I first encountered the work of Neil Gunn
some eight years ago. Although
critically acclaimed in his lifetime, Gunn’s contribution to, and influence on,
the first half of twentieth century Scottish literature has to a certain extent
been eclipsed by the work of Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Gunn was a socialist and committed to the
cause of Scottish nationalism at a time when both were unfashionable, causes
which, many of you will have gathered, I have more than a little sympathy
for. He was also, as the excellent Whisky & Scotland: A Practical and Spiritual Survey proves, an early proponent of malt whisky at a time when single malts were
virtually unknown, no doubt aided by his years as a Customs & Excise
officer. His time at the Glen Mhor distillery
afforded him ample opportunity to write, and is surely my dream day job.
Gunn, along with contemporary Hugh
MacDiarmid was part of the Scottish Renaissance - a movement that sought to
take Scottish fiction “out of the kaleyard” and into contemporary themes free
from the romanticised and flowery tales that had come to typify Scottish
literature. Despite all of his novels
being set in the Scottish Highlands, Gunn experimented continuously with style
and subject matter, his later work being particularly influenced Zen Buddhism. In many ways this was to be his undoing. Despite the commercial and critical success
of novels such as Butcher’s Broom and
The Silver Darlings, Gunn defied the expectations of his publisher and
readers by more metaphysical tales such as The
Serpent and The Green Isle Of The
Great Deep, the latter a dystopian warning that pre-dates Nineteen
Eighty-Four by five years. As sad as it
might seem inevitable, this led to a dwindling interest by both Gunn’s agent
and his public, resulting in such a poor reception to his spiritual
autobiography The Atom Of Delight in
1956 that he never wrote another full length work up until his death in 1973.
Perhaps somewhat perversely, while many
readers expect, even demand, that their favourite authors produce a variant of
the same book or at least return to favourite characters in order to continue their
story, it is the diversity of Gunn’s novels that has made him both a favourite
and an influence on my own work. From
the rich prose of Highland River
It was through such works that I first
began to experience a shift in my own perception, the acknowledgement of
something of worth within my own heritage and culture, the ability to tell a story
in my own dialect and set in the land in which I grew up. More than this, I came to challenge myself
and remove self-imposed limits on my writing, enabling me to write stories that
previously I might have considered beyond my means. For this, more than anything else, I will
always be indebted to Neil Gunn, regardless of any future direction. This is why the books I write may not always
be in a genre you wish to read, feature settings you are familiar with, or deal
with subject matter with which you might readily associate me with. What they will be is written to the best of
my ability in order to tell the stories I need to tell.
Like the song says, ‘You can’t always get
what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.’
Don’t think of this as hubris so much as
kindly dictatorship.
For those wishing to investigate the work
of Neil Gunn, I have listed some of my personal favourites. Others are perhaps better known but these one’s
resonated particularly strongly.
Sun Circle
Young Art And Old Hector
The Green Isle Of The Great Deep
The Silver Bough
The Well At The World’s End
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