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But wait a minute, I'm getting sidetracked, that's not what I was going to talk about. What I was going to talk about is a new collection of interviews with Scottish crime writers conducted by Len Wanner and called Dead Sharp. Wanner does an excellent job coming up with questions that draw out this surprisingly diverse collection of novelists. His analyses of their fiction, motivations, characters and so on are spot on. As you would expect from Scots there's a lot of humour in the collection and much of that humour is self depreciating. All in all if you're interested in Celtic Noir I think you'll love this book. I hope there's an edition of Irish crime writing interviews brewing in Wanner's mind too - indeed if he has his wits about him he might be able to get a whole series going.
10 comments:
And that's a good picture of Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Allan Guthrie and Paul Johnston at Hay-on-Wye.
David
Absolutely. Nice to see them letting their hair down and getting a bit of sun on those lard coloured torsos.
Please, God, let them be written not voice recordings. How come the Scots can write English, but not speak it?
Lew
It really depends where in Scotland you're talking about. An Edinburgh accent is completely different from a Glasgow one. And I have to say I have no trouble understanding any of the Scottish accents, even a Govan one which seems to baffle so many people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHKAvm0zsUs&feature=related
Well, it's not a novel, but there's a book coming out this fall from Susan Orlean--she of Orchid Thief fame--called Rin Tin Tin: the Life and the Legend. We had a bunch of galleys floating around but I didn't grab one. Now I'm sort of regretting that. After all it's got war, it's got dogs, it's got name recognition. It's basically Sea Biscuit in German Shepherd form.
As for Scottish dialect, I may have mentioned this here before, but I remember sitting in at some kind of folk festival in Edinburgh where they played the tapes of some Scottish humor from the hinterland. The friend I was traveling with and I were so clueless that we only knew where the punchlines were by when the rest of the audience burst out laughung. Of course, we found this hilarious, so we still fit right in, though with a slight lag.
That said, accents don't take all that long to become familiar, even if they seem pretty opaque at first.
Seana
I think thats true the longer you are there the more accustomed to accent and dialect you become.
I've always liked the Scottish accent, from the lilting tones of Kelly McDonald to the terrifying menace of The Thick Of It's Malcolm Tucker.
I recognize that Malcolm Tucker actor. He pretty much always turns out to be the villain, or at least negligent in British mysteries.
I was reading a Christopher Brookmyre story in the latest Mammoth Best British crime anthology and I was impressed at how well he translated a deep Scottish accent. On the one hand, it seemed pretty thick, but on the other, you could easily understand every word of it.
This isn't really related to anything but my uncle was a big wheel at Toyota. Sometimes he and my cousin and my old man and me would hit the links. When the wheels started to fall off he would say "No one should play this game but a Scot" and swear in Japanese.
I can somehow see a short film in that set up, Matt.
Dang....I'm gonna check this out.
I am a fan of Celtic/Gaelic crime, especially the noir side of things a la your good self and Ken Bruen, to name only a couple.
Well spotted. I shall report back on my blog hehe
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