Product Description
"The Good Times" was James Kelman's first work after winning the Booker Prize for his novel. How late it was, how late. The twenty first-person narratives portray ordinary people - men and boys facing uncomfortable truths, encountering betrayal or struggling to understand women and work. Tender and lyrical, "The Good Times" is a dazzling collection from one of the world's masters of the short-story form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Well-Written Yet Uncompelling
The twenty stories here offer little variation from those in Busted Scotch. Written in the first-person, these are again mostly from a lower-class male perspective. They often feel fragmentary in nature, rarelyoffering up a traditional "story" per se, they tend to be moreabout how people communicate and misunderstand each other. Kelman's a goodwriter, but I don't find his stories particularly interesting. ... Read more

Product Description
Patrick Doyle is a 29 year old teacher in an ordinary school. Disaffected, frustrated and increasingly bitter at the system he is employed to maintain, Patrick begins his rebellion, fuelled by drink and his passionate, unrequited love for a fellow teacher. Originally published in 1989 by Secker and Warburg. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

What A Lovely Muddle
Ah dear, another one of those Kelman books which, if it doesn't lull you into the Scottish, Glaswegian dialect of the endless verbal circumlocutions of our very disaffected schoolteacher protagonist, of sorts - one Patrick Doyle - isn't going to catch your fancy.A pity, for this is really quite a lovely book.No, it doesn't pack the wallop of Kelman's later, Booker-winning masterpiece "How Late it Was, How Late," but this is as it should be.This book - despite the ambience of grim Glasgow in the 1980s - brims over with humour, sweetness and light.

Doyle plods around Glasgow and its environs, mooning over a fellow schoolteacher he's never going to get (She's married.).He obsesses about all manner of recondite lore including Pythagoras and the German Romantic poet Holderlin, dragging the reader along with him down these esoteric byways with no end in sight.
One is never quite sure as to which way the narrative is going to turn until it veers into the kitchenette in brother Gavin's and sister-in-law Nicola's flat.But I'll leave that scene for the reader to discover.
Some might say that this is a meandering, nearly solipsistic, navel-gazing exercise in gazing into the past.To which Pat Doyle would make reply:

"But this is because he was a single chap and single chaps are single persons ergo they dwell on the past and there is nothing wrong in dwelling on the past.How can you dwell on the future?There is nothing to dwell on! It doesni exist.It is a blank.Everything has yet to take place.This is what the future is, the place where things have yet to occur.So how can you dwell on that?You're cheating. Okay but just think of it as an empty room. No. Well then.... "

And he goes on and on.And if the reader didn't at least notice a wee smile crossing his/her face whilst reading this excerpt of Pat's musings, then this book is nae for the likes of him/her!

Ach.I didni like it, no.
I began 'A Disaffection' enthusiastically.Aside from the brilliant Glaswegian vernacular and some tasty morsels of cynicism, however, the book felt long, slowly paced, and overdrawn.Doyle's character and predicament -- his disillusionment, like of drink, near-obsession with co-worker Alison, and fascination with cardboard pipes, of all things -- are largely described and summed up within the first two pages.Literally.After these, everything is redundant.Doyle is dissatisfied, and true to the title, disaffected; you'll likely feel the same after reading this novel.

Reads like you're living in somebody's head
I guess there's no easy way into a James Kelman novel. He is not the most accessible of writers to non-native readers because he uses the language of the vernacular to capture the essence of daily thought and speech patterns of the Scottish working class. Authentic it may well be, this style of writing is nevertheless limiting in its readership appeal. Thus, it was with some reservation that I began on "A Disaffection", my first Kelman novel. After stumbling around a bit with familiar looking words spelled funny and expletives that scream at you from nearly every line, I got into a rhythmn and found myself on the way to a strange journey that's not without its appeal. Kelman's stream of consciousness style means that we stay very much within the confines of our hero Patrick Doyle's mind. Nothing much happens but that's the point. Pat is a university graduate from a working class background, who hates and despises his job as a teacher, believes he is polluting the minds of the children he teaches with useless capitalist thoughts, secretly falls for Alison, a fellow teacher who's married, but is too scared to declare his intentions, and ends up being transferred to another school but cannot remember having asked for the transfer. It's bad enough that he's paralysed by inaction, his elder brother, Gavin, an unemployed builder, harbours a secret resentment against Pat for being the educated one in the family, not realising his lonely plight. The novel begins with two sets of pipes that Pat finds at the back of the Arts Club, intending to use as musical instruments. He never gets round to it.That's the story of his life. The pipes are a symbol of his private ambitions. They are painted and shiny but he never gets round to playing them at the nightclub after work. "A Disaffection" is remorseless in its pessimism and criticism of the state ofScottish society but it's also infused with so much good humour and honesty you leave the embattled scene not necessarily unscarred but alive. My first taste of Kelman may have been fraught with some initial difficulties but you get the hang of it and the final verdict is a thumbs up. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of James Kelman, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 4201 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 2008. The length of the article is 322 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: James Kelman. Kieron Smith.(Brief article)(Book review)
Author: Stephen Bernstein
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2008
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: 28Issue: 3Page: 181(1)

Article Type: Book review, Brief article

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 4075 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: James Kelman (4).
Author: Stephen Bernstein
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: 20Issue: 3Page: 42

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Product Description

James Kelman is the most influential and controversial Scottish writer today. Yet despite international fame and recognition, his radical art is often subject to caricature and misunderstanding. The first major collection of essays devoted to Kelman's writing, this anthology clarifies and explores the full spectrum of his extraordinary work. Original essays consider novels, short stories, essays, polemics, and plays, and the vigorous debates they provoke. Key topics include Kelman's distinctive approach to language and narrative technique, his influence on recent Scottish fiction, his affiliations in socialist, nationalist, anticolonial, and gender politics, his interplay between political, linguistic, and artistic agendas, and his place within realist, modernist, and existential literary traditions. Contributors also address wider debates in which Kelman's work is prominent, including the literary status of vernacular writing, the politics of canonizing working-class culture, and the validity of postcolonial approaches to Scottish literature.

Customer Reviews (1)

Great critical overviews
Each writer is covered by a long critical article which gives an overview of all of their major works and provides insight into the themes and concerns of each writer.It is definitely a great place to go for background on the writers and help with interpreting their works. ... Read more

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Here Lies is an anthology of short stories about lying. The premise is that every story either features the telling of a lie or the presence of a liar. ... Read more

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Offers some of the author's best work from three separate collections. "The Bevel" and "The Hitchhiker" tell of Chas, Sammy and "the boy" working in the Highlands in the summer, while "Pictures" and "Lassies Are Trained That Way" have their own take on the relationships between men and women. ... Read more