Busted Scotch: Selected Stories [Paperback]

James Kelman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

Busted Scotch is a selection by James Kelman of 35 short stories--most of them published in this country for the first time--from over two decades of his work. They reveal the author as a tough-minded master of the short form, which he infuses with his unique brand of bleak comedy and his absolute belief in the primacy of his character's language and culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The stories in James Kelman's collection, Busted Scotch are as bleak as a Scottish winter. Kelman's characters are working class people--mostly men, mostly inarticulate--whose dead-end existences are relentlessly dark. Fortunately, the reader, if not the characters, is rescued from this lunarscape vision by bracing doses of Kelman's black humor and impressive prose. Sometimes, as in "Nice to be Nice," the prose is rendered in a thick Scots dialect that might confound readers outside of the U.K. Most stories, however, are more accessible linguistically, though liberally laced with obscenities. Kelman does not concentrate his energies on character development or even on action; nothing much happens in many of these stories, yet everything changes. In "Pictures," a man notices a woman in a movie theater, buys her coffee, begins to wonder if she's a prostitute. These tiny, uneventful occurrences lead to the revelation of an unresolved trauma in the man's own life. In "A Nightboilerman's Notes," the narrator achieves a strange kind of transcendence simply contemplating the darkness in the bowels of a factory.

Kelman, who won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize in 1994 for his novel How Late It Was, How Late, has selected the 35 stories in Busted Scotch from more than 20 years' work. Many of these stories make their American debut in this collection. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The Scotsmen in these stories and fragments (some no more than a paragraph or two) by Booker Prize winner Kelman live in squats, caravans, and tenements, on the dole and on the edge. They would be working-class if they worked, but they're layabouts and idlers who prefer to sponge off their mates and neighbors. The narrator of "Not While the Giro" considers himself a late starter, but, by most standards, he's a nonstarter. He worries that he's losing his mind, but his very self-awareness convinces himself otherwise as he muses, "Often I sit by my window in order to sort myself out--a group therapy within." In "A Situation," a boarding house tenant is asked down to the room of an elderly invalid who confesses to an old crime of industrial sabotage while the younger man is haunted by his own secret, an infidelity with his girlfriend's sister. The reader may not wish to know these characters well but will be grateful for the opportunity of this brief meeting. Recommended for literary collections.?Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317773
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317770
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,186,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, bleak, brilliant stories about post-industrial angst., August 21, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Busted Scotch: Selected Stories (Hardcover)

Kelman's collection of short stories is a bleak affair, a series of grim portraits of disaffected Scots who bumble through their Kafkaesque lives. Stories begin in the middle of a narrative, and end before any concrete resolution. Enigmatic dwarves invade a migrant workers' camp and pub, with bizarre effects. Absurdity coexists with anxiety, dispair with some aching longing for better times, when the true reason things are so bad remains firmly out of grasp. Out of this darkness emerge Kelman's characters, pitiful souls who aimlessly seek some meaning and reason. Of course, it eludes them completely. Yet, like a 100 to 1 shot against picking a winning horse, Kelman's characters continue to struggle against poverty, injustice, and hard times. In spite of this, all is not completely grim, for rays of humor pierce through the darkness, and mirth creeps into the angst, ever so subtly. In the careful portrayal of their struggles, Kelman has crafted brilliant fiction. Read one story and wince, catch your breath, gain some enlightenment, then plunge on to the next one. Each and every tale is well worth your time.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On Reflection: Good, January 12, 2000

By 

John Briginshaw (Huntington Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Busted Scotch: Selected Stories (Hardcover)

A wide range of stories of life in the slow lane of post industrial Scotland. I picked up this book in a store, tried to read it and pretty much immediately put it down for six months. I was put off by the written Scots dialect (in some (not all) of the stories), the seeming inconsequentality of some of the storylines, and the surreal nature of some others.

I'm glad I picked it up again. I tried reading "Nice to be Nice" (written in Scots) oot loud to mysel' an' it made a lot more sense, and became an affecting story of a man working (in a small way) against bureaucracy. Reading other stories it became clear that they ARE about everyday life, but they add a poetic quality to it, and really get you inside the head of the characters.

I would recommend this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Poverty, cigarettes, booze and welfare, December 15, 2000

By 

D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Busted Scotch: Selected Stories (Paperback)

Flashes of genius but not always readable. Short stories that sometimes lapse into incoherent surrealistic stream of consciousness. The understandability is often further reduced by phonetic spelling of dialect. The phonetic spelling assumes that the reader normally speaks Southern British English (for example "game" spelled "gemm.") At times it is absolutely brilliant with dark humor describing the way the shiftless (often homeless and destitute) make ends meet by welfare and panhandling. Reminded me often of James Joyce, which is not altogether a compliment because I've never managed to finish Ulysses.