Stuart Kelly: Nothing donnish about Aberdeen knees-up

Published on Tuesday 25 May 2010 18:09

Aberdeen's WORD festival has reached double figures – in age, not audience numbers – and shows no sign of becoming formulaic. Over a sparkling weekend, it balanced old favourites, such as a reading by William McIlvanney where he performed his Frankenstein's Monster Meets The Drunk Glaswegian poem, and emerging talents, such as Scarlett Thomas, right, who jaunted through topics as diverse as the poverty of reviewers and the quantum possibilities of the Omega Point.

There were also complete wild cards: I'd never heard of Stefan Chwin, the author of the death in Danzig,

but bought his book immediatly after the reading - it's a stunning evocation of the linguistic and moral vagaries of post-war Poland.

In the easy chair

WORD also succeeds in having literary events that aren't just the churchy reading, exposition and audience supplications. Scottish Opera's 5:15, an Elizabeth Blackadder exhibition and Karen Dunbar doing Denise Mina's Rabeleisian one-woman show and retort to Hugh MacDiarmid, A Drunk Woman Looks At The Thistle, were all diverting additions to the programme, as was Canongate's Irregular Club Night. If you have any doubts about the power of Robin Robertson's poetry, you should have seen him silence a sweaty, chatty, boozy bar with his honed and fearful verse. I had the pleasure of "chairing" Pauline McLynn, star of Father Ted and currently in Shameless. We somehow got from her new novel, about Alzheimer's, to why even porn stars hate high-definition television.

Vital Spark snubbed

It seems that Muriel Spark is condemned to be overlooked in death as in life, with the news that the 1970 Lost Booker Prize – an ingenious scheme cooked up by literary agent Peter Straus – has gone instead to JG Farrell (who won the prize for real in 1973 with The Siege of Krishnapur). To add insult to injury, Spark's novel on the shortlist, The Driver's Seat, is a masterpiece, and a hidden influence on Martin Amis's London Fields.

This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on May 25, 2010