The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Acid Placid: New Scottish Writing by Harry RitchieJames DeRossitt
Harry Ritchie, ed. Acid Plaid: New Scottish Writing. Arcade, 1997. 256 pp. Paper: $13.95.
A diverse collection of work—stories, essays, poems, and a play—makes up this colorful, brash anthology. Acid Plaid is a sort of book-length yelp of joy at the new vitality of Scottish writing, a blossoming most famously represented, of course, by Irvine Welsh, as well as James Kelman and William Boyd. If you’re new to new Scottish writing, however, you might do well to read this alongside one of Welsh’s novels, or his stories in Acid House or perhaps one of Kelman’s many books. This volume has some very fine work in it, but there’s also a fair bit of weak writing. Welsh has a very funny, disgusting story here about a despicable bloke whose wife gets her legs cut off through his own misprision; all he wants to do is find a TV so he can watch a football match. Iain Crichton Smith has a nice little tale here about an aging man in a small village who decides to improve himself by enrolling in a Foundations program at Open University, to the envy and chagrin of his neighbors. Duncan McLean offers a play in brilliantly poor taste about a man trying to persuade a pal to sleep with his wife so that he can catch it on film and use it against her in a divorce proceeding. Other contributors include Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray, among others. Angus Calder closes the collection with a meditation on Scottish writing that sort of brings it all into cultural/historical perspective that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. So if you’d like to explore some fresh, edgy new Scottish writing, this is a fine introduction to several established writers as well as many who are new to these shores. [James DeRossitt]