‘The sense of helplessness is more of a choice than a reality, in my opinion’ – James Kelman in dialogue with Noam Chomsky

Ian Rankin is a rare novelist in admitting that his decision over what sort of fiction he would write was predicated upon a desire for paternal approval...

Kelman’s reading was lively, entrancing at times, and the writer was pretty much at his performing best. In questions he was voluble, but as awkward as ever, maintaining his line over language, class and marginalisation, even in this, one of the most crassly populist, conservative of events on the literary calendar…