Stop representing Scotland this way
Ho hum, how tedious! It seems another "no holds barred" depiction of Scots as sad junkies/alcoholics has won a literary prize.
As reported by the BBC:
As reported by the BBC:
Scottish author Douglas Stuart has paid tribute to his "wonderful" Glaswegian mother, who inspired his Booker Prize winning novel.He described her as a "proud, hardworking, generous woman" who struggled with alcoholism in the 1980s. The illness eventually led to her death when Stuart was a teenager.His novel Shuggie Bain took the 2020 gong on Thursday following a unanimous decision from judges - who said they had only taken an hour to decide.Stuart described the book as a "love story" between a mother - Agnes Bain - and her son Shuggie.
What is this plot about? Here is a quick summary from Wikipedia:
Sammy awakens in a lane one morning after a two-day drinking binge, and gets into a fight with some plainclothes policemen... When he regains consciousness, he finds that he has been beaten severely and, he gradually realises, is completely blind. The plot of the novel follows Sammy as he explores and comes to terms with his new-found disability, and the difficulties this brings.
Whoops, sorry, that's the plot summary from James Kelman's 1994 stream-of-consciousness novel "How late it was, how late is," another pile of piss-and-vomit-sodden garbage that won Britain's "highest" literary prize.
Shuggie Bain is more of the same -- underclass reportage about some pathetic piss-for-brains whore who does anything for that next drink, and is clearly modeled on the writer's own mum.
While Hugh “Shuggie” Bain may give his name to the title of the book, it is as much about Shuggie’s mother, Agnes, and her damaged, doomed attempts to be a wife and mother amid the booze-soaked brutality of 1980s Glasgow...Agnes and her youngest child are thrown together, forming a strong and complex bond. From an early scene when, drunk, she hugs Shuggie as the room they are in burns about them, we understand that Shuggie’s fate will hang upon his mother’s self-destructive impulses and her battle to overcome them.
Yes, so fucking "brave" putting his own alky mum in a novel, when the kindest thing he could have done for the old drunken slag would have been to pretend she had never existed.
All that this kind of crap represents is the "Trainspottification" of Scotland, which started in earnest when Irvine Welsh's junkie novel "Trainspotting" was foisted on the public in 1993, backed up by the film of the same name only three years later. It's like someone really wanted to brand Scotland as a helpless POS nation, just as it was starting to move towards greater independence.
But what they don't tell you about the junkie/alky image of Scotland they are projecting is that it is much more rooted in Scotland's still largely unassimilated Irish immigrant population.
Irvine Welsh, from whose rectum Trainspotting dropped one fine day, is a crypto-hibernian, which is probably why he still supports Hibs FC. Yes, all the junkie, fuck-up characters in his novels are not actually modelled on real Scots, but instead first, second, third, fourth, or fifth generation Hiberno-Scots who are still struggling to come to terms with their new homeland.
Irvine Welsh, from whose rectum Trainspotting dropped one fine day, is a crypto-hibernian, which is probably why he still supports Hibs FC. Yes, all the junkie, fuck-up characters in his novels are not actually modelled on real Scots, but instead first, second, third, fourth, or fifth generation Hiberno-Scots who are still struggling to come to terms with their new homeland.
So, what about Douglas Stuart? He sounds like a real Scot, doesn't he? Sure, but we have already seen that the main alcoholic character in the novel is pretty closely based on his own mum.
Is it a mere coincidence that the character of Agnes is a Catholic, which in Scotland almost always means an Irish immigrant background?
Of course not. This is yet another novel/ film about Scotland's Irish-origin underclass and its drug and alcohol problems posing as a novel about Scottish people. Scots, in fact, are actually incredibly puritanical and totally impervious to the effects of alcohol (for example, I am writing this incredibly lucid article after downing half a bottle of Jack Daniels, which is actually a "lady drink" in my hometown).
Is it a mere coincidence that the character of Agnes is a Catholic, which in Scotland almost always means an Irish immigrant background?
Of course not. This is yet another novel/ film about Scotland's Irish-origin underclass and its drug and alcohol problems posing as a novel about Scottish people. Scots, in fact, are actually incredibly puritanical and totally impervious to the effects of alcohol (for example, I am writing this incredibly lucid article after downing half a bottle of Jack Daniels, which is actually a "lady drink" in my hometown).
The only upside of this pathetic story is that Stuart, who is gay, in case you hadn't guessed it, BTFOed the even more woke writers on the Booker Prize shortlist, which clearly tried extra hard this year to exclude straight White men:
The Booker Prize shortlist (straight White men fuck off!)
