God's Teeth and Other Phenomena

James Kelman

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781629639543
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Jack Proctor, a celebrated older writer and curmudgeon, goes off to residency where he is to be an honored part of teaching and giving public readings, he soon finds the atmosphere of the literary world has changed since his last foray into the public sphere. Unknown to most, unable to work on his own writing, surrounded by a host of odd characters, would-be writers, antagonists, handlers, and members of the elite House of Art and Aesthetics, Proctor finds himself driven to distraction (literally in a very very tiny car). This is a story of a man attempting not to go mad when forced to stop his own writing in order to coach others to write. Proctor's tour of rural places, pubs, theaters, fancy parties, where he is to be headlining as a "Banker-Prize-Winning-Author" reads like a literary version of Spinal Tap. Uproariously funny, brilliantly philosophical, gorgeously written this is James Kelman at his best.

1Eighteen Months Later

I was at the computer trying to finish a sentence. Hannah was here and my attention would go and I was trying not to let it, to finish the damn—the sentence, the thought, before my memory snapped altogether. What the hell was it? It was just there and I would get it I would get it except Hannah standing there studying the diary chart above my right shoulder, that stupit diary chart tacked up on the wall by my desk, why was she studying that? What was she wanting me to do! Stop work to hammer in another drawing pin jesus christ. Hang on a second eh I’m just eh … hang on a second.

But snap and gone, gone. She had not spoken a word. She never had to. Her presence just. In mid-sentence when she opened the door, and pausing so not to interrupt me, finishing the sentence, a sentence being a sentence and is one sentence from inside. It is from inside and I was finishing it. Inside. I was inside. The thing about “inside” as opposed to outside concerns perception and reality, if we are inside then our outpourings, the utterings, cries and squeals that we pour out, within the writing, becoming “outside,” about eh

one toty wee sentence.

She had placed her hand on my shoulder and was peering at the thing, this diary chart and what was it, the perfume, the perfume. In former days I worked in typescript and her bending forwards, craning to read, her bosom against my cheek, one could just … one nestled, my hand round her waist, resting on her hip. Nowadays a 21.5-inch screen, creating aloofness, aloofity; one’s lady with her hand on one’s shoulder, a distancing: What is that? she said and was pointing.

The diary chart. Every xmas she got me one in the expectation I examine it hourly. Every year for the whole of January she waited to see if I would stick it up myself. I never did. I had not forgotten. I just didnt get to do it, the whole time it took, drawing pins and all that stuff, even unrolling the thing. It was just time, the time it took to get it up on the bloody wall, and then once it was there, I never looked at the damn thing. Bloody drawing pins aye broke anyway, the spike part flattened or twisted or just fell out the fucking wall and ye wound up stepping on it. My heels were permanently punctured by these fuckers. So now it was another one, another drawing pin, another bloody

Fuck it.

When she knew I was beyond the heart attack stage she pointed again to a space on the diary chart, one of the paltry few I had penned an entry. What is that? she said, her finger covering the space: a nice finger, a nice hand, a strong hand; slender but strong; unlike mine, thick and grasping, a grasping hand for a grasping bastard for that was me, a grasper.

I drew hands as a boy. I drew hers when we met. I liked drawing her, the curve of her bosom and shaded nipples, so much in the shading, I could never get the shading, the valley as they say, valley; one strokes, one’s fingers, one’s chin nestles; nestling, burrowing. God’s teeth! I was too old for sex anyway. Damn sex man one believes one is past it, has passed it. We married young. Bunny rabbits! She didnt like me using such language. Nay wonder. Sex sex and sex but that was us and why not, that was the age we were and this was the generation, our generation, pre-online porn. I was working on a story based on that. And writing about sex one aye craves it, who was that writer … Henry Miller or somebody, writing with a hardon—I hadnt read him for forty years—the constant sensitivity and I try to capture it, something there, touch me; touch me and I am yours, a goner: me so; he, she or it am; I am, yours for ever, and ever amen: I touched her wrist and smiled but she frowned, had frowned. She was speaking and I was not hearing. I was not listening. The sentence was gone, was long gone; the thought of, the thought thereof; all of it. What does it matter,

what

does

it

Why bother anyway. Who cares apart from me, the right word or the wrong word, whether or not I finish such a question—is it a question, an exclamation, a proposition: who gives a fuck. Agents and publishers, accountants; lawyers, all these fuckers at yer shoulder, sweetsmelling breath disguising the rotten gums.

Ach it wasnt even true. I couldnt blame a soul except myself. I was skint and that was that. People dont buy yer books and ye cannay fucking force them man imagine it! waiting outside the bookshop with yer Winchester rifle: buy the bastard’s book or I’ll blow yer fuckin heid aff! One would be arrested for foul language.

Talking about accountants, mine was a pal. He only cared as a pal: the work petered out a while ago. When was he last paid? When was I last paid?

And Hannah was still pointing. Why does one have a diary chart if one never peruses the thing? That was her question, unstated.

The diary chart about fourteen inches from the upper right side of my cranium. All I needed to do was squint sideways to see it. And in the seeing I saw, in a lush sumptuous hand, The House of Art and Aesthetics. What in the name of god was that?

You’ve to be there in ten days, she said.

Pardon?

How could ye forget something like this?

I didnt forget I just eh … Other entries were there too; actions planned, actions beholden, arrows indicating all manner of potential manoueverings in regard to bodies and other substances; dentists and tooth scrapers, the birth dates of assorted relatives; jeesoh man where do they all come frae! Fucking grandkids!

Hannah sighed. That particular sigh. Hannah had this amazing attribute: the sigh. Sigh was a set. Double click on the sigh and up came a dozen entries. This one now

Oh god … and the word required a capital it was of such significance. Oh God!!!!! I didnt forget, I said: The House of Art and Aesthetics?

But what the fuck was it? Some kind of residence, residential. I was to be there in ten days, and it took an airoplane to get there! God’s teeth!

Phone Rob.

I’m not phoning Rob.

He’s your agent.

Yeah well …

Hannah sighed. It was her fault anyway. But for her I wouldnt have considered the damn thing, that or anything else. I dont need any damn thing else. Scraps from dustbins. Who needs money. Except one has a partner, one has offspring; offspring of the offspring; appendages to one’s existence. Without Hannah there would have been none of that, without Hannah …

I would be dead.

Quality of Life: I had been trying to improve such. Put an end to this compulsive way of living. Electronic scribbling man it does yer fucking nut in. Henceforth I would accompany Hannah to the Cine Complex twice per week. Maybe I could bring the laptop.

The House of Art and Aesthetics? Was it a hotel, a bunkhouse, a barracks? Whatever man it was a job and jobs paid dough. Okay. Here I was having signed my name for some residential thing without knowing what it was. Fair enough. Not for Hannah but it was not enough for her. She was a facts and and reality kind of individual. Had she asked me directly the nature of this House I could not have told her. She did not ask, but remained hovering. “Hovering” is a silent beseech. “Hovering” is an action designed to interrupt one’s thought, reminding one of the existence of the world, that one occupies a place in it. Never mind anyway. Because

may be expressed also as sequence. And that sequence, whatever it was, could not come out come out wherever you are, it had gone forever. Hannah entered the room and dynamite, splattered brains and propositions, destroyed, destroyed propositions, lost and gone forever. Statements in kind and of kind. An infinity of the fuckers. My memory had snapped. That sequence had gone. Who cares. Precision is a life-sentence. Although if one enters the racket, so-to-speak numbers-game, if one so chooses—some would say chosen, if one is so chosen, among the elect, thus one’s entry into the great hereafter,

Concentrate. Slivers of thought. Form & Substance: Metaphysical Division.

A familiarity therein. But my mind was incapable, incapable. I might have made of it a sketch, or a song. Either may work. I had acquired the habit from a fellow who applied pen to paper in the construction of Truth-Tables: for sketching he used only pencil. Lead is life! (who wrote that?) It is true, sketching is a means and means is life: breathing laughing singing dancing making love; sex, sex and sex, the square and the root. People are pencils and must always be pencils, if we dont have pencils there is no red blood. Blue is blue, ink, absence. Pencils do not mark the absence.

Now dead. A good fellow. I glanced at Hannah and breathed. A formulated breath, constructed such that oxygen is obtainable. This was my logic. Devised, developed and devoured. Who was I talking about? The guy who constructed the Truth-Tables, or set us on the path, that one may breathe. One wields the pencil, the prosaic prosist and the search for correct symbols, signs and signifiers in the fulfilment of these concepts so created. Ergo a pedant. A painstaking fucker.

Hannah. She was still here. One’s wife, one’s partner, one’s rock: in short, one’s salvation, without whom perish the thought lest perish the man. I should have said all that but I didnt; I couldnt. We didnt communicate in such highfalutin ways.

She ignored my arm, which encircled her waist. She said, You signed your name to this residency.

Aw dear. I shook my head. Then I pulled open the filing cabinet, pretending I knew what I was looking for. To my amazement I found it! Leastways:

1) the initial invitation

2) their acknowledgment of my acceptance.

But that was eight months ago, or was it eighteen? and nothing since. Except thinking about it now, my old email address had bitten the dust. Maybe they were still using it? Was that last year or the year before?

Could be, said Hannah, and you wouldnt have known so you couldnt acknowledge it, and they wouldnt know you hadnt received it because you dont always reply to things.

What do ye mean?

People make contact and you dont reply.

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Chapters
• 1. Eighteen Months Later
• 2. Who did ye say ye were again?
• 3. Stan scratched his head
• 4. Flying seagulls and that Belgian guy
• 5. The Patience to Live
• 6. Who I am
• 7. Excuse me, are you expecting a writer today?
• 8. His eyes drifted skyward
• 9. Art Students Interested in Art
• 10. Matters Empathetic
• 11. School in the Morning
• 12. … then in the Afternoon
• 13. Shared Roots and Square-toed Luggers
• 14. I could have been a Dance Troupe!
• 15. Little Georgic
• 16. The Only Resident in the Entire Fucking Dump
• 17. The Vanity of the Poet-Professor
• 18. Dont mess with Miles
• 19. On We Go
• 20. In Time
• 21. All is not Lost
• 22. Land Ahoy!
• 23. My name is so and so and I am a writer
• 24. Horrible Nonsense
• 25. When Hannah thought of me I was thinking of her
• 26. Horrible Nonsense right enough
• 27. Ever Thus
• 28. I would have wanted to batter somebody
• 29. A Proper Event
• 30. The Gory Details
• 31. Feet Without One’s Partner
• 32. The Ugly Troot
• 33. Ghost Writers in the Sky
• 34. Knackert
• 35. Agatha Christie to Gertrude Stein
• 36. How Long is a Short Story?
• 37. The Terms
• 38. Easy does it
• 39. Grounds for Optimism
• 40. Writers go away and come back
• 41. Later it was later
• 42. The difficulty of the I-voice ending
• 43. Tallulah and the Vampires
• 44. Ach
• 45. Fuck them all
• Author’s Afterword
• About the Author
• About PM Press
• Friends of PM Press