dialect voices of Terry, Billy, Carl, and Andrew. Their experiences and voices
have their own peculiar sublimity, a sublimity that effectively solicits the
reader’s iconoclastic estrangement and yet sympathy. Here is just one pas-
sage, in Andrew’s voice, giving some thoughts about women, and then
modulating into a football-related brawl.
- Caroline Urquhart...she’s a fucking stuck-up wee hing-oot, Terry sais tae
ays.
-- You’d ride her if you goat the chance, ah tells um.
Ah’d fuckin ride her n a minute, Marty Gentleman goes.–Bit ah’d shag that
Amy Connor first.
Gentleman could probably bag oaf wi Amy Connor, cause eh looks aulder n
eh’s a big hard cunt. No wi Caroline Urquhart but, shes’mair snobby, well, ah
widnae say snobby, but likesay classier. But ah’m thinkin aboot this, aboot
who’s the biggest shag between the two. Dozo’s aw irritated but. Eh’s noddin
ower someSash-singing cunts. We up our pace n faw in behind thum. Thir’s
aboot five boys, drapped in Union Jacks. One’s goat ARDROSSAN LOYAL in
white letters oan it. Eh’s wearin nine-inch Docs. Dozo boots this one in the
heel n one leg wraps roond another n eh crashes ontae the cobblestones. Gent
boots the cunt on the deck n shouts in a Glesgay accent,–Briktin Derry!
Naebody startsThe Sash‘cept us!
It works a treat! They back off, n one nashes right ower the road. The rest aw
go quiet. Aw the other groups ay Huns look confused but dinnae make a move.
If we’d hud the colours oan, we’d be stomped. They’ll tear anything apart in
green, but they think this is jist Hun v Hun, a civil war. Now the other cunts
dinnae want tae ken! It’s working, that plan wi agreed! Isolate the cunts, even
up the odds by makin it personal, us against thaim, instead ay fitba, Hibs
against Rangers.^100
For most middle-class speakers of“standard”English, this language is diffi-
cult. The thoughts and incidents that it describes are at best unattractive, at
worst repellent. Yet–as even this small excerpt from a 469-page book
shows–there is something absorbing about it. Partly this is a function of
the sheer difficulty and pleasure of working through the language. But it is
also in part a function ofanattraction of the way of life thus presented. The
novel itself offers an explanation of what about this way of life is thus
absorbing in a crucial passage recording the thoughts of Kathryn Joyner, a
(^100) Ibid., p. 82.
Art and morality 249