Book Review

Book Review: A Disaffection

By James Kelman

Vintage, London, 1999

Review by Stephen Wilson

 

A Disaffection is a novel written by Scottish writer James Kelman, first published in 1989 by Secker and Warburg. Set in Glasgow, it is written in the Scottish dialect in a stream of consciousness style, centering on a 29-year-old schoolteacher named Patrick Doyle.

          Some books conjure up old half-forgotten memories of the past. When you read them, it is as if the past, like an unknown stranger is staring at you from the window of a tenement building you are passing by. You think you can spot the stranger looking at you but later learn that you can't quite identify the person from the window ledge. So you ask yourself - Did you really read this novel 30 years ago who is like this person staring down at you? For there is a huge difference between reading the Scottish writer Kelman's book 'The Disaffection', in 1990, and thirty years later in 2020 about a disillusioned school teacher. In 1990 I had done no teaching. By 2020 I have been doing almost 30 years teaching in many different schools.By this time i felt I had experienced some of the situations the character Patrick Doyle had gone through and perhaps even worse experiences than him. I even felt now that the novel, 'A Disaffection', understated the problems facing some teachers. In 1990 I was lucky enough to interview and then meet James Kelman in 1990. I joked with him that I had changed my mind about teaching in a Scottish school after reading his novel about the ordeal of his Scottish teacher. But I'm not sure teaching abroad represented a lucky escape.

 

The novel 'A Disaffection ' is about the tribulations of a 29-year-old Scottish school teacher Paddy Doyle who has become very disillusioned with his job of being an English school teacher in a comprehensive school. He experiences a dark night of the soul where he no longer agrees with his role as a teacher on the grounds that he is playing a negative role in helping to fortify an unjust system where the affluent and powerful oppress the working class. So he becomes angry, frustrated and disaffected by his job which he dreams of giving up. In a word, he hates his job. He begins a rebellion where he drinks and constantly breaks the school rules and conventions. But it appears the teacher is on the very brink of a nervous break down. When reflecting his role as a teacher he keeps on comparing himself to the German poet Holderlln who went mad, the Spanish painter Goya 's 'black period' and the nightmare experience of Joseph K of Kafka's 'The Trial'. In one passage Doyle states - 'The job was second rate and that was that. Who wanted to be a teacher? Nobody. And no fucking wonder.You could hardly blame Desmond when it comes down to it. A lot of teachers were like him, or tried to cultivate the appearance of being so. Not the women right enough. They didn't seem to regard the job as settling for second best in life. They regarded it as something different. They thought of it as a plum.' {Page 17}

In one dramatic scene in the school staff room Doyle shocks the other teachers with a rant against how he is sick of his job and intends to quit. He declares - 'Dross! Exactly! ! called Patrick. That is why it's so bloody ideal in the classroom. Because everything that goes on in the bloody place is a load of bloody dross in the first place! That is how I am bloody leaving!

WHAT!!!!

Everybody seemed astonished by this. They were all gawking at him. Even those teachers who rarely allowed themselves to get involved in staff room conversations, they too were gawking at him.

I'm just fed up with it, said Patrick..........{page 13}

And we further read -'Okay as far as I am concerned there is something very fishy about being a teacher. I mean we are all second best for a kick-off, and that's what I cannot go. Plus none of us wanted to be a teacher in the first bloody place, but here we are, bloody teaching, it's bloody terrible so it is. I'm really bloody browned off with it all, I'm no kidding ye.'{page 14}

Patrick Doyle does not like the material he has to teach which he views as useless and abstract knowledge which children will never use, the petty harassment and rules laid down by his headmaster old Milne, who he detests and a whole education system which he views as being implicated in reproducing an unjust system which sentences most pupils to taking up dead end jobs, poverty and living in very old and poorly insulated slums. The novel is also about the hell of loneliness and how Patrick attempts to unsuccessfully woo another colleague. He candidly expresses his views on teaching which is at odds with her views. He states, 'Patrick sniffed: I think about their parents Alison. They way they stand back and let their weans' heids get totally swollen with all that rightwing keech we've got to stuff into them so's we can sit back with the big wage packets. It's us that keep the things from falling apart. It's us. Who else! We're responsible for it, the present polity.

Alison stared at him.

It is; us.

Is that what you believe? Her eyes screwed up: genuine puzzlement .

Eh yes.

Well I think that is nonsense....' {page 149} 

Alison goes on to say that it is a ridiculous thing to say and if he really thinks this way then he should leave his job. But we can't discern why Alison thinks that Doyle's views are so ridiculous. The reader can only guess.

Patrick is summoned to the headmaster's office to be told that he is to be transferred to another school. But Patrick is astonished. He replies that he never applied for a transfer. The headmaster states with either dishonesty or frankness that he did. Patrick wonders if he has just forgotten. This is something Kafkaesque about this novel as Patrick feels he is being watched all the time and that if some teenagers on the streets find out that he is a teacher they will beat him up. You can almost feel the paranoia which pervades the whole novel. 

Patrick finds himself subjected to teacher bashing from his brother who claims he has a cushy job, is well paid and gets a lot of holidays. Patrick almost comes to blows with his brother. The character of Kafka's novel the Trial, Joseph K, is mentioned three times hinting that a similar fate awaits Patrick Doyle in the sense he will encounter a disaster such as either being fired, imprisoned or in this case 'transferred'. In other words, some kind of 'execution' awaits him!

 

This is a novel which many people might not be used to reading. There is no smooth narrative  and clear beginning, middle or ending. We don't even know the chronological order of the novel. In fact, the voice of the narrator or author is absent. Kelman argues that there is no need for the narrator to explain events at what is happening in a story. The author should simply deftly write about events and give space to the reader to come to his own conclusions. He also made the bold claim that almost 99% of English literature is unrealistic nonsense or to put it one way, "English literature is bunk'. 

In his views most novels, especially detective, are based on abnormal events that rarely happen in the lives of most people. Whereas the novels of literature are written by people who don't have to deal with the struggle to make a living because the characters don't have economic problems compared to the dull reality of lives most people live where nothing really happens. There is something very artificial about those novels. Kelman argues that novels should deal with those everyday issues such as alienation, poverty, the sheer boredom of work and aimlessness of our lives.

 

When I interviewed Kelman in his Glasgow flat he came across as someone very down to earth and approachable. He'd invite you to go for a drink and ask how you felt about this and that. Then there were his penetrative and clear eyes which seemed to notice everything around him. He was sharply attentive and nothing seemed to escape his attention. When I quoted one academic who told him his work was illiterate he sharply retorted that this academic "fails to understand how language operates in real situations'. 

James Kelman admires Noam Chomsky and told me how he had sent him his article about how he felt Chomsky's views had an affinity with a lot of Scottish thinkers. Like Chomsky, Kelman is an anarchist. His works have been compared with Samuel Beckett as well as Franz Kafka.

 

Some critics are always complaining about how his characters use the word 'fuck' so many times, but Kelman claims that is how many characters in Scotland speak. And he is so right. There are so many people in Glasgow who can't say a sentence without a swear word. If you don't believe me, just visit some pubs in Glasgow. See for yourself!

 

The great thing about Kelman's books is the immense empathy he has for human suffering as well as his ability to make us see situations through the eyes of his own characters. The reader feels he or she is experiencing the events of the book itself. My friend who was a bus conductor had read 'The Bus conductor Hines' and asked whether Kelman was ever a bus conductor. It turned out that he was. He had taken on the job to support his wife and three daughters.

 

I learnt that Kelman was unhappy about not winning the Booker prize for his work, 'A Disaffection.' He deserved to win it. But he won the Booker prize for his work 'How Late it was, How Late' in 1994. One of the jury resigned in disgust because she thought this work was just a rant by a drunkard against the state. Many people have objected to the swearing in his works. This perhaps indicates how petty a lot of literary criticism is. The main point is that the work 'The Disaffection' originally written, has an audacity to express itself in bolder ways and is not scared to express something which offends people. The work is also written in both a mix of the Scottish dialect and standardized Scottish English.

 

The views on the role of a school teacher might appear extreme. Is a teacher just another agent of the state or is his role more ambiguous? Does the view of Patrick Doyle mirror the views of Kelman? Kelman keeps silent about this. But it is difficult for readers not to feel sorry for Patrick Doyle doing a job he no longer believes in and hoping for love that is unrequited. Many teachers who read this work will have deeply felt the intense problems experienced by Patrick Doyle at some time in their jobs. However, his colleague Alison reassures him that his job could be far far worse. Compared to some schools in Chicago and even Scotland, the pupils Doyle is teaching are angels.  

 

Kelman's work 'The Disaffection' deserves to be read  for his vivid and deep portrait of his characters and the superb use of language alone. It is highly unconventional work which still pulls punches!