within the eleven years she was prime minister. In this period, social mobility became visible.
Together with addressing the causes and effects of social mobility after the 1980s, chapter one also deals with the term working class and its ambiguity. Social mobility and changes in the 1980s had resulted in a renewed class consciousness within literature. Through a discussion of several literary critics, the problem of establishing a marker for a diverse social group – the working class – and its influence on literature is portrayed. The renewed class consciousness and the effects it had on working class individuals has often led to a feeling of alienation and disaffection from society. Together with the alienation and disaffection, the problem of labelling a social group which do not seem to belong to any social class resulted in the label ‘underclass’.
The three remaining chapters will show a critical discussion of respectively Lott’s Rumous of a Hurricane, Kelman’s novels A Disaffection and How Late It Was, How Late and Welsh’s Trainspotting and their position in working class literature after the 1980s. All three authors have different styles in portraying the working class, and were written from 1989 to 2002. The protagonists in the novels have often similar views of – in their eyes – middle class society, and the rapid change of society, and the eventual alienation and disaffection working class individuals often experience are recurring themes within the novels. The reception of the novels in the separate chapters, show the importance and cultural value of the working class novel within contemporary British literature.
The social mobility made possible in the period of Thatcher’s reign, is the subject of Lott’s Rumours of a Hurricane. The notion of change is most evident in this novel. Lott describes the life of working class individual Charlie Buck, in the urban area of London from 1979 until 1991 and the effects Thatcher’s governments have on him personally. Political changes, and his opposition to the personal effects of these political changes, eventually lead to a dramatic ending.
Kelman’s novels How Late It Was, How Late and A Disaffection depict the lives of working class individuals within the grim urban area of Glasgow. Kelman’s use of demotic speech shows the alienation and disaffection of the protagonists. Their poor engagement with society and their hard language does not only show their estrangement, but the same effect is triggered in the reader. This distancing is most prominent in How Late It Was, How Late, where the reader has to rely on a blind person to make sense of the world depicted in the novel.
The ambiguity of the term working class is most clear in Welsh’s depiction of junkies within the urban area of Edinburgh and Leith. These drug addicted, unemployed, working class individuals are extremely disaffected from society and can more specifically be described as ‘underclass’. The depiction of the abjection of drug addicts without ambitions, hopes or even friendship is, like Kelman’s novels, written in demotic speech, and has the same effect of distancing the reader. In spite of their questionable status as working class, all individuals in Trainspotting seem to consider themselves to belong to this class, and use this identity as a means to rebel against middle class society.
While Lott, Kelman and Welsh are certainly not the only authors dealing with the working class in British literature, they are important representatives of working class literature after the 1980s. The complex social group of the working class within contemporary British society, and their representation in working class literature, give an often grim view of an individualised, heartless, middle class society. In this society, the notion of a certain identity – e.g. that of a working class individual – seems utterly important. However, individualisation does not only occur within middle class society, but also within the lives of the working class. The traditional view of the fraternised, affiliated working class, does no longer apply in modern day society. The loss of this traditional comradeship and the rise of individualisation does not bring working class individuals closer to middle class groups. On the contrary; association with the middle class is often found offensive. This crisis within the contemporary working class is marvellously portrayed by Lott, Kelman and Welsh. The protagonists all experience changes in a post-industrialist world and find themselves disaffected from society. Their attitude towards change is often accompanied by a passiveness which causes a sense of distance from the reader. The reader often cannot fully grasp their mentality, which makes the literature of Lott, Kelman and Welsh so intriguing.
Chapter One
The Working Class Novel in Contemporary Literature
Introduction
To understand working class literature after the 1980s, it is important to discuss the main social changes which occurred from 1979 onwards, the position of class within society and its effects on British literature in general. Together with the social and economic changes which occurred as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s governments from 1979 until 1990, literature underwent changes as well. From the 1980s onward, a reconsideration of the notion of identity and social status was visible, and this shift in thinking became distinct in the British novel in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to emerge in the 21st century. The working class became a popular source of inspiration. Though working class literature had existed before the 1980s, it becomes clear that working class fiction in contemporary literature should be approached differently after the 1980s.
After the Second World War, the general belief was that the traditional class system had been broken down. The hardships felt by members of every class during the war created a false sense of solidarity and fraternisation (Cannadine 146). In the years following the war – the so-called ‘age of consensus’ – huge economic and ideological investments were made into the public sector and the production of consumer goods and social mobility led Britain to wealth and improved living standards. Mass production also influenced cultural forms like fiction, which became available to everybody (Haywood 89-93). Even though capitalism had improved life for many, not all thrived in this period and the majority of the British public was “outraged by the rediscovery of poverty and deprivation in welfare state Britain” (Haywood 126). The close proximity of poverty to the affluent working class was described in many working class novels in the late 1960s. In the following decade, continuous cuts in education and public services caused public sector unions to go on strike. The ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-9, which consisted of six weeks of widespread labour strikes, resulted in the election of Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (126-8).
Class Consciousness in British Society
Phillip Tew in The Contemporary British Novel (2004), and Dominic Head in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000 (2002), both consider the period of Thatcher’s reign, 1979-1990, a turning point in literature. During Thatcher’s three governments, attempts were made to achieve a classless society. This could only be done when clear definitions of separate classes were established. This, however, was – and still is – not easy. Even though Thatcher’s governments apparently had a clear view of what class – and in particular working class – entails, the official labels were eventually established in 1998. In that year, the Office of National Statistics adopted a class scheme based on the original scheme from the 1970s, developed by sociologist John Goldthorpe. According to this scheme, the working class consists of four groups of certain occupations and their market situations. Group one are the supervisors, craft and related occupations, group two are the semi-routine occupations (such as cooks, bus drivers, hairdressers and shop assistants), group three are the routine occupations (such as waiters, cleaners and couriers) and the fourth group consists of individuals which have never worked or are long-term unemployed.
Even though the class scheme of Goldthorpe had not officially been adopted by the government, Thatcher had similar ideas concerning the labelling of the working class. She needed this knowledge to advocate classlessness. David Cannadine in Class in Britain (1998) argues that the overall mentality in the 1980s was that classlessness would have been accomplished anyway, “given the long term decline of traditional manufacturing and rise of new service industries” (179). This view changed when poverty and inequality rose in the early 1980s and people believed once more that society was sharply divided. This new distinction, however, was less connected with class but rather directed at the distinction of rich and poor (179). Dominic Head in calls this effect the “disintegration of traditional class affiliation” (Head 69). The new markers – rich and poor – for class distinction are also discussed by Ian Haywood in Working Class Fiction (1997). He says that instead of dividing society into middle and working class, the primary signifier in official discourses used “rich” and “poor” in defining class (141). By obliterating the traditional economic base and the class-conscious protective power that was built upon it – like the faith the working class had in the power of unions – the emphasis was put on poverty, instead of capitalist exploitation. The effect was that working class identity submerged “into a heterogeneous, proletarianized underclass of alienated social groups, defined by their economic unproductiveness and an inability to participate fully in society” (141). This underclass consists of families living on social security, the homeless, drug addicts, delinquents, single parents and the disabled. Haywood calls this “new slum life” (141).
The fragmentation of class consciousness was brought about by the disappearance of traditional working class communities which were originally organised around large manufacturing industries, especially in Scotland which accounts for the large group of working class authors originating from this area. Ken Roberts, Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, mentions in Class in Modern Britain (2001), the term “post-industrialism” (16) in connection with the fragmentation and new class divisions in the 1980s. The term “post-industrialism”, which is “the shift of labour from manufacturing to services, and from manual into white-collar occupations” (16), is often used in arguments claiming that the class system is fading in Britain. According to Roberts, however, it is not this simple. Even though modern day society puts more emphasis on “brain power” which “supersedes both money capital and brute labour as the key factor of production” (16), Roberts claims that this does not lead to equality and a decline of class power. On the contrary: “The extent to which access to information, qualifications and knowledge remain class-based, and, second, the ways in which credentialism either reinforces older, or creates new class divisions” (17) is completely ignored by these arguments.
Furthermore, although income and wealth is certainly an important marker for class divisions, it becomes clear that the division between rich and poor is not the only reason for class divisions. Roberts emphasises the fact that “class locations are liable to get into people’s heads and make impressions on their minds, their consciousness and unconsciousness” (Roberts 8). He mentions that “class is related to people’s attitudes” (8) and individuals “tend to associate with other in the same classes – at work, in their neighbourhoods – and so they also tend to marry another” (9). This psychological affinity to class results in class consciousness and class related behaviour which is very difficult to match with studies of class structure and class mobility, as Roberts explains (9).
Aesthetics and Working Class Literature
The renewed class consciousness – emphasis on rich and poor, and the psychological affiliation of the working class – has been visible in the literature after the 1980s. There seemed to be a trend in depicting working class life in working class literature as a genre and its popularity still remains. This is also due to a renewed aesthetic consciousness after the 1980s, which is visible in the popularity of fiction by Kelman and Welsh. These authors have not only introduced new subject matters in literature by depicting working class and underclass life in an entirely new way, but they have also contributed to changes in aesthetic notions concerning language and style, and the hierarchy of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Not only is this hierarchy questioned, their fiction also implies criticism of the assumed hierarchy within literary circles, which seems to consist mostly of middle class authors, readers and publishers.
The change in aesthetics in the British novel after the 1980s is not remarkable since traditionally, in literature in general, reactions to existing notions of aesthetics within literature are quite common. The notion of what is good, pleasant and artistic enough to be qualified as literature has always been a debate, and will continue to occupy the minds of critics and readers of literature. After the 1980s, however, there seemed to be a new approach to literature, which made success for innovative, authentic authors possible.
The general opinion of literary critics was that after the Second World War, literature seemed to be of a different quality than the literature which the Victorian authors and modernist authors produced. From the 1960s onwards, multiple critics had found cause of concern about the novel’s future (Marwick 76). The decline of Britain’s influence in the world, and the growing focus on the USA, was – according to many – reflected by the declining quality of British literature. Bernard Bergonzi claimed, in The Situation of the Novel (1970) that “in literary terms, as in political ones, Britain is not a very important part of the world today” (67-8). Neil McEwan in The Survival of the Novel: British Fiction in the Later Twentieth Century (1981) discussed this presumed poorer quality of the late twentieth century novel, and the “crisis among the post-war generation of writers” (Tew 59). This crisis was reflected in McEwan’s term “the death of the novel” (59), and he advocated a new aesthetic view of post-war literature. Phillip Tew, in The Contemporary British Novel, tries to establish this new aesthetic view advocated by McEwan, by urging to look beyond categorisations, and follow the more “intuitive, creative sense of the objectifiable real” and read “culture and narrative beyond that of simply identifying the post-modern” (6). Tew urges the reader to focus on the “hybridity, social consciousness, historical influence and shared identities” (185) visible in contemporary literature, and create authentic judgement, cleared of any categorisation.
This new way of looking at literature also involves a new way of writing literature. Contemporary literature is full of experimental forms of narrative and structure. Furthermore, contemporary literature focuses on many different characters and subject matters. The focus on working class individuals in contemporary literature is evidence of the renewed class consciousness after the 1980s. According to Phillip Tew, this renewed social consciousness is visible in all parts of society and affects literature in many ways
Promisingly there has been a shift in social practices and experiences reflected in fictional output toward a less narrow view of culture. For fiction and culture more generally, I also see as progressive informed postcolonial critiques, notions of radical hybridity, and of a revived class consciousness. (Preface XIII)
This change in social consciousness has resulted, according to Tew, in an “overall […] shift in the focus of British literariness” (14). Martin Amis in The Information (1995) wonders what happened to the notion of genres: “[T]hey have all bled into one another. Decorum is no longer observed” (53). This hybridity of genres is an important observation of contemporary literature.
The overall shift in literature has not only led to a blurring of genres, the traditional difference between high and low culture is also questioned in contemporary literature. Dominic Head, in Modern British Fiction, states that
The post-war novel has done much to discredit a rigid distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. […] It has managed to cultivate a new intellectual space. (6)
In this new intellectual space, there is room for new genres and hybridity of genres. This is brought about by the “growing recognition that traditional divisions no longer apply” (9). The working class literature of the 1980s and 1990s, fall in a different category than the gritty realism of working class literature in the 1950s and 1960s (9).
Class Consciousness and Working Class Literature
In discussing working class literature, the same problems arise as in trying to establish a label for the working class in British society. Working class literature cannot easily be identified as a specific genre. One reason is that much contemporary fiction deals with class-consciousness. Another problem, similar to defining the working class in society, is the difficulty to define the working class as a whole. What also plays an important role is that the occupation as an author and the act of reading in general, is not considered to match with working class life.
Even though Thatcher, as her successors John Major and Tony Blair, had tried to create a classless society, it became clear that social inequality had not been expunged. Dominic Head mentions that the pursuit of classlessness did not exterminate class consciousness or literary products about perceived losses of communities (72). Even though he agrees with the fact that the “changing nature of work in a post-industrial society […] casts doubt on the continuing relevance of traditional class categories”, Head does believe that this only leads to a “new brand of inequality” (73).
The ‘classless’ society of […] Major, and Blair, a notional meritocracy in which opportunity will not be restricted by traditional class, or ‘old-school-tie’ expectations, has thus brought with it a simpler model of social inequality, a new set of class distinctions for a population still often enamoured of the traditional divisions. (73)
The simpler model of social inequality brings about the “rise of the underclass”; those who have been “bypassed by technological change, and disadvantaged by the increasing rarity of unskilled manual labour” (73). The underclass, also mentioned by Haywood and Roberts, is thus anyone who does not belong to middle class. This includes cleaners, menial service workers but also the homeless – though still lower in the social hierarchy – can be included in the same “underclass” (73).
When considering the underclass the new working class, the label becomes much easier to handle. Working class is thus anything that comes ‘under’ the middle class. As Head rightly points out, the obliteration or alteration of the label ‘working class’, does not imply the annihilation of feelings of inequality and loss of perceived communities, and these feelings are often expressed in working class literature. Incorporating the underclass in working class literature helps labelling working class literature and its contents, but what about its audience and authors? Editor Jeremy Hawthorn of The British Working-Class Novel in the Twentieth Century (1984), which deals with essays about working class novels before 1980, states in his preface that the term working class literature can be interpreted as contradictory
For some people, “working-class novel” is a contradiction in terms. C.C. Barfoot, commenting upon a book concerned with the portrayal of youth in post-war British working-class fiction, observes that nothing “that is said about Jack Common, Brendan Behan, Alan Sillitoe or Barry Hines here disguises the fact that to shape a fiction, however unconventionally, and however loyal the writer may remain to the people who bore and sustained him, is an act that produces a result that is not in itself compatible with working class aspirations.” (vii)
Barfoot believes there is no such thing as a working class author, since the act of writing in itself is a middle class occupation. This objection is heard often and is also dealt with in Head’s Modern British Fiction, where he mentions that working class literature often comes across as being somewhat of a “paradox” (59). Hawthorn, on the other hand, thinks this is not entirely true, despite his acknowledgement of the fact that “the novel as literary genre does have an intimate relationship with the middle class, both in terms of its historical emergence and also of its continuing sociology: its readership and conditions of production” (vii). The fact that the working class has always been “struggling for universal education, public libraries, their own publishing outlets and – not least – adequate leisure time” (viii) proves that it is definitely wrong to assume that there is no such thing as a working class author or working class audience.
Though the access of education and improvement of means to write a novel
has accomplished much, literature as a cultural expression is still dominated by the middle class. The author Will Self in Junk Mail (1995) laments the fact that, although there are some exceptions
[t]he superstructure of English culture is still overwhelmingly white, middle-class and metropolitan. The people we are forced to listen to on matters cultural have by and large seldom actually immersed themselves in the culture they purport to be explaining. (217)
Although Will Self here expresses his objections to the middle class superstructure in literature, a point which many critics have made, the objection would not exist if audiences would not think in class distinctions when reading a novel.
David Cannadine in Class in Britain gives a complete overview of attitudes to class in British society. He states that
[t]he vision of British society as an ordered integrated layered hierarchy had almost always been historically the most powerful, the most popular and the most resonant. (158)
Almost everyone in Britain thinks in matters of class. Phillip Tew addresses this problem in relation to literature in The Contemporary British Novel. In a confronting manner he asks the reader to admit that they consider characters which are “mostly assumed as being normative” middle class characters, and those “either elided or marginalized” to belong to the working class (86). Tew believes, although “unaided by criticism”, that
a particular class affiliation is a constant, whatever the strength of the fictional motifs signifying an awareness of the dimensions of gender, regionality, internal migration and multi-accented social forces. (87)
Not only do we try to place certain fiction in a class, we also ascribe a certain aesthetic value to it, Tew argues (87).
In discussing working class literature, the reader should have a clear vision of what class actually is. In spite of the wide use of the term ‘working class’, it is not easy to explain what it entails. Even though the Office of National Statistics adopted a class scheme in 1998 to clarify the distinctions, its focus on occupations and market situations does not seem enough to label a social group. As Ken Roberts argues, working class identity seems to exist for a large part in people’s heads. Traditionally, working class fiction seemed to focus on the affiliation and affinity which existed within the working class. Interestingly, in the novels of Lott, Kelman and Welsh, this affinity does not portray itself in fraternisation within the working class environment, but rather in the distrust of and disaffection from middle class society, and the opposition to changes initiated by middle class institutions. Even though the protagonists in all four novels feel victimised by middle class society, they feel they are unable to change situations at their benefit. Their resistance to change is accompanied by a passiveness which often causes a sense of estrangement in the reader. In spite of their class consciousness, the protagonists have a disposition to accept situations as inevitable, which is often difficult for the reader to understand.
Since many of the characters are unemployed, it is often difficult to establish a definite category of the working class. What seems to connect the protagonists in the novels is their resistance to and suspicions of change, the distance they keep from middle class society and the disaffection they feel which results from this distance. These themes are visible in all four novels, and are often accompanied by the difficulty to define their social status, which creates a certain existential anxiety. The difficulty of trying to define a working class individual is accompanied by the difficulty of categorising novels which deal with the working class status in contemporary British fiction. Because of the shared characteristics visible in these novels they can be regarded as important novels within working class fiction and contemporary British literature altogether, and the altered class consciousness after the 1980s continues to be an inspiration for contemporary British authors.
Chapter Two
Tim Lott
London author Tim Lott (1956) made his first entrance in British literature in 1996. His autobiographic The Scent of Dried Roses (1996) was awarded with the J.R. Ackerley Prize. After this, he turned to fiction, producing four novels in six years. All his novels have male protagonists, placing him in the fashionable 1990s genre of authors writing about the male psyche: Lad Lit (Holcombe par 1-3). Though men are always the main characters in Lott’s fiction, they definitely cannot be considered the heroes of the stories. In Rumours of a Hurricane (2002), the male protagonist, Charlie, can be considered an anti-hero. His success is always short while his failures accumulate. His life is situated in London during the turmoil of the Thatcher years.
Change and Social Mobility
The protagonist in Rumours of a Hurricane, Charlie Buck, is a perfect example of a man sliding from the affluent working class to poverty in the Thatcher years. Even though Charlie Buck does experience the possibilities of social mobility in his environment, he is so interlinked with the working class that he considers his middle-class son a traitor. It is, however, his distrust of change and his strong affinity with the working class, which keeps him from achieving success. The reception of Lott’s novel, although not always positive, does show that Lott has given a fervent account of the life of a working class individual in the decade which was pervaded by change. The notion of change in the novel reflects the position of the working class within a society where social boundaries seem to be diminishing. This, however, is a deceptive view of society, and Charlie Buck dramatically experiences this deceit.
Lott realistically portrays all prominent features in British society in the late 1970s and 1980s, like women’s emancipation, racism and family struggles and divisions and most importantly class mobility and class consciousness. Through a third person narrative, the fiction comes across as an account, a record of actual events, objectively observed and put down for the reader to test and judge. Rumours of a Hurricane is described by Garan Holcombe in a “Critical Perspective” on Tim Lott’s fiction on ContemporaryWriters.com as “a masterly dissection of a very ordinary marriage” (par 9). It does not try to make events more exiting as they are, it just serves as “a window on to the world of an unremarkable family, bound together by history, routine and affection” (par 11). The men in Lott’s novels are not heroes, Holcombe explains. It seems that
[t]he world is never seen to revolve around these men. Instead, they are like skittles in a bowling alley: constantly being knocked down or hauled up by women, parents, children, friends, work, and money. (par 4)
The ordinary life of Charlie Buck, a working class man of 49, however, includes the painful account of a winner becoming a loser. The ordinariness of Charlie’s situation is portrayed by a spokesman of the National and North Bank, discussing the actions taken against Charlie for not meeting his payments on his house and the loans and lease of his shop (356). He says:
Take consolation in this. You’re not alone. I have to deal with cases worse than this every day. Men with wives and children. It’s not easy, I can tell you. (360)
This, of course, is no consolation whatsoever to Charlie. In the time-span of twelve years, he has climbed up from being a working class man living in a council flat, to a home owner living in affluent 1980s Milton Keynes. He loses his working class job as a newspaper’s compositor, but manages to open a business in miniature trains, his personal hobby. It seems that he has climbed the social ladder himself, but his conservative views toward change are consistent with the working class. The difficulty of defining Charlie’s social status, comes to an abrupt end when he, homeless, filthy and drunk – which is the beginning of the novel - commits suicide in the winter of 1991.
Lott has tried to accurately portray how government decisions and renewed social consciousness due to many changes in society in the 1980s, affected a normal working class family. The novel, however, is so tightly packed with information that the character’s emotions cannot seem to reach the reader. Andy Beckett in his review “Thatcherism for Beginners” in The Guardian, admits that Lott’s writing is often “too flat and casual” (par 2). However, he does believe that there is a “warmth and the sense of an author properly inhabiting his main characters” (2). He praises him for the full view and his “[r]eferences to the obvious landmarks of Thatcherism” often avoided by other novels about Britain under Margareth Thatcher (2).
Tim Lott, by contrast, gives us all of them. The Belgrano sinking on the front page of the Sun. Council tenants buying their flats. The picket lines at Wapping. Essex Man. Negative equity and “city-trader braces”. Characters who say things like: “This is 1980. Every man for himself.” In one scene, someone paints the front door of his newly acquired council flat while wearing a plastic Union Jack bowler hat to show his support for the recapture of the Falklands. The page almost expires under the weight of symbolism. (3)
This symbolism, however, is described by Tim Adams in his review “Indignity of Labour” in The Observer, to be of “an eerie kind of obsession” and he criticises Lott for his “pre-packaged ironies” accompanying the “flat rigour of his writing” (Adams, par 8). While Rumour of a Hurricane is supposed to be portraying the complex change in social consciousness in the 1980s, the characters portraying this change are unfortunately not that interesting. As Adams says:
Lott can’t help but keep just a little bit of distance. As a result, you never much care how things turn out for Maureen and Charlie, beyond hoping they might cheer up a little, and it doesn’t really feel like he does, either. (10)
Due to the distance of Lott and the enormous amount of information, Charlie’s personal vision – his opinion concerning his social identity – is put to the background. Phillip Tew in The Contemporary British Novel, however, does give credit for Lott’s pursuit to describe the changing social consciousness. While Adams is not convinced by Lott’s message that Charlie tries to attain a new social status – “Charlie builds a conservatory, purchases his utility shares and, we are asked to believe, sells his working-class soul” (par 6) – Tew does see the “cultural effacement” (Tew 88) portrayed by Lott.
In Tim Lott’s Rumours of a Hurricane (2002) the protagonist, Charlie, is effaced, as he finds when he brakes into his newly Thatcherite ex-wife’s house. “Any remnant of Charlie’s marriage to Maureen seems to have been comprehensively erased. There is none of their old furniture, pictures, ornaments, nothing. He is a non-person. He has been erased” (Lott 372). (88)
Even though the message of social mobility is made clear by Lott, the portrayal of the personal dilemmas of Charlie and the people around him, are not convincing. Perhaps with less focus on detail and more on emotions, Lott could have made the personal dilemma of trying to define a social status in Britain in the 1980s more clear. The neglect of emotion in Rumours of a Hurricane does have the positive effect that the reader feels as if Charlie Buck was one of many working class men, whose lives altered greatly in the 1980s. Although it is a detailed story of a man’s life, the reader does get the impression that Charlie’s story is not special; there are probably many stories like his, and unfortunately, with the same dramatic ending.
Rumours of a Hurricane
Lott’s fourth novel, Rumours of a Hurricane, deals with an enormous range of aspects of life in 1980s Britain. The protagonist, Charlie Buck, is followed trough twelve years of his life; the years of Margaret Thatcher’s government. She is certainly a prominent factor in Charlie’s life, as well as in his wife’s. Initially, although Thatcher was received with suspicion, working class family Buck seems more affluent than before 1979. Charlie seems to be climbing the social ladder: from a working class compositor at a newspaper living in a council flat in Fulham London, to a homeowner and shopkeeper living in affluent Milton Keynes. His wife Maureen is inspired by Thatcher’s personal story of success: from housewife, to business woman, to prime minister, and aspires to do the same. Charlie’s son, Robert, climbs up from being a squatter to becoming a riot police officer and sergeant. Charlie’s brother, Tommy, evolves from being a lover of “recreational violence” (104) and petty crime, to a £10,000 kitchen owner, and plans on sending his children to private schools.
Although all these individual stories are stories of success and are all almost too good to be true, Charlie’s story is the only one which has a disastrous ending. He experiences the negative side of social mobility: not only can individuals climb up the social ladder, they can also plummet down. The recurring theme in Lott’s novel, and also visible in working class novels by Kelman and Welsh, is the difficulty of working class man Charlie Buck to adapt to change. Lott describes the changes occurring in Charlie’s live, and his objection of and difficulty to adapt to them.
Charlie is proud of his job as a compositor at Times Newspapers. The craft, the result of seven years of apprenticeship (23), however, is destined for a crude death, with the introduction of computers and the consequences for his manual labour. Still unaware of this destiny, the compositors are involved in endless strikes for better working conditions in 1979 and Charlie is positive that “[t]he management would cave in” (16). He is certain of this because: “They always did, they always had, they always would. Then Charlie and the rest would get back-pay, and things would be the same as they were before” (16). This faith in the inevitability of these events marks Charlie’s vision of the world as a working class individual. Throughout the first quarter of the novel, Charlie is portrayed as a conservative man with a deep-rooted faith in his union, whose life consists of a series of daily rituals and who saves cash under the floorboards instead of putting it on a bank account. The only change he allows is letting his model train take a different circuit occasionally, but Charlie “enjoys the way the journey is always more or less the same” (54). His life is consistent with his wife’s. Maureen is happy with the black and white television set, although Charlie offered to buy her a colour, because, like Charlie, she is “suspicious of both change and hire-purchase agreements” (29). Aside from her daily rituals she also has a weekly ritual of dressing up and watching Dallas on television, a world filled with passion and excitement which lacks in her own life. It is understandable that the political decisions of Thatcher had a huge impact on a family like the Buck’s, for Thatcher’s government transformed, among other things, British social services, institutions such as the Church and local governments, tax systems and public transport (Morgan 587): the whole reign of Thatcher consisted of change.
Symbolic of the decade of change ahead of him, the first thing that changes in Charlie’s life is his miniature representation of life: his model train set. The train which always takes the same journey is considered a fire hazard by the inspector of the council house Charlie lives in. The council inspector visits Charlie because of his complaint of a malfunctioning radiator. A man in a suit, Stan, asks Charlie questions about the presumed faulty radiator. The radiator, however, is not defect in the sense that it does not generate heat; it simply cannot be turned off. This cannot be dealt with immediately, because it conflicts with the earlier statement that the radiator is faulty, and repairing the boiler is in conflict with procedure. This is utterly frustrating for Charlie, also because the council inspector and the two maintenance men ignore him and his statements. Frustrated he exclaims: “Why won’t you talk to me? You bloody people!” (73). Without paying attention to Charlie they proceed their inspection, denying Charlie’s feeling of being intruded in his privacy.
“This is my home”, says Charlie desperately
“It’s council property”, says Huxtable, without turning his head. (73)
Remarking Charlie’s model train set, council representative Huxtable declares: “This is in contravention. Without question” (74). Charlie has to store his model train, and is prohibited from using within the council flat. The behaviour of the council representative, the disrespect for Charlie’s privacy and his unwillingness to resolve the radiator’s malfunction – through which the bureaucracy of council housing are represented – are here viewed from a working class point of view. The treatment by the middle class council representative is clearly one of disdain.
This view of middle class institutions and their treatment of the working class is a recurring theme in Kelman and Welsh as well. The disdain implied in the council representative’s attitude, by ignoring Charlie’s statements and emphasising the house being council property, is part of a more general distrust of working class individuals toward middle class society. In Lott’s novel, as in Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late, the difference between working and middle class is often represented in bureaucratic discourses with middle class institutions. In the discussion of Kelman’s novel How Late It Was, How Late, this will be addressed.
Despite Charlie’s sceptical attitude towards change and large investments, he decides to buy his own council home. This procedure was made possible through Thatcher’s decision of expanding home ownership in the early 1980s. Aside from this large investment, Charlie buys a microwave oven for his wife on Christmas day. The turkey which is cooked inside the microwave turns out to be “both uncooked and overcooked” (117) and is simply inedible. While every one else decides to order in Indian food, Charlie is too proud to acknowledge the failed meal, and stubbornly eats on. His adamant behaviour clearly shows his unwillingness to accept the failure of his expensive microwave. Aside from this, he also feels attacked in his manhood and is unwilling to let his brother Tommy save the meal. He would rather feel sick from the raw meat. It becomes clear that Charlie often feels personally offended by Tommy’s success, whether this is saving a Christmas meal, or buying better presents. He envies his brother for his attractive wife but despises him for his vulgar language, loudness and obesity (104). What bothers Charlie most, however, is that his son Robert has a better relationship with Tommy than with his own father.
The troubled relationship Charlie has with his son is the result of Robert’s failure to live up to his father’s expectations. Charlie expects his son to emulate his own life. He wishes his son to learn the same craft and with much effort he has obtained a union membership card for the National Graphic Association, giving his son the opportunity to be assured of a job for life, as Charlie explains it (126). Robert, however, has no intention of becoming a compositor:
Charlie looks at Robert, sees suddenly what the silence indicates.
“It’s a job for life!”
“There’s no such thing any more.”
Robert suddenly feels something within him coalesce, a tender defiance. When he speaks again, it is softly but firmly.
“Anyway. Don’t take this wrong, Dad. But your life isn’t the life I want.”
Charlie feels a shooting pain in his stomach, then a hotness invading his entire body. He sees his brother’s face, thinks there is the ghost of a mocking grin. When he speaks again, he cannot keep the bitterness from his voice.
“I suppose you’ve got the right to mess up your own life however you want. But the trouble with that dropout type of attitude is that it’s all very well when you’re young. But sooner or later you’re going to get old. I know it’s hard to believe. I never believed it myself.”
“I’m not a dropout”, says Robert, turning his head away.
“Obviously not. Obviously not. I mean, you’ve got a brand-new motorbike, for instance. The Social must be giving out Christmas bonuses this year.” (127)
Charlie’s wife Maureen tries to calm him, but Charlie rambles on, insulting his son and his brother.
“You been taking a few lessons from your Uncle Tommy in villainy, have you, son? Is that the life you want? Taking the piss out of Joe Public the rest of your life. Thinking the world is just a collection of mugs waiting to be taken advantage of.” (127)
This attitude towards his son deteriorates their relationship further, and the distance between them increases after this episode. The aggressive atmosphere accompanying Charlie’s allegations is relieved by Maureen inquiring if anyone wants a cup of tea.
Charlie and Robert lose contact, and Robert becomes a riot police officer and eventually a sergeant, giving him enough money to support his illegitimate son and the son’s mother. Charlie is unaware of his status as a grandfather and believes Robert is wasting his life as a squatter in London, living on social security. His conservative working class mentality – live an honest life and work hard –clashes with his son’s assumed identity which Charlie invented, when in fact Robert is actually adopting this traditional working class mentality. Remarkably, Robert gets a lot further with his – live an honest life and work hard – mentality than his father. When Charlie finally finds out that his son is a riot police officer, he is shocked. While he should be relieved that the image he had of his son was false, he feels betrayed. His only son, in Charlie’s eyes, betrays his working class background by becoming part of a middle class institution; the police.
Maureen’s working class status is also quickly changing. Although Maureen appears to be a humble housewife and mother, she finds out she has a remarkable bookkeeping talent. At the local barbershop she explores her administrative knowledge and enjoys her new status as a working woman. With her promotion from housewife to working woman, her vision of the world around her also seems to change. When at the beginning of the novel she does not seem to have an opinion of her own, she now often debates issues with Charlie. Her view toward change is also altered. While discussing the future of Charlie’s job as a compositor she tries to convince him of the inevitability of technological progress.
“But surely, Charlie, you can’t stop progress. If they’ve invented these computers, they’ve got to come sooner or later. How can you stand in the way of that?”
It is unusual for Maureen to offer an opinion so contrary to the one Charlie has expressed and a look of mild surprise crosses his face.
“Kiddo, it’s hard to explain. Of course the computers have got to come. But when? Now? Next year? In fifty years? Who’s to say? Is it the management who has the only say?”
“Well, they’ve got a business to run, haven’t they? If they can’t run a business, you wouldn’t have any jobs. It’s uneconomical to keep things like they are.”
At first amused by Maureen’s contrariness, Charlie now feels irritated.
“You’ve got it the wrong way round. You can’t run a business without workers to work in it. We are the business.” (177)
Unconvinced, Maureen tries to point out that he might loose his job when computers take over his work. Charlie replies to this comment
You know what Mike Sunderland at the paper would call you? A … petty barge wire zee. He’d call you a class traitor. (178)
What the comment “petty barge wire zee” means is not clear, but it is obvious that Charlie does not like to hear the possibility of loosing his job. By acknowledging the inevitability of technological progress by means of computers, Maureen is considered a class traitor. Instead of siding with her husband, a working class man who through manual labour – again through an honest life and hard work – puts together a newspaper, she empathises with the middle class management who are unable to deny the introduction of computers. The conservatism of Charlie, his faith in the routine of daily life, makes him unable to look beyond this routine and imagine what would happen if computers actually are introduced. Anyone who can, like his wife, who accepts the inevitability of change, is considered to be opposing the working class mentality.
Mike Sunderland, mentioned in the argument with Maureen, is a journalist with a Cambridge education. Metaphorically, he works “upstairs” (85), which, besides actually working a floor higher than Charlie, also implies the class difference between them. Reluctant to eat their lunch with him, Charlie and his dark-skinned friend Lloyd – whom Charlie calls ‘Snowball’ – discuss Mike
“Look at the state of him. Dirty old jeans. Shoes look like they’ve been picked out of a dustbin. You can always tell a man by his shoes.”
“Not always. His watch must be worth a few hundred pounds. And his voice, bwoy, I’m telling you, there’s money there. He’s a mug. A real live patsy. He’s asking for it”.
“I dunno.”
“Look. He’s one of them socialists, isn’t he? Reads the Guardian and that. He wants a pet darkie as mate. And what with you in the council house, it’s two niggers for the price of one. Let’s teach him a thing or two about the redistribution of wealth.” (84)
Mike, indeed, is very interested in the lives of Charlie and Lloyd. He wants to know “what’s it like living in a council flat” (86). His thinks Thatcher’s decision of expanding home ownership is appalling.
“I can’t believe what Thatcher is doing. She’s destroying the stock of social housing. Selling them off in that fashion. It’s completely inappropriate. […] She’s just trying to appeal to the worst in everyone. People are better than that. That’s why people hate her.” (86)
When Mike tries to convince Charlie about the racial connotations of Lloyd’s nickname ‘Snowball’, Charlie replies: “The trouble with you, Mike, is that you don’t know real people. You live in a different world” (87). The emphasis on the difference in class between them, in which the working class are the “real people”, implies an insurmountable gap between them. Mike can never become working class which also implies that Charlie can never become middle class. In spite of the social mobility made possible in the period of Thatcher – the social mobility Robert and later on Maureen experience – Charlie seems so deeply connected with the working class, that social mobility could never be possible, despite appearances.
The friendship between Mike and Charlie – one never based on equality – comes to an abrupt end when Charlie sees Mike in a coach filled with strike breakers. Charlie has received a form letter in which the dismissal of at least 5,000 employees is announced. He breaks the news to Maureen:
“I’ve got six month’s notice. No offer of redundancy even.”
“Nothing at all? I thought they had an £80 million fund.”
“That was before we went on strike. It’s been withdrawn.” (249)
Charlie’s union is organising a demonstration against this decision
“We’re all going to fight it, to the hilt. […] We’re going to rise, like, like […] like rats from the rubble! That’s it, Maureen, like rats from the rubble!” (250)
At the demonstration only six pickets are allowed inside the newspaper’s premises at Wapping, London. The rest of the 6,000 demonstrators are kept outside. Thousands of riot police officers are present to make the event go smoothly. There is, however, an angry atmosphere and when the coach with strike breakers appears, the atmosphere turns from confusion, to unrest and finally rage. The riot police want to disperse the crowd, but this only increases the jostling and irritation among the strikers. The event ends dramatically: the police batter Lloyd, and Charlie finds out his son is a riot police officer.
The redundancy of Charlie comes as a shock, because he and Maureen have purchased a house in Milton Keynes, a huge investment. Together with purchasing a house in an affluent town, Charlie and Maureen’s lives, and most importantly, their ideas and opinions about change, alter radically. While in the beginning of the novel Charlie mentions that envying the rich “would be as pointless to envy the birds. The species are as different, as alien” (21). With Thatcher, new possibilities have emerged and the possibility of becoming rich is certainly present. Charlie experienced his new home ownership as a “new beginning” (207). They bought a new car (207) and Charlie even voted Thatcher (210). His political opinions, however, he kept to himself. He felt part of “a large secret community: the Labour-supporting Tory voters” (210). These new feelings, however, come to an abrupt end with Charlie’s redundancy.
Meanwhile, Maureen, having left her administrative job behind in Fulham, experiences the joy of shopping and shoplifting. Because Charlie wants Maureen to be mobile, he invites their neighbour, Peter, who is a driving instructor. Peter and Maureen have a passionate affair, and finally, Maureen leaves Charlie for Peter. Interestingly, together with becoming more mobile in respect to learning how to drive, Maureen also becomes socially mobile, as she starts a driving school with Peter and attains the status of a successful business woman, and therefore moving up the social ladder. Charlie does not respond well to the news of Maureen wanting a divorce. He hits her and then in the heat of the moment mutilates some cattle in a nearby meadow. Because of this incident, Maureen demands their entire savings, which she invests in her driving school with Peter.
Charlie, even though dismissed from his compositing job and left by his wife, takes on the advice of his brother Tommy; he sells his house, and opens a model train shop. He is “carried, like all the lucky ones, dipping and bobbing on a blue and green sea of banknotes” (312). Although his business is prosperous in the first two years, a horrendous storm announces his bad luck. The storm – there are even rumours of a hurricane, which accounts for the novel’s title – feels like “a world in motion, of chaos descending” (329). Chaos soon descends on his personal life. His business does not prosper as Maureen’s does, and Charlie soon finds himself in huge debts. He realises that the 1980s is not just a decade of prosperity and prospects. “Charlie has come to understand how bad luck and bad choices can bring a man down, the brute power of circumstance” (332). His bad luck consisted of hitting his wife at her announcement of divorce and taking advice from his brother to open a model train shop. Ironically, it is Charlie who experiences the negative side of change. Having finally lost his distrust of change and having invested in a model train shop, he is the one who eventually fails. In his pursuit to become an entrepreneur, he also seems to have lost his working class mentality. In having briefly experienced what it is like being a middle class man, he has lost his honesty and values. In a desperate attempt to steal money from his ex-wife to try to delay the payments of his loans, Charlie is confronted with his wife’s success. The beginning of the novel describes his final stage of life in the winter of 1991.
Homeless, drunk and filthy, Charlie has become invisible on the streets as only the lowest of the low can be invisible: ignored by people hurrying to the underground station. It is only when Charlie decides to jump in front of a lorry that people notice him. Because the impact does not kill Charlie instantly, he is taken to a hospital where a surgeon is reluctant to operate
He has taken his saviour’s knife to too many street roughs and drunks and hopeless cases with their ruined insides, keeping him from spending valuable time on those he thinks of as more valuable people, those he believes misfortune, rather than personal weakness, has laid low. He hates what he tries to save; a futile drain on resources. (9)
From an honest, working class man to an entrepreneur in the 1980s – taking the path Thatcher had in mind for the majority of the British citizens - Charlie has now become “a futile drain on resources”. This shows the worst case scenario of social mobility in the 1980s. Not only did Charlie experience the climb upwards on the social ladder, at the end of his life he finds himself non-existent. A person not even worthy of a class marker. After the surgery, Charlie is taken to an intensive-care ward where he dies, alone, 61 years old.
Chapter Three
James Kelman
A Scottish author who has been the voice of the working class in the mid 80s and 90s is James Kelman. In his fiction, the reader is offered a point of view from inside the character’s head. Often through a stream-of-consciousness mode of writing, every thought of the main character is expressed and his view of the world is propagated. Together with promulgating a working class point of view, Kelman’s characters all invoke a bleak, alienated viewpoint of the world around them, which is seen often in contemporary literature. Especially the alienation and exclusion of the characters in a post-industrialised world is evident in his novels A Disaffection (1989) and How Late It Was, How Late (1994). By using Scottish demotic speech, Kelman tries to distance himself from the existing opinions about literariness in the 1980s. His novels therefore convey not only an alienated viewpoint, but are alienated from the prevailing view of literature in the 1980s.
Distance and Disaffection
Working class fiction in contemporary literature has not always been received with much praise. When James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late was pronounced winner of the 1994 Booker Prize, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, a prize-committee judge, resigned in protest. She commented that Kelman’s novel in “broad Glaswegian dialect, littered with F-words … was too much, too inaccessible, and simply too dull […] The novel does not appeal to me, I do not find it amusing – and it never changes in tone” (McGlynn 50). It is not only the demotic language which irritates most critics, but also the inability to place Kelman in a certain genre. His stream-of-consciousness mode of writing has tempted many critics to place him in a modernist tradition, although his stylistic experimentation, the deletion of punctuation marks, is more connected with post-modernism. Furthermore, working class fiction has always been labelled as ‘realistic’, and since the same “‘rough, recorded vernacular’ could be overheard on any night in a Glasgow pub” Kelman’s novels cannot be considered literature, according to author Fay Weldon (53). Dominic Head, on the other hand, does acknowledge the cultural value of Kelman’s novel How Late It Was, How Late in Modern British Fiction, by claiming that Kelman voices an “experience that usually goes unheard” (68). Kelman’s novel is “representative, formally, of the direction fiction has taken to treat questions of poverty and inequality”(68).
Mary McGlynn, in her essay “‘Middle Class Wankers’ and Working-Class Texts: The Critics and James Kelman” in Contemporary Literature, gives an overview of the opinions of critics in the 1980s and 1990s of Kelman’s fiction. Here, she emphasises the problem of placing Kelman in a tradition of genres. McGlynn says: “In many of his theoretical pronouncements, Kelman calls for a more realist fiction, but his novel reveal a nuanced awareness of the oxymoron regularly overlooked in that term” (52). The oxymoron is that even though his fiction claims to portray the truth, reality, through his portrayal of interior monologue, “a single, verifiable truth” (52) is denied. There is no omniscient narrator who can verify the character’s perception of reality. Cairn Craig in “Resisting Arrest: James Kelman” in The Scottish Novel since the Seventies, calls “Kelmans’s working-class realism […] tactical rather than essential” (105). Kelman’s novel cannot be put in a realist genre, but can it be put in any genre? According to McGlynn, Kelman’s fiction “def[ies] both realist and genre expectations” (53), and it is exactly the expectations of the reader which Kelman wants to break. Readers are accustomed to punctuation marks and a third person overview in a novel and by omitting this, Kelman creates a distance between his fiction and the reader. This coexists with the feelings of estrangement and isolation that the characters in his novels experience.
By creating a distance between reader and character by omitting an omniscient point of view and writing in demotic speech, Kelman tries to “dethrone the normative narrative voice, refusing to translate for middle-class readers” (McGlynn 59). Kelman does not only try to avoid every possibility of placing his fiction in a certain genre, he also tries to give the working class characters their own authentic voice by letting them converse and think in their own language. This is a rather revolutionary change within the tradition of working-class fiction. In the working class fiction of 1950s author Sillitoe, for example, even though the characters speech is written down in dialect, the narrator is always a voice speaking in standard – middle class – English. In Kelman’s fiction the use of demotic speech is perhaps not just present to give the characters an authentic voice, but Kelman perhaps wants to choose his own audience by the refusal of translating the Scottish speech. According to McGlynn, Kelman forces the presumed middle class readers to change their assumptions about “the limitations of working-class minds” (61), should they have them.
While Mary McGlynn’s article focuses on the use of language in Kelman’s novels and the implications this has for middle class readers and the differences and similarities with novels within the tradition of working class realism, John Kirk focuses on the representations of urban life in Kelman’s fiction. In “Figuring the Dispossessed: Images of the Urban Working Class in the Writing of James Kelman” in English, John Kirk focuses on the “alienation and dispossession” of the working class within the “class geographies” of “recent times” in the fiction of Kelman (101). Kirk acknowledges the fact that Kelman cannot be placed unthinkingly within the tradition of working class fiction as it existed before the 1980s (101). Within the ‘post-industrial’ era, as Kirk argues, the “nature of work has altered” and with it the “experiences of working class life” (105). Ken Worpole in Dockers and Detectives (1984) already prophesised that: “[d]isplacement, fragmentation, cosmopolitanism, the life of the streets rather than in the homes … are like to be the new conditions of experience for the next generation of working class people” (Kirk 104). This becomes clear in the fiction of Kelman, and also Welsh, where the working class individuals are often unemployed. These “urban vagrant” (105) individuals are no longer concerned with honest hard work or family values.
A Disaffection
A Disaffection can be considered a transition novel. While Charlie Buck in Rumours of a Hurricane was a victim of social mobility in respect to his bankruptcy, Patrick Doyle in A Disaffection has climbed the social ladder despite his background and has become successful. Being a teacher at a comprehensive school in Glasgow, he finds himself in a middle class environment in which he feels out of place. The identity crisis accompanying this change in class, causes his disaffection from society, and his longing to go back to his working class background. This novel can be considered an intermediate within the working class novels discussed in this study. Patrick has reached the stage of feeling disaffected from society – this disaffection could be seen as the effect of the process portrayed in Lott’s Rumours of a Hurricane – but he longs to return to his romanticised working class background. In Kelman’s novel How Late It Was, How Late and Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, this romanticised view of the working class has disappeared.
Pat Doyle obtained an MA title at university and found a job as a teacher in a country marked by unemployment and an increasing gap between rich and poor. In this social environment, the aspects of social belonging and class-consciousness are prevailing. Feeling disaffected from his middle class environment, he has an overwhelming desire to connect with his working class family. This desire is mostly triggered by a romanticised view of working class life, which, in Patrick’s mind, consists of fraternity and compassion for one another. In trying to obtain the desired connection with his family, and leaving his middle class environment he detests so much, he decides to quit his job. The efforts of connecting with his family, however, are in vain, and the recognition of the hopelessness of the pursuit leaves him feeling even more misunderstood.
Ian Haywood in Working Class Fiction, From Chartism to Trainspotting (1997) describes Kelman as an author who is
concerned to render the existential interior life of a fractured, often wandering and centreless post-industrial working class consciousness. (152)
Although he does not discuss A Disaffection, the mood evoked in other novels by Kelman such as The Busconductor Hines (1984) and How Late It Was, How Late, as described by Haywood, apply to A Disaffection as well. The “existential interior life” in A Disaffection of Patrick Doyle focuses on his ultimately dissatisfactory job and his decision to quit teaching. The interior life of Pat Doyle is conveyed in free indirect discourse. There is some sense of a narrator, though it is very limited. Pat’s thoughts are the main link to the world around him for the reader.
The disaffection – the title covers the general mood in the novel perfectly – of the protagonist is made clear instantly. The feeling that he is “the tool of a dictatorship government” (Kelman 1994, 67) and the rejection of the fact that he should be “content to perform the fencing-in job for a society you purport to detest right to the very depth of your being” (87), makes Pat want to retire. Although he is told by his environment that his status as “a single man, a bachelor; a chap with little or no responsibilities” (67) is something that many envy, he has difficulties living up to this image. Pat feels excluded from his fellow-teachers and cannot understand their desire to teach. Teachers are part of “middle-class warders […] professional wanks on behalf of institutionalised terror”, and they are responsible for creating a false reality (103). This false reality consists of excluding the working class and rewarding those who betray their origins like Patrick
He was a representative of corruption, representative of a corrupt and repressive society which operated nicely and efficiently as an effect of the liberal machinations of such as himself, corruption optimi pessima, not that he was approaching the best but just a person who had certain tools of the higher-educational processes at his command yet persisted in representing a social order that was not good and was not beneficent to those who have nothing. What right did he have to be treated differently to any member of the fucking government or polis or the fucking law courts in general who sentence you to prison. Doyle had sold his rights. (303)
By feeling that he has been forced by his parents to go to university, Patrick considers himself trapped in his job as a teacher. Through his teaching he is supposed to influence children and push them towards making decisions he regrets to have made, an act he thinks hypocritical. He feels that he is supposed to “influence the weans of the lower orders so that they willni do anything that might upset the people with wealth, power and privilege” (210). He often mentions being “bought” (181), as if being tricked into selling his soul; loosing his roots as a working class individual.
It is difficult to understand why Patrick regrets having lost his background as a working class individual. He seems to think that working class life has more value and is more genuine, since he often reflects on middle class people as being hypocritical. Patrick contemplates writing his ‘friend’ Eric, the only person he has kept in contact with since university. He refers to Eric as “born an Englishman” (52), though his parents were Scottish. The reference to Scotland being working class and England being middle class recurs throughout the novel. By being “born an Englishman”, Patrick means to say that he has always been a middle class individual, and the fact that Eric married an English woman and moved to England (52), makes him the ultimate betrayer to his working class background. Patrick believes that
[t]hey were all like that, these middle-class bastards, lying fuckers, so absolutely hypocritical it was a way of being, they never even bothered reflecting on it. (53)
Even though he is irritated by the fact that middle class people never seem to reflect on their lives, he finds out that even working class people do not always reflect on theirs.
Patrick’s reflection on life reverberates in his teaching methods. He feels an extreme need to make the people in his environment conscious of his view of the world. Instead of pushing his pupils towards making the wrong decisions he regrets to have made, he tries to make them think differently. He tries to “just make the weans angry” (320), so that they will reconsider the world around them. This method he applies not only in his classroom, but also to “other folk as well; I try and make them angry. That includes relations!” (320) The treatment of the working class by middle class society makes Pat extremely angry. He is often wondering if people in his working class environment; his family, feel exploited. While visiting his parents he wants to know if his dad, a 59 year old machine setter in a factory, feels exploited. He wants to ask if his dad “wiped [his] gaffer’s arse recently” (119). He dares not ask his father this because he is taken aback by the uselessness of it all; he cannot get through to him. “It’s just that fucking hopeless reactionariness. How do ye pierce it? It’s a fucking tortoiseshell. You would need a Moby Dick harpoon” (119). The comment of the reactionariness of his father seems to indicate that he, just like Patrick himself, is clinging on to the traditional ideas of being working class. The urge to change his father’s life, seems to be in contrast with his own reactionariness. Patrick’s reactionariness consists of a romanticised view of brotherhood and solidarity within the working class but does not encompass the notion that nothing can be changed, that no progress is possible.
The pursuit to improve his father’s life, to encourage a debate about the possible maltreatment of his father and his fellow workers, is left in silence. The hopelessness of trying to get through to his father leaves Patrick feeling emotional and he has to retreat to the bathroom (119). Patrick feels that if people talked about their experiences, their feeling of exploitation, then something could change. While visiting his brother Gavin, Patrick is wondering why they are not talking about important things. His abysmal questions to the working class consist of
how much of a fucking wage do ye earn? Are you getting exploited badly or just ordinarily so? Is your rate for the job fixed by person or persons unknown? Is your union as corrupt as mine? Did your leaders sell ye out that last time as usual? (280)
But, just as with his father, he does not ask them.
In the classroom, Patrick tries to make the pupils aware of the rottenness of middle class society. This is done by extremely unconventional teaching methods, in which he makes no effort to hide his disaffection. His chaotic teaching consists of answering questions like “is shaving sore?” (185), and beginning class with the question: “What’s this fucking load of drivel all about?” to which one of his fourteen year old pupils replies: “Eh is what this fucking load of drivel is all about is what this fucking load of drivel is all about?” (184). Another example of his eccentric teaching methods is making the class repeat him in saying: “We are being fenced in by the teachers, at the behest of a dictatorship government, in explicit simulation of our fucking parents the silly bastards” (25). In trying to comprehend what subject he is supposed to be teaching, philosophy is the closest thing that comes into mind. This peculiar method of teaching is in accordance with the chaotic thoughts he has privately. He shares everything that comes into his head at that exact moment with his pupils. In a strange way it seems that he is most himself when he is addressing his pupils. His private thoughts consist of contemplating suicide or masturbation and thinking about hugging the object of his affection, the married teacher Alison. This relationship does not work out, partly because of Patrick’s loathing for teaching as a profession.
Besides intimate thoughts, Patrick Doyle’s thoughts often invoke a feeling of alienation, dejection, incomprehension, and boredom. He never experiences a moment of peace, since
His fucking mind is always going this way or that way and he is just never is able to get down and relax somewhere. (66)
In his constant stream of thoughts, Patrick often subconsciously connects ordinary experiences or objects with more universal thoughts about his life and post-industrial society. At the beginning of the novel Patrick finds two pipes which he intends to use as musical instruments. He contemplates painting the pipes but then wonders why everything ordinary has to be coloured: “What was wrong with their own colour? Their self-colour. Their colour of self?” (9) He fears that when they are coloured, they loose their meaning, and the perspective gets changed. It is difficult to decide if he is thinking about the pipes, or perhaps about his own life. It seems as if he is talking about his own “self-colour”, which he has changed when taking on in his profession as a teacher. His transformation of being working class to becoming middle class. Perhaps this is why he feels he has betrayed his background; he has changed his “self-colour”. He now lives in a world where there is a “hollowness of tone” (8). Although this phrase comes into his mind when thinking about a painting by Goya, he then wonders if he was referring to the painting or to the pipes. “He had not been thinking about the pipes at all” (8). Later on the phrase recurs:
The phrase ‘hollowness of tone’; what did it mean. Why was it in his head. Hollowness of tone. It was a fine and smashing phrase. There is something of it in the work of old Goya. It is a thing that what is it. What is it. I wonder what the fuck it is. An ineffability about such abstractions, these affairs that arent tangible, the slobbery yins, and only their names remain, arcane celestiae” (222).
The elusive phrase which he cannot seem to comprehend, lingers in his head all the time. The phrase seems to connect to Goya’s paintings.
Goya’s later period, the period which Patrick refers to when speaking of the “hollowness of tone”, invokes the feeling of “an old man’s sense of bitterness and defeat” (153). According to Petra ten-Doesschate Chu in Nineteenth Century European Art (2003), Goya
had seen the world change from a place ruled by reason and optimism to one controlled by fear, madness, and destruction. (153)
It is not arbitrary that Patrick connects the phrase “hollowness of tone” to the images of Goya conveying the notion that the world has changed from reason and optimism to fear, madness and destruction. Though Patrick’s vision of the world is perhaps not so dark as Goya’s, the “hollowness” does seems to convey a quality of life, that was not there before; just like Goya’s world had changed.
The phrase seems to convey the general feeling of a hollow life which Patrick lives. Not only does “hollowness of tone” seem to have a reference to the work of Goya, another artist also comes to mind when considering hollowness a quality of life. A century later than Goya, human kind are portrayed as scarecrows by T.S. Eliot in The Hollow Men (Abrams 1925). His depiction of the “decay of culture in the Modern Western world” (Abrams 2363), consists of allusions to a dead, dilapidated, dark world. The poem consists of lines like
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
[…] Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless (2. 1-7)
And
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star (2. 39-44)
In this dead land, the hollow men do not connect with one another, although they “grope together” (58), they “avoid speech” (59). This evokes an image of zombies – the living dead – groping one another, looking for fresh meat in a desolate city. The image of a dead city is also portrayed by Patrick. Because of the limited view offered in A Disaffection, i.e. through Patrick Doyle’s eyes, the reader is introduced to an empty city: Patrick’s Glasgow. Patrick does not seem to connect with anyone, and though there are others on the streets and in cars, they do not talk to or look at each other. This is also visible with the middle class people in his environment. Patrick wonders why
he is not able to just be dead like everybody else. Everybody else was dead. They were dead. How come he was not like them, and not able to just be dead. (216)
This hollowness and deadness of this middle class world around him is exactly why he detests his social surroundings so much. He laments the loss of sentimentality. “Was there not a place for sentimentality. Were you not allowed to start bloody greeting nowadays, was that it! Was that the way things were” (11). In discussing a book in the staffroom, Patrick, without even having read the book, criticises his fellow-teacher Desmond for thinking “there’s no room for sentimentality” (13). Whereas in Patrick’s mind the middle class lacks sentimentality, he believes the working class is overflowing with sentimentality. In feeling there is a lack of sentimentality in his middle class surroundings, his view towards working class environments seems to be romanticised, such as at his brother’s house. When approaching his brother’s apartment building he observes that: “The front door was ajar. He must have done it himself. Does the world fit together or is that purely sentimental” (258). When listening to a story about his brother’s neighbour’s relatives, who worked at a ferry, he romanticises this working class job
This guy who was an astonishing bevymerchant and practical joker who earned his living on the ferry to Kyleakin which without any question had to be regarded as the finest job in all possible universes. Patrick smiled. But it definitely was. Imagine working on the ferry that sailed across the sea to Skye! (259)
His brother and his neighbours disagree with Patrick’s remark that: “It must be about one of the best jobs in the entire universe” (259), but fail to persuade him in thinking it is a horrible profession. Patrick envies his brother’s life, although Gavin is unemployed and failed to pay the electricity bill because he was on a drinking binge all afternoon with his neighbours. Patrick however, even romanticises this drinking binge and describes the situation as
[t]he company was relaxing. It was good. They were friends this trio of neighbours; they shared their grub and they shared their drink. They got on fine together. They were friends. And they were not at all making him feel excluded; that was one thing, they were not making him feel awkward. That’s two things. (268)
This romanticised view of working class life with friends sharing their “grub” and “drink”, is exactly what is missing in Patrick’s middle class life. He has no friends to share his food with, but even if he had friends, he has no refrigerator and often does not even have food in the house to share.
Although Patrick states that Gavin and his neighbours do not make him feel excluded or awkward, Patrick soon finds himself in an awkward situation where Gavin criticises him for “chucking” in his job, while he is unemployed and believes “jobs are a thing of the past in this country” (301). When an uncomfortable silence follows this remark, Patrick thinks
Gavin didnt wish to speak to his young brother, especially on a basis of equality. His young brother had a good sort of middle-classish wage whereas he had fuck all. His young brother could make all the comments and criticisms he had a mind to, then walk along to the licensed grocer and buy a bottle of whisky and a dozen cans of superlager – just about the most expensive lager in the premises. So what was the point in talking to him, to somebody like him. (303)
Not only does Patrick feel disaffected from his middle class environment, he feels estranged from his working class family.
This estrangement from his family is only described through the eyes of Patrick Doyle, and it does not become clear if his family is the cause he feels so disaffected, or that the disaffection is something Patrick has created in his own mind. Patrick mentions being forced into going to university and becoming a teacher, which his family considers the “backbone of community” (78). This phrase, however, is coined by Patrick, it is not clear if his parents actually believe that teachers are the backbone of the community. This is just an example of the narrow view the reader is offered in A Disaffection. Because reality is looked at from Patrick’s viewpoint, it is the reality which the reader has to deal with. In the novel there is a limited viewpoint, no objective point of reference which tests Patrick’s point of view. Because of this subjective view of the world, it is often hard for the reader to understand Patrick Doyle’s disaffection. The recurring contradictory dilemmas Patrick deals with are often difficult to understand. Why does Patrick hold such a romanticised view of working class life, since he has grown up in it, and could have seen what it comprises? And why does he feel so disaffected from his family when they have given him no reason to feel so estranged from them. This is particularly strange since Patrick often contemplates on how to get close to them, but in other situations he keeps them at a distance by not returning their phone calls. The difficulty to understand such dilemma’s, causes a distance in the reader as well. Not only does Patrick feel excluded from the outside world, the reader is often left with a feeling of exclusion of the actual meaning of Patrick’s dilemmas.
Patrick Doyle is disaffected with the teaching, middle class environment he finds himself in. He laments the loss of sentimentality and the hollowness of life and questions the importance and given authority to education. In the novel, Patrick often refers to himself as Patrick Doyle MA (HONS): “I got my ‘honours’. My (Honours)! My !!!honours!!! I became a registered civilian on behalf of forces that are corrupt” (210). The attention given to his “honours” ridicules his personal title and his education. He sarcastically points out that getting your ‘honours’ does not make you a better person. He feels that he has been acting like someone he is not; he has lost his “self-colour”, and thinks middle class people are often hypocritical. This disrupted image of his middle class environment causes his longing to connect with his working class family. This, however, often fails. Trying to connect with his father fails because Patrick cannot understand his reactionariness, and fails in trying to start a debate about his presumed exploitation. The pursuit of connecting with his brother fails because of Patrick’s romanticised image of working class life, and because they have different expectations in life. His brother cannot understand why Patrick has given up his job, when there is so much unemployment in Britain. This disrupted relationship Patrick has with his family coexists with his disrupted view of his middle class environment. He is disaffected with both classes, which brings about his personal existential crisis.
The social mobility visible in Tim Lott’s novel Rumours of a Hurricane created a new class consciousness a redefinition of social status. The difficulty of trying to define a social status is visible in James Kelman’s novel A Disaffection (1989). In his novel How Late It Was, How Late (1994), the new working class man is introduced. While Charlie Buck in Rumours of a Hurricane was a true working class man, an honest, hard working man with conservative views towards change, Sammy Samuels in How Late It Was, How Late is a man with a criminal past, living on the dole. Trying to define a class marker for this group of people is extremely difficult and the term working class does seem a bit inappropriate for the working class individual actually does not work at all.
There are, however, similarities. Just like Charlie, Sammy seems to live his life in a series of daily rituals. In the lives of both protagonists, alcohol is part of these daily rituals – as in the lives of Patrick’s brother and his neighbours in A Disaffection. Their view towards middle class society, the bureaucracy of institutions like the council in Rumours of a Hurricane and the Department of Social Security in How Late It Was, How Late, are both very frustrating for the working class protagonists. They both feel thwarted by the police, Charlie in the demonstration at Wapping, and Sammy in interrogations. What seems most dominant in the novels are the reticent attitudes of both characters. They both accept situations as inevitable and do not try to change it. Even though they feel victimised by institutions – the clearest example the blindness of Sammy as a result of a battering by the police – they fecklessly accept the situation as it is.
How Late It Was, How Late
The protagonist in Kelman’s Booker Prize winning novel How Late It Was, How Late, Sammy Samuels, does not have the romanticised image of the working class Patrick Doyle has in A Disaffection. The disaffection and alienation present in A Disaffection, however, are recurring themes in How Late It Was, How Late. Just like Patrick Doyle, Sammy Samuels feels disaffected from his environment, and the distance between their environment is often self-inflicted. The reason for Sammy’s alienation from the world around him is his blindness, brought about by taking a beating by the police. Even though this physical state causes Sammy’s detachment from the world around him, he also inflicts it on himself, by being utterly individualistic and self-reliant, despite of help often being offered. Whereas in A Disaffection there is a very limited narrator, in How Late It Was, How Late the reader has absolutely no other source, other than Sammy Samuels senses, to rely on the world. The stream-of-consciousness visible in How Late It Was, How Late consists only of Sammy’s thoughts and his interpretation of the world around him. This utterly limited view of Sammy’s world is accompanied by demotic Glaswegian speech.
The blind Sammy Samuels is confronted with the bureaucracy of modern day society and it is clear that the institutions are not cooperative towards a working class person. The Kafkaesque dialogues of Sammy and representatives of several institutions like the police department and the Department of Social Security show how Sammy experiences life. Because of his blindness, his world is as disordered as portrayed in the novel, and his visual malfunction, but perhaps even more importantly his working class background, cause a distance between him and the world. The chaotic structure and language of the novel, together with the feeling that the reader cannot fully grasp what is going on, creates a distance between the reader and the novel. This distancing is therefore not only between Sammy and the world, but also between the reader and Sammy, which enforces the alienation of Sammy.
Just as in A Disaffection, the alienation from society of the protagonist in How Late It Was, How Late, is instantly visible. Sammy wakes up on the streets of Glasgow, with shoes on which are not his, and a black gap of a whole day, due to a two day drinking binge. When trying to get home, he asks some people on the street for some money. Sammy gets arrested for begging and, while in prison, provokes and attacks the police. The police assail Sammy and he wakes up blind and is released in this state. Coming home eventually, he has to cope with official procedures, such as visiting the doctor, trying to change his unemployment benefit, and also coping with the fact that his girlfriend Helen is missing. He is taken into custody once again for his alleged involvement with criminals and after interrogation he is released because the police lack evidence to hold him. In the mean time he tries to figure out why the police are after him, what he did on the day which he cannot remember, where his girlfriend Helen is, and how to deal with his blindness and the effect it will have on his life. Because the reader cannot rely on a third person narrative for an overview of the story, confusion in the reader is constant. This confusion corresponds with Sammy’s experience as a blind man. It also becomes clear to the reader that Sammy, coming from a working class environment and being unemployed, is treated with disdain by the authorities, the police, the Department of Social Security and even his doctor. Through the depiction of this treatment, the laboriousness and contradictions within the system in the welfare state are portrayed. Frustrated and thwarted by bureaucracy and middle class authorities and hunted by the police, Sammy, with help from his son, eventually flees to England.
Sammy believes that his blindness is just one of those things you have to cope with in life. In a very matter-of-fact style he summarises the situation as follows: “[y]e go for a pint and ye wind up a blind bastard” (47). He mentions that being blind “wasnay the fucking worst man he had been through”, he had experienced horrible things: “he had seen it, the worst man he had fucking seen it, cunts fucking dying, getting fucking kicked to death” (57). Hardships in life should be overcome, according to Sammy:
What can ye do but. Except start again so he started again. That was what he did he started again. It’s a game but so it is man life, fucking life I’m talking about, that’s all ye can do man start again, turn ower a new leaf, a fresh start, another yin, ye just plough on, ye plough on, ye just fucking plough on, that’s what ye do, that was what Sammy did. (37)
This remark is made only a few hours after he has become blind, but Sammy does seem to accept his blindness very quickly, and he seems to use the possibility to make a fresh start. Sammy feels as if his blindness marks a new period in his life: “This was a new stage in his life, a development. A new epoch!” (11) He believes that “the auld life was definitely over now man it was finished” (11). In spite of his positive attitude, it becomes clear that Sammy’s history and future are not that positive. Sammy had a history in crime: he was involved in gambling schemes and was dealing in stolen goods. He had been in prison for a total of eleven years. This information is given throughout the novel in fragments and vague descriptions, but has its effects on Sammy’s second arrest, later on in the novel. After being arrested for drunkenness and begging, Sammy’s taken into custody once again, but now the police seem to think he has been involved with criminals, planning something illegal. This contributes to the fragmentation and chaos of the entire novel, for it is not only the police who attempt to find out what Sammy did the day he lost his memory; Sammy himself wants to know as well.
While hoping that his blindness can change his life, he remarks that at least now “he wouldnay see cunts looking at him” (12). Just like Patrick Doyle in A Disaffection, Sammy feels like an outcast. By having gone to prison when he was only 19, he feels like he has missed out on life. When thinking about life in general he remarks that
[f]olk take a battering but, they do; they get born and they get brought up and they get fuckt. That’s the story; the cot to the fucking funeral pyre. (16)
This is the picture he has from his working class environment, his family and the criminals he was involved with. They cope with life the best way they can, and then they die. As Sammy puts it: “Life is sent to try ye” (46). He mentions that he was fairly good at school but liked football better. He states that “there was a wee chance he might have went all the way. If he had landed lucky” (47). He had not “landed lucky”, he ended up surrounded by crime and spent half of his adult life in jail. He does not think he has led a good life, but “he was not a fucking eejit aw the gether; just he acted that way, sometimes, when he felt like it” (16). By acting like an “eejit” sometimes, he gets himself into trouble, and eventually ends up blind.
Because of his blindness and the time spent being locked up Sammy cannot do much else than evaluate his life. He mentions his father frequently. It becomes clear that Sammy comes from a poor, working class family. When taking a bath, the water is too hot and Sammy thinks about the advice his father used to give him: when the water in the bathtub is too hot, you just wait until it cools off:
Naw he fucking wouldnay man he would just run in some cold! Fucking auld man again for Christ sake how come he was thinking about him all of a sudden? these moves to watch the dough, which included no putting cold water into hot because ye had paid for the heat. It used to drive Sammy’s maw crackers. Ye spent half an hour waiting for the fucking water to cool down. It didnay even save money! It was just how the auld man hated giving cunts anything, especially the fucking capitalists.Ye pay for hot water, he said, so ye’ve got hot water, so ye dont fucking turn it into cold. Don’t give them the satisfaction, fucking fat bastards. (152)
This attitude – though not as radical as in the example of waiting for water to cool down because you already gave the ‘capitalists’ your money – is seen in Sammy as well. He does not trust people in general and especially not those in the higher classes, including the police. Sammy is brought into another room when he is in prison and a policeman grabs his shoulder
The hand on his shoulder my fuck it would have been nice, it would have been nice, know what I’m saying, dirty bastards, Sammy would have fucking loved it; get yer fucking hand off my fucking shoulder ya bastard ye just don’t fucking touch me. (33)
The policeman is a middle class man. If, from Sammy’s point of view, the person touching him would have been an equal, Sammy would not mind. But it is a policeman, touching him, telling him what to do. Sammy even goes as far as proclaiming to a cell-mate that: “There’s nay such thing as a good fucking uniform” (195). Although it is also a clear sign of Sammy’s problem with authorities, this dislike is not just focussed on the police; it is middle class people in general. Sammy feels they want to control his life:
And it was always them, these bastards, always at their convenience, every single last bit of time, it was always them that chose it; you never had any fucking choices. Everything ye fucking did in life it was always them, fucking them, them them them, like greedy weans thrashing about looking for the tit. (32-3)
His girlfriend Helen had seen her share of misery as well. She had also been manipulated by middle class society. Sammy mentions that Helen often felt depressed because her children had been taken away from her by Child Services (134). This also contributes to Sammy’s distrust of middle class bureaucracy. When he has to report himself at the Department of Social Security, he is being questioned by a woman behind a desk with “one of these mental ding dong middle-class accents” (123). Sammy cannot help but thinking: “[H]e hated these people. Naw he didnay, he just found them fucking stupit” (125). Although he does withdraw the claim that he hates middle class people, he continues to hate the fact that everything that has to be done in life – like reporting yourself at the DSS – has to be handled by middle class people.
Even though the police are the cause of Sammy’s visual problems, he does not blame them, since, after all, he was the one waking up drunk on the streets (16). The only problem Sammy has now is how to change his application for his benefit. Sammy had had jobs in construction through the Department of Social Security and had been living on state-subsidised wages in between jobs. Being visually incompetent, he has to change his application in case he has to work in Community Work Programmes unsuitable for blind people. Although certain it will be close to impossible, he is hoping for a “dysfunctional payment”, because his visual state is caused by the police (67). The DSS create a dossier about his sight loss. The treatment of the working class by middle class society as represented by several authorities, like the DSS, is reflected in the unreasonable amount of paperwork and difficulties surrounding Sammy’s application. Sammy cannot say precisely when he has lost his eyesight, and does not want to report the police. He does admit to a nice young man that the police beat him up, but he does not intent to make a claim (98). When he enters a DSS office for his medical observation, the Independent Medical Officer (IMO) confronts him with the claim that the police “gave ye a doing” (103):
You’re asserting ye were subject to a physical beating by members of the police department?
What?
…
What d’ye say?
They gave ye a doing?
They gave me a doing?
That’s what’s entered here.
Well I dont like the way it sounds.
I’m only reading out what ye told the Preliminary Officer; he entered the phrase in quotation marks to indicate these were yer own very words. Was he mistaken in this do you feel?
Look I cannay remember what I said exactly; as far as know I just telt him I lost my sight last Monday or Tuesday, I woke up and it was away.
Are ye denying these were the words used?
I dont know, I cannay remember: I didnay use physical beating but I know that.
Sammy gripped the stick.
She carried on talking: What’s entered here is the phrase ‘they gave me a doing’, and it’s entered expressly as a quotation. But it’s a colloquialism and not everyone who deals with yer claim will understand what it means. I felt that it was fair to use physical beating by way of an exposition but if you would prefer something else… is there anything else ye can think of?
It was a fight.
Pardon?
Look, what does it say?
They gave ye a doing.
Can I change it?
No, I’m sorry, but ye can add to it for purposes of clarification. (102-3)
This passage indicates not only the difficulties of the rules and regulations surrounding the application, but also shows how Sammy is put to a situation beyond his control. This, as will be discussed later on, is a situation Sammy often finds himself in. Sammy had asked the Preliminary Officer, who never introduced himself as such, to delete the phrase, and is then told by the IMO that once the phrase is in the file it cannot be deleted. After this remark Sammy is explained the process of the application:
Now there are two bands of dysfunction; those with a cause that is available to verification, and those that remain under the heading pseudo-spontaneous. The former band may entitle the customer to Dysfunctional Benefit but those in the latter may not. But both bands entitle the customer to a reassessment of his or her physical criteria in respect of full-function job registration, given the dysfunction is established. (104)
This explanation given by the middle class woman from the DSS shows the large contrast in idiom between Sammy and the IMO. Instead of giving the explanation which applies to Sammy’s case, she decides to expound the entire regulation surrounding Dysfunctional Benefits. This of course causes Sammy to feel confused and frustrated and leads him to think they do not intend to help him.
His confidence in the authorities deteriorates when he visits his doctor. When Sammy asks him if he can give a future prospect with regard to his eyesight, Doctor Logan replies:
I’ve stated that it would be wise to proceed on the assumption that should the alleged dysfunction be found
Aye sorry for interrupting doctor but see when you see ‘alleged’?
Yes?
Are ye saying that you dont really think I’m blind?
Pardon?
Ye saying ye dont think I’m blind?
Of course not.
Well what are ye saying?
I told you a minute ago.
Could ye repeat it please?
In respect of the visual stimuli presented you appeared unable to respond.
So ye’re no saying I’m blind?
It isnt for me to say.
Aye but you’re a doctor.
Yes.
So ye can give an opinion?
Anyone can give an opinion.
Aye but to do with medical things.
Mister Samuels, I have people waiting to see me. (225)
This utterly frustrating response causes Sammy to become verbally aggressive and he walks out the room. By leaving, he has no official report of his blindness, and no chance of getting a Dysfunctional Benefit. In “’Middle-Class Wankers’ and Working-Class Texts: The Critics and James Kelman” by Mary McGlynn, this passages is given as the example of Sammy’s “frustration with bureaucracy” which has an “explicitly political edge to it” (68). McGlynn explains that here, Kelman has made “location and the class positions of its characters explicit, largely through reference to accents” (68), and that this difference in language portrays the assumptions by “Sammy’s interlocutors […] that his low social status means that he will be easy to manipulate verbally” (69). She points out that “Sammy’s blindness makes literal the concept of faceless bureaucracy” (68).
The treatment of Sammy by the police and other authorities creates a distance between him and the entire society. He creates a barrier between him and everyone around him. He does not even want his neighbour “Boab” to help him painting a broomstick white, so it can function as a walking stick (145). The police put Sammy on the street without any kind of assistance after he has gone blind. He has to walk back home, unable to see, not having any money for a bus or taxi, not even knowing what day it is. The police “went about their business like he wasnay there, a mere formality, a dod of shite” (32). When trying to get home he worries that people might think he is a drunk (35), and when he tries to make contact with somebody there is nobody there to help him (40). Or perhaps there are people there, but they ignore him. By not being able to see the reactions of the people around him, Sammy gets rather paranoid. He believes there are people following him and laughing at him. The paranoia is made clear by the repetition and incoherence of his thoughts. There also seems to be a change in pace. The sentences become longer but do not hold much information. The separate thoughts are linked together by repetition and the emphasis is put on how to forget what he has been through:
The idea of a drink man it never crossed his mind, it was just a smoke he could have done with a smoke; so alright, if he couldnay get one, he just carried on till he did, then it was alright, once he was smoking, he would have forgot all about it, that was what happened, all these total need ye had, once ye got them ye forgot about them, about how they were bothering ye, ye forgot about it, as soon as ye had it it went out yer mind. (52)
Even though Sammy starts to think about smoking a cigarette he starts to believe that when he has one he will forget about his problems. His only concern is to forget his needs, not just his craving for a cigarette, but all needs.
The contradiction is, that as his walking pace slows down, the pace of his thoughts accelerate. When someone finally helps him crossing a street Sammy mentions
He was trying to find his feet, find his feet, where he was walking but he couldnay do the pace, dictate it, he had to do what the guy done, with him, walk with him. (53)
Here it seems that he is not just thinking about the pace in which he walks, but that there always seems to be a pace dictated in life. When he still had his sight, he had no trouble following the pace, but being blind, the pace has become different. It is out of his control. This is exactly what Sammy feels is the worse thing that could happen to him. When the blindness seems a mere nuisance, the fact that there are “things out his control”, seems to be the worse thing that could happen to him. “There was things in his control but there were other things out, they were out his control, he had put them out his control” (7). This is mentioned before he went blind, but seems to be incorporated throughout the novel.
The lack of control is also evident in the police interrogations. Sammy cannot remember what happened on the day the police are asking about and this causes the police to believe that he is hiding something and protecting someone. They also find stolen jackets in Sammy’s closet, which he bought off someone who “sounded like a posh foreign businessman” (176). Frustrated by this information – since the police are not after Sammy because of some stolen shirts, but something bigger – the police are trying to make Sammy feel guilty
Yeh Sammy, see we were under the impression ye were a bit higher class than this. Speaking personally, I thought ye were a guy down on his luck, but ye were fighting back; three years on the straight and narrow, trying yer best, sorting yerself out, doing yer Work Provision, getting in tow with a nice woman; I dont know if ye’ve got an alcohol problem, our colleagues say ye have, but I dont see it, speaking personally – but if ye have maybe ye’re beating it, if so hats-off-to-ye. Now we find ye’re dealing in reset – petty stuff by the way, for an ex-hotshot like yerself – but that’s us, we’re in the fact-finding business and if that’s the fact we find then we’ve got to accept it. Even so, a bit of this and a bit of that, ye can understand it; I can understand it, making up the giro and all that I mean who’s gony worry about a few leather jackets. The thing is but, what ye’re involved in the now, it’s serious; and I’ll be honest with ye, I dont know how come ye’re hiding the cunt ye’re hiding. Naybody likes a grass, I appreciate that; but this guy’s something else. (178)
The remark “we were under the impression that ye were a bit higher class than this”, is supposed to make Sammy be ashamed of his underclass position as a criminal. By “higher class” they mean working class, which is strange, since they know he has been living on the dole and hence is not working. They try to make Sammy feel proud of the efforts he has made to become a respectful citizen, and try to make Sammy give the name of the person they are looking for. This, however, is in vain, because he claims he cannot remember. He has no control over this situation because of his memory loss; he seems to be avoiding the questions and this gets him into even more trouble. Eventually he flees to England with financial help from his son, which does give the impression that Sammy was indeed hiding something.
It is not just Sammy who has no control; the reader does not have control over the story or the character either. Even though a reader is never able to influence a story or character, it often feels this way because of the personal information and third person narrative often included in a story. With the incorporation of a third person narrative, the image of the character is verifiable, the actions are logical, and persons are recognizable. In How Late It Was, How Late, none of this is the case. The reader cannot really connect with Sammy, cannot understand the situation he is in, does not entirely know his background and the mystery of the disappearance of his girlfriend and the missing day does not help to get an overview of the story. The fact that the whole story is written in a stream-of-consciousness mode, and the reader has to rely on a blind person and his view of reality, creates a distance. This confusion is intensified by the demotic speech and lack of speech tags, which makes the story often difficult to understand. The story is chaotic and fragmented. Information about what the police want to know from Sammy is very limited and creates a state of confusion in Sammy but even more so in the reader. Mary McGlynn in “‘Middle Class Wankers’ and Working-Class Texts” states that it seems as if “Sammy knows more than he’s letting on, that he’s hiding from the middle-class wanker/reader the same stuff that he may be hiding from the government, that he’s making up stories and trusts the reader no more than anyone else” (80). “‘Middle class wanker’” or not, it does indeed seem to the reader that he is hiding something, and this affects the reader’s opinion about Sammy. Because no exterior opinion is given about Sammy, the reader is not sure whether to hate him, love him or merely pity him. This effect created in the novel is a remarkable achievement by James Kelman.
Even though both A Disaffection, and How Late It Was, How Late, are written through the eyes of men originating from working class environments, and are both from written from a limited viewpoint; the interior life of the characters, there is a prevailing difference. Patrick Doyle in A Disaffection romanticises his working class background and feels disaffected from his middle class surroundings as a teacher. Sammy Samuels in How Late It Was, How Late does not romanticise his background, he even tries to get away from it by fleeing to England. Even though Patrick is a middle class teacher at a comprehensive school while Sammy is an unemployed 38 year old man with a criminal past, the resemblance between them is visible in their thoughts.
In both novels a distance between the reader and the characters is created. It does not become clear why Patrick romanticises his past as he does, for he has experienced what it is like to be a working class person. The distance between the reader and Sammy is even greater. The reader cannot fully comprehend what the police are investigating and what Sammy did on the day he lost his memory. In both novels this distance is also created through the demotic Scottish speech, which makes the story often difficult to understand and the notion of disaffection is made clear. This makes the notion of distance and disaffection the most dominant themes in Kelman’s working class fiction. Both characters feel alienated from the world around them and in How Late It Was, How Late, this estrangement is even more enforced by the character’s blindness. They do not seem to hold any real ambition to make their lives more successful. Despite this difficulty and the confusion often triggered in the reader, both A Disaffection and How Late It Was, How Late are clear examples of post-industrial working class fiction.
Chapter Four
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh’s novels show the dismal life of young underclass individuals in a post-industrial society in the urban region of Edinburgh. Welsh, like Kelman, chooses Scotland as the setting for his working class novels, which implies a working class identity for Scotland as a whole. This is the result of the traditional working class occupations, which were often situated in Scotland. Together with using this collective working class identity of Scotland, Welsh uses Scottish demotic speech to portray those lives in the capital, and plays with conventional styles in his novels. In Trainspotting, capitals are often left out, and instead of using quotation marks, em dashes suggest reported speech. According to Michelle Goldberg, in her review of Welsh’s novel Filth (1998), Welsh’s “rejection of the literary world, his estrangement from the theory-drenched avant-garde and workshopped-to-death MFA fiction” is what makes him so intriguing (par 11). In the depiction of young drug addicts in Leith and Edinburgh in Trainspotting, a grim account of several disaffected and numb characters is given. The characters fill every void they feel in their lives with drugs. Friendship, family relations and romantic relationships are no longer necessary. The characters and settings alternate in a high speed and it is not surprising that the novel was made into a very successful film in 1997.
Rise of the Underclass
By comparing Irvine Welsh to earlier working class fiction, James Proctor in his “Critical Review” of Welsh on ContemporaryWriters.com, points out the “lack of male solidarity – key to earlier post-war working-class fiction” visible in Welsh’s novels (par 5). This is certainly visible in Trainspotting and corresponds to Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late. Kelman has given protagonist Patrick Doyle in A Disaffection a romanticised view of his working class background. Patrick believes that working class men “shared their grub and they shared their drink” (268), and shows the traditional view of working class male solidarity. Sammy Samuels in How Late It Was, How Late, however, does not seem influenced by the notion of male solidarity. He does not have friends, only acquaintances – probably all criminals – and they cannot count on solidarity from Sammy. The only male he can count on is his son, who, despite of their poor relationship, helps him flee to England.
In both novels by Kelman and the novel by Welsh, the term ‘working class’ seems inappropriate. Pat Doyle has a middle class occupation, but feels more connected with his working class family. They, however, cannot accept him as a working class individual. Both Kelman’s Sammy Samuels and all the characters in Welsh’s Trainspotting are unemployed. The characters in Kelman’s novels, however, appear to be more worthy of the marker ‘working class’, for they do seem to hold some sort of honesty. The honesty of Sammy Samuels in How Late It Was, How Late seems to last until at least half the novel. The reader is fooled into believing Sammy has made a stupid mistake, and is intended to pay for it. This is, however, disrupted by the realisation that Sammy seems to be holding something back, and that the reader was probably sympathizing with a criminal. In Trainspotting, however, the reader is instantly introduced to a world of dishonesty; the grim life of a junkie, the absolute bottom of the class system.
The “urban vagrant” (Kirk 105) characters in Trainspotting, have certainly other worries than work and family and solidarity between friends. Welsh’s novels are littered with people inhabiting the lowest classes. Set in Edinburgh and Leith, the abjection of drug users, criminals, and the spread of AIDS, the early deaths of many young users, unemployment and every other effect of hopeless lives are portrayed often accompanied by a critical view of contemporary society and black humour. The novel describes the lives and opinions of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, Begbie, Tommy, Diane and Kelly, and several other minor characters. Often the characters are not introduced in the chapters and the demotic Scottish speech shows which character is dealt with.
Ian Bell in his review “Last Exit to Leith” describes the lives of the characters in Trainspotting as “dull, violent and hopeless” (par 3). Why look for work if you can pocket five unemployment benefits by giving up five different addresses and different names. Why have a few friends when you can have more associates. Why live up to the expectations of middle class society when you have heroin to forget everything around you. Because of the use of Scottish vernacular, the comparison with Kelman is often made. Ian Bell begins his review with
[i]t is unfair to say so, but the shadow of James Kelman lies over Irvine Welsh’s first novel. It is as though there is now only one subject and one manner in Scottish fiction. Life is tough, but the language – what they still call the vernacular – is tougher still. Welsh adopts familiar Kelman devices. An em dash signals reported speech, the author affects to deny himself omniscience, street language, minutely rendered, is the only language. It is a stance born of the idea that most British fiction is bourgeois, and therefore, somehow, dishonest. (par 1)
Although the vernacular of Edinburgh is slightly different than Glaswegian, the use of demotic speech is certainly a device of Welsh to give the characters of Trainspotting an authentic voice. Through the language, as in Kelman’s novels, the difference between lower and middle class individuals is portrayed.
Dominic Head in Modern British Fiction, acknowledges Welsh in his pursuit to break with “lingering bourgeois tradition” (44). This is not only visible in the demotic speech, but also by portraying the “junky culture” (44). Welsh propagates the “social fragmentation and alienation” visible in the lower classes and furthermore questions the “morality of high culture” (44). Head points out the fact that Trainspotting is set in the period of the Edinburgh Festival, the embodiment of traditional ‘high art’ (44). In the novel, Mark Renton and Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson create their own “public art exhibitions” by placing pictures of their genitals behind glass at the bus stops (Welsh 200). Ian Haywood in Working Class Fiction, describes the setting of Trainspotting as “cultural squalor beneath the beauty and antiquity of the capital city” (158).
The link between the characters in especially the novels of Kelman and Welsh, is the representation of urban life. Phillip Tew in The Contemporary British Novel, focuses on the “commodified Thatcherite city” (111) in Welsh’s novels. Urban life in Welsh’s novels, as in Kelman’s
synthesizes and resists an experience of the anonymity and despair. They offer a narrative of ordinariness, and of the threat to it by the pathological and the criminal, an environment of potential failure and neglect. The world so depicted is […] firmly a world of multiple practical problems, of violence, addiction, loneliness, unemployment, poverty, fracturing or fractured relationships, and the inconsequentiality in terms of the hegemonic or macro-culture of the lower classes. (111)
Because all these problems are so interlinked with the “Thatcherite city”, the only solution to escape these problems is to escape this city. Liam McIlvanney, in his essay “The Politics of Narrative” in On Modern British Fiction (2002), mentions the tradition in Scottish literature of letting the hero be “poised on the cusp of a new life” (208). While Charlie Buck, the protagonist in Rumours of a Hurricane, escapes his life by committing suicide; Sammy Samuels in How Late It Was, How Late escapes to England and Mark Renton in Trainspotting escapes, with a bag filled with money, to Amsterdam. Whether they truly escape their problems is questionable , but it is certainly remarkable, since all protagonists shun change, and live their lives as a series of habits. In their disaffection and distance from society, they hope to find their fortune elsewhere.
Despite the abjection and the hopelessness of the lives of the characters in Trainspotting, Dominic Head believes the novel holds a “submerged moral code” which is suggested by the “human collective struggle to re-emerge, suppressed by deprivation and social dysfunction” (44). His view is that the novel “is a disguised lament for a simpler and more human world – the stereo-typical home and hearth values of the pre-war working classes, perhaps – an environment of nurture that is regrettable unavailable” (45). This, however, is hard to believe, since especially Mark Renton, tries to escape the values imposed by society, the “home and hearth values”. This becomes clear in Renton’s soliloquy which was chosen by Danny Boyle as the introduction of his 1996 film based on the novel. Here, Renton argues that even if you are “ay sound mind”, know all “the pros and cons” and know that you are bound to have a short life, you still want to continue your junkie habit, society will not allow it. The reason for this is, that it is “seen as a sign ay thir ain failure” (187).
The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv tae offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye’ve produced. Choose life. Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cannae handle that, it’s thair fuckin problem. (187-8)
Haywood believes that the loss of “ideals of liberty, equality or fraternity […] self-improvement, rationality and citizenship” is a “demonic reflection of a commodified, fetishized and irresponsible capitalist system” (158). The treatment of drug addicts within this system shows that it indeed does not work the way it should. Nationally organised rehabilitation by proscribing Methadone is portrayed as a cheap method to expand a drug cocktail. When drug dealer Johnny Swan tries to earn some money by pretending to have lost his leg in the Falklands War – when in fact his leg was amputated due to repetitive drug injections in his leg causing gangrene – he receives £46.78 after just a few hours. A woman gives Johnny all the money she has because her son died in the Falklands War. She says: “[A]h’ll hate that Thatcher till ma dyin day. Thir isnae a day goes by whin ah dinnae curse her” (320). In his gratitude to be able to exploit people in Haywood’s “commodified, fetishized and irresponsible capitalist system”, he exclaims: “Yes, god bless the Royal Jocks , and god bless the NHS” (320).
Trainspotting
In the 1990s, Edinburgh was considered to be the drug capital of Europe and Welsh gives a remarkable account of its inhabitants. Mark Renton is the most sympathetic of the group, which consists of Sick Boy, the womaniser proud of his Italian heritage; Begbie, anti-drugs but pro-violence; Spud, the not extremely bright but definitely the most sensitive person of the group; Second Prize, an ex-soccer player who would have been certain of a successful career at Manchester United, were it not for his drinking problem he developed at sixteen; and Tommy, the most promising youngster, who, unfortunately will die of AIDS. Their lives consist of trying to buy drugs, trying to get money to buy drugs, going to pubs and nightclubs, using drugs and drinking alcohol. In spite of the occasional effort made to escape this life – by trying to rehabilitate from drugs – their lives remain more or less the same throughout the novel. It seems that only persons who manage to escape these desolate lives are the ones who die. The only exception seems Mark Renton, who does seem successful and even manages to escape Edinburgh by moving to London. At the funeral of Tommy, however, the group comes together once more and they decide to traffic cocaine to London for which they will get £16,000. Renton has no intention of splitting it, however, and flees with the money to Amsterdam.
Even though there does not seem to be a clear protagonist in the novel, the most interesting and the character which is given most attention is Mark Renton. In his engagement with his associates/friends, family and the middle class institutions there is a dominant sense of distance. Renton, even though he is intelligent and could probably be very successful, does not have the need to change his life and is trapped in an apparent never-ending circle of self-destruction. The treatment of middle class institutions – like the Department of Employment Jobcentre – makes clear that not only does Renton keep society at a distance, this distancing is mutual, and society itself would rather keep people like Renton away. This critical reflection of society by Welsh, seems, more explicitly than Kelman, to suggest that society is responsible for creating outcasts within the lower classes.
The reader is introduced to Sick Boy and Renton at the beginning of the novel. It immediately becomes clear that the inhabitants of drug capital Edinburgh have other needs and thoughts in life than the average man. A pessimistic, grim, though often hilarious view of the world around them and their own lives show the extreme alienation these characters experience. In the beginning of the novel, Sick Boy’s drugs are starting to wear off, and he wants to go to their drug dealer; Mother Superior. Sick Boy’s agony is described in his restlessness and his vexation with Renton.
¬— Ah’ve goat tae fuckin move man! he shouts, standing up. he moves ower tae the windae and rests against it, breathing heavily, looking like a hunted animal. There’s nothing in his eyes but need. (4)
On the way over to Mother Superior, Renton and Sick Boy jump the queue at a taxi stand and the driver is not amused. Renton expresses his feelings about these people in society.
He looked a right cunt. Maist ay them do. The stamp-peying self-employed ur truly the lowest form ay vermin oan god’s earth. (5)
The remark comes across as hilariously ridiculous since it is clear that in retrospect they are considered to be the “lowest form of vermin on God’s earth” by this same taxi driver.
In the “commodified Thatcherite city” (Tew 111) a distance is kept from both society and the people in the personal environment. Renton makes clear that in a junkie’s life, no friends exist; only acquaintances. He remarks: “We are all acquaintances now [and this] seems tae go beyond our personal junk circumstances; a brilliant metaphor for our times” (11). In the individualistic world of the post-Thatcher era, one can only survive with acquaintances; you should not let people come too close. The distance Renton keeps from his “acquaintances” is similar to the distance he keeps from society, an attitude his other drug buddies adopted as well. Together with keeping society at a distance, society keeps them at a distance as well.
This mutual distancing, is brilliantly portrayed when Renton and Spud are summoned by the Department of Employment’s Jobcentre to go to a job interview. They have to go, since the DEJ will cease their unemployment benefit if they do not. Renton and Spud, however, have another problem; if they do well on the interview, they may end up with the job, which must be avoided at all cost. They discuss their strategy:
¬— Well, what ye huv tae dae is tae act enthusiastic, but still fuck up the interview. As long as ye come across as keen, they cannae say fuck all. If we jist be ourselves, n be honest, thill nivir gie either ay us the fucking joab. (63)
Another part of the strategy is to lie about the schools they went to. Even though they probably will not offer Renton and Spud a job, the fear exists that their lower class schools may in fact be the reason they will be offered the lower class job as a hotel porter.
¬— It’s a well-known fact thit ye nivir stand a fuckin chance ay gitting anything decent in this city if ye didnae go tae a posh school. Nae wey though, will they offer a George Heriots FP a porterin joab in a hotel. That’s only fir us plebs; so pit doon something like that. If they see Augies or Craigy oan your form, the cunts’ll offer ye the joab. (63)
Renton’s approach works miraculously. He remains himself and they do not offer him the job. When the interviewers ask Renton about his unemployment gaps, he answers:
¬—I’ve had a long-standing problem with heroin addiction. I’ve been trying to combat this, but it has curtailed my employment activities. I feel it’s important to be honest and mention this to you, as a potential future employer.
A stunning coup de maître. They shift nervously in their seats.
¬—Well, eh, thank you for being so frank with us Mr Renton… eh, we do have some other people to see… so thanks again, and we’ll be in touch.
Magic. The gross git pulls down a wall of coldness and distance between us. They cannae say ah didnae try… (65)
Spud’s means of sabotaging the interview make use of the same method; be yourself and they will never give you the job. Spud, on speed during the interview, is extremely hyperactive and immediately admits to having lied on the application form, to, as he puts it: “[G]it ma fit in the door” (66). The interviewer is utterly frustrated by the pursuit of the interview and cannot comprehend why anyone would lie on their application form to ‘get their foot in the door’, for in fact Spud was referred to them by the Department of Employment’s Jobcentre. The interviewer decides to let him go after the question: “What are your main weaknesses?” and his answer
¬—Ah suppose man, ah’m too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It’s likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y’know? Ah git good vibes aboot this interview the day though man, ken? (67)
Needless to say, Spud does not get the job either, and Renton and Spud have a drink to celebrate their success.
Renton’s passive attitude to life was visible before his heroin addiction. Although he went to Aberdeen University after his Advanced Level qualification, he had no desire to finish a university study. The two years he spent in Aberdeen were wasted by sitting in pubs and meeting prostitutes (182). He did not connect with the people there, because he “thought they were aw boring middle-class cunts” (182). In Edinburgh he defrauds the government by giving up five different addresses and through them receives four extra unemployment benefits. The difficulty maintaining this fraud makes him believe he earns it
Renton felt that he deserved this money, as the management skills employed to maintain such a state of affairs were fairly extensive, especially for someone struggling to control a heroin habit. (146)
The lack of desire to accomplish something in his life is not just based on his problems with middle class people. His entire view of society, of Scotland and of the world in general is based on pessimistic opinions. His working class friend Begbie, for instance, is part of a larger group of Scottish people whom Renton despises:
Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that’s different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fucking failures in a country ay failures. It’s nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We’re ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. (78)
Scotland, according to Renton is: “ay place ay dispossessed white trash in a trash country fill ay dispossessed white trash” (190). The working class neighbourhood Renton grew up in always treated his family with suspicion. They suspected his mother of using Renton’s little brother’s handicap so they could move to a nice Housing Association flat, and they suspected his father because he, after he was made redundant, tried to change the situation for the better, instead of “sitting in Strathie’s Bar moaning his fuckin box oaf aboot everything” (190). The suspicion of Renton’s working class neighbourhood to progress and change is in accordance with the traditional views of Charlie Buck in Lott’s Rumours of a Hurricane. Because of their views toward progress and change within his personal sphere, Renton does not only have a problem with middle class society, but also with the working class group of society. In fact, he is alienated from everyone in society.
Renton is forced to reflect on his life and show progress in beating his addiction when he and Spud are caught stealing books. Renton is forced to beat his heroine addiction with a state sponsored rehabilitation programme. Accompanying the programme, Renton has sessions with a psychiatrist as well. They talk about his family, his time at Aberdeen University and his drug use. The idea is that
[t]he identification and resolution ay such conflicts will remove the anger which fuels ma self-destructive behaviour, that behaviour manifesting itself in ma use ay hard drugs. (181)
The outcome of the sessions is that his junk behaviour is “attention-seeking” and Renton’s drug use is rebellion to society in general (185). Renton’s opinion of this outcome is neutral. He is willing to believe it, although thinks this outcome is a periphery to his drug addiction.
Renton keeps society at a distance with his “protect me from those who wish tae help us” (190) mentality. He believes that “there’s nae way under the sun that they can appreciate what ah feel, what ah need” (190), and it is certainly hard for the reader to understand why Renton, being an intelligent individual, desires to hold on to his junkie lifestyle. Just as in Kelman’s novels, the reader is kept at a distance. Renton’s own explanation for continuing his junkie lifestyle is that
[i]t kinday makes things seem mair real tae us. Life’s boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re aw gaunnae die, without really finding oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, without really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless. […] Ma problem is, whenever ah sense the possibility, or realise the actuality ay attaining something that ah thought ah wanted, be it girlfriend, flat, job, education, money and so on, it jist seems so dull n sterile, that ah cannae value it any mair. Junk’s different though. Ye cannae turn yir back oan it sae easy. It willnae let ye. Trying tae manage a junk problem is the ultimate challenge. (89-9)
This pessimistic world-view corresponds to Sammy in Kelman’s novel How Late It Was, How Late. Sammy’s remark “the cot to the fucking funeral pyre” (16), addresses the futileness of their working class lives.
Feeling disaffected by society Renton does not feel the need accomplish anything. Ironically, Charlie Buck, in Rumours of a Hurricane, did make the effort to make his life successful and failed miserably. Patrick Doyle in A Disaffection had also managed to become successful as a teacher, although he still feels alienated from his middle class colleagues and his working class family. In How Late It Was, How Late, the alienation of working class protagonist Sammy Samuels is made even more explicit by his blindness. While he already felt estranged from society as a working class individual, his blindness reinforces this feeling even more. Through the disaffection and distance portrayed in the novels, the unwillingness to accomplish something or change a situation, the reader often feels himself kept at a distance.
Conclusion
The four novels discussed in this study are written from 1989 until 2002 and give an overview of the renewed class consciousness that became so apparent in literature after 1980. All characters are very sensitive of the world around them, and feel victimized by middle class society. In trying to categorise working class literature after 1980, many problems arise. Firstly, the sociological problem on how to categorise the working class since traditional industries have diminished and the traditional working class does no longer seem to exist. Furthermore, the discussion of what can be considered literature, and the problem of aesthetics within literature has to be dealt with. Also, is there such a thing as a working class author, or a working class public? In all novels discussed in this study, the working class is portrayed vigorously, by giving them an authentic voice by Kelman and Welsh, and through attention to detail by Lott, and gives a unique view of the working class in post-Thatcherite Britain. All protagonists do feel themselves be part of a working class group, for they all originate from traditional working class families. It seems that in the fast changing world of the late 20th century, all protagonists feel the need to belong to a certain class. Characteristics of the traditional working class like honesty, hard work and the importance of comradeship and family, however, do not always become apparent in the protagonists of Lott, Kelman and Welsh.
An important characteristic of working class individuals in contemporary working class literature is the suspicion of change. The protagonists in the novels seem to accept events without resistance and mark them as inevitable. They do not feel the need to alter their lives or feel incapable. They all seem to be afraid of change although they all want to change something. They are all aware of the difference between middle and working class, and are offended or frustrated by it, but believe they do not have the knowledge or skill required to alter the situation, like Sammy Samuels is not able to explain himself in the DSS office. Despite their loathing of middle class society and the middle class institutions, the protagonists, especially in Trainspotting, often confirm the opinions middle class society has of them. In the case of Spud and Renton’s job interview this is extremely evident. Renton knows he will not be offered a job admitting he has a drug problem, and so he uses this to avoid working. Being seen as middle class is found offensive, and even a sign of treason, again confirming the notion of comradeship within a working class community, although traditional brotherhood often no longer exists as such.
In discussing working class literature in relation to contemporary literature, it becomes clear that class consciousness is a recurring theme within contemporary literature. Aesthetic notions have altered, as did the reading public and authors. The difference between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is shifting, and popular culture cannot be ignored as artistic expression. Authors like Kelman sympathise with the working class and rebel against the middle class hierarchy within the literary establishment. With the attention given to ‘low’ culture and readers and authors of lower classes being given the opportunity to express themselves, contemporary British literature often focuses on class consciousness and the class system. Although some still cannot accept this change in literature – such as Rabbi Julia Neuberger, prize-committee judge of the 1994 Booker Prize, who resigned in protest to the choice of Kelman’s novel How Late It Was, How Late as the winner – many critics, like Dominic Head and Phillip Tew, accept this change in aesthetics and focus on class and applaud it.
The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was of great importance to British life and its reflection in literature. Tim Lott in Rumours of a Hurricane offers the reader a full scope of the period of Margaret Thatcher, and the influence on a working class individual, like Charlie Buck. His resistance to change can be seen as a traditional view of the working class before Thatcher. In the twelve years of his life, however, his suspicion of change gradually fades, and he experiences social mobility. His life and story are not spectacular and his uneventful life is not made over-dramatic, but the small changes in periods and events in his life do lead to a dramatic ending, where Charlie decides to take his own life. Because attention is given to the results of political decisions of Thatcher – such as the expansion of home ownership resulting in Charlie being able to buy his council flat – the reader gets the impression that Charlie is not the only person who was influenced by them. In fact, Charlie is one of many working class individuals who were similarly influenced and had the same hopes and dreams. Consequently, the question rises if Charlie was the only individual bereft of all those hopes and dreams at the end of the 1980s and seeing no other option than to take his own life.
While Charlie Buck is an example of a traditional working class individual being confronted with radical changes and a change of consciousness, Kelman places his protagonists Patrick Doyle and Sammy Samuels in A Disaffection and How Late It Was, How Late in the period following Thatcher’s reign. Thatcher’s political decisions and change in working conditions have resulted in difficulties of deciding one’s class. The disaffection which results from this distorted class system after the 1980s becomes clear in A Disaffection. Patrick Doyle cannot connect with his environment and romanticises his working class background. He considers himself a traitor, having a middle class career.
It becomes clear that the original characteristics of working class categorisations no longer apply. It seems that the class system is divided into two categories, being the middle and higher class as one category and all individuals who are not considered to fall into this category working class. This includes the unemployed, like Sammy Samuels in Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late. Having spent eleven years in prison and being blind, it is understandable that Sammy feels alienated from his environment, although his working class background is the greatest cause of his lack of interaction. He is treated with disdain by middle class institutions such as the police and the Department of Social Security. Having experienced his father’s distrust in institutions and his girlfriend’s experience of having her children taken from her, it is understandable that Sammy has the same opinions. Together with Sammy’s distance from society, the reader feels distanced from Sammy as well, being not able to understand his situation.
After the 1980s, the unemployed are considered to belong to the working class. The lowest class possible, such as drug addicts, are incorporated in working class literature as well. The world of the underclass is portrayed in Welsh’s Trainspotting. These individuals do not hold any ambitions or dreams, are extremely disaffected and do not seem to care whether their situation improves or not. Their passive attitude and their feeling that life is futile, however, seems to fit in perfectly with working class literature, as Kelman’s protagonists have the same attitude. Just like How Late It Was, How Late, Trainspotting creates the same distance between character and society and reader and character.
The novels of Lott, Kelman and Welsh, written from 1989 until 2002 depict the 1980s renewed class consciousness and through the characters the importance of belonging to a class is clear. Even though the characters often feel victimised for being working class individuals, they do not wish to belong to the middle class. Despite the efforts of Thatcher and her successors Major and Blair to try to exterminate the traditional class system, it seems that many British citizens need the class system to supply them with a certain identity. This identity seems to consists of suspicion of change, rejection of change and a passive attitude altogether. This passiveness creates a distance between the working class and society, resulting in a strong feeling of disaffection. Despite of the notion of distance, both in the characters in the novel, but also in the reader, contemporary working class fiction is utterly intriguing and the difficulty in understanding working class identity makes it even more appealing. The mysteriousness surrounding working class identity appeals to authors and readers alike and can be seen from the popularity of working class fiction in contemporary literature.
Works Cited
Abrams, M.H & Greenblatt, Stephen. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume II, 7th ed. London: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2000. 2363. 2383-85.
Adams, Tim. “The Indignant Labour” in: The Observer. 3 February 3, 2002. 18 January 2006
<http://books.guardian.co.uk/whitbread2002/story/0,12605,842631,00.html> .
Amis, Martin. The Information. New York: Harmony Books, 1995.
Becket, Andy. “Thatcherism for Beginners” in The Guardian. 2 February 2002. 19 January 2006 <http://books.guardian.co.uk/whitbread2002/story/0,,842641,00.html>.
Bell, Ian. “Last Exit to Leith” in The Observer, 15 August 1993. 21 January 2006 <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,772788,00.html>.
Bergonzi, Bernard. The Situation of the Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
Cannadine, David. Class in Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate. Nineteenth Century European Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003.
Goldberg, Michelle. “Dirty Rotten Scotsman” in Metro, 1 October 1998. 5 February 2006
<http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/10.01.98/cover/lit-welsh-9839.html> .
Craig, Cairns. “Resisting Arrest: James Kelman” in: The Scottish Novel Since the Seventies: New Visions, Old Dreams. Ed. Gavin Wallace and Randall Stevenson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1993.
Haywood, Ian. Working Class Fiction, From Chartism to Trainspotting. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1997.
Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Holcombe, Garan. “Critical Perspective; Tim Lott” in: Contemporary Writers. 12 January 2006 <http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth241>.
Kelman, James. A Disaffection. London: Vintage, 1989.
---, How Late It Was, How Late. London: Secker and Warburg, 1994.
Lott, Tim. Rumours of a Hurricane. London: Penguin Books, 2002.
“Mandingo” in Wikipedia. 20 January 2006
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandingo_%28film%29>.
McEwan, Neil. The Survival of the Novel: British Fiction in the Later Twentieth Century. London: Macmillan, 1981.
McGlynn, Mary. “‘Middle-Class Wankers’ and Working-Class Texts: The Critics and James Kelman” in: Contemporary Literature 43:1 (2002): 50-84.
McIlvanney, Liam. “The Politics of Narrative” in On Modern British Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
“Milton Keynes” in Wikipedia.12 January 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes#Urban_design:_Layout_of_the_New_Ci ty>.
Morgan, Kenneth O, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Proctor, James. “Critical Review; Irvine Welsh” Contemporary Writers, 19 January 2006 <http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth120>.
Roberts, Ken. Class in Modern Britain. Hampshire & New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Self, Will. Junk Mail. London: Bloomsbury, 1995.
Tew, Phillip. The Contemporary British Novel. London: Continuum, 2004.
Source: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/20657/Dispossessed%20White%20Trash.doc?sequence=1
Web site to visit: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/
Author of the text: indicated on the source document of the above text
If you are the author of the text above and you not agree to share your knowledge for teaching, research, scholarship (for fair use as indicated in the United States copyrigh low) please send us an e-mail and we will remove your text quickly. Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use)
The information of medicine and health contained in the site are of a general nature and purpose which is purely informative and for this reason may not replace in any case, the council of a doctor or a qualified entity legally to the profession.
The texts are the property of their respective authors and we thank them for giving us the opportunity to share for free to students, teachers and users of the Web their texts will used only for illustrative educational and scientific purposes only.
All the information in our site are given for nonprofit educational purposes