Stuart Kelly: The Browser
A mildly flustered AL Kennedy turned up at the Aye Write! festival in Glasgow just as I was announcing to the audience that we didn't know where she was, and proceeded to give an exclusive preview of her new novel. In the briefest of glimpses, we got ocean liners, the ignominies of ageing and the role of the queue in the downfall of state socialism, where her character mused that being perpetually annoyed and being right wing might well be the same things. One audience member summed up neatly what the majority of critics are yet to appreciate: despite her reputation as a bleak and depressing author ("making misery tedious" was one old review she quotes with glee), she's actually one of the finest comic writers Scotland has ever produced.
Austen power lives on
Life, as you all know, is short, but not so fleeting that Martin Amis can't find time to contribute to a new anthology on why, after 200 years, we're still obsessed with Jane Austen. His particular angle is to imagine a sex scene between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. No doubt he'll soon grace us with his opinions about which of the Bront sisters was hottest and on which page to find the really mucky bit in Finnegans Wake. It strikes me that one of the reasons Austen is still so influential and admired is her sly, wry capacity to leave some things unsaid.
This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, March 14, 2010