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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/aug/31/james-kelman-scottish-literature?commentpage=1
The de facto, albeit barely conscious, censorship which is the normative paradigm of haute bourgeois ‘literary’ London is simply a manifestation in the world of information of which creative writing forms a numinous part, of power politics, of war by other means. The elevation of ‘genre’, in purely financial, rather than aesthetic, terms, is the result of the dominance of the theologies of marketing/ PR above all other philosophical systems. There is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ or ‘inferior’ with genre’ – I, one of those ‘angry, experimental, less easily marketable writers whom Alan Bissett mentions in his 'Guardian' article – have written a genre novel, albeit an erotic/ pornographic one! – I think crime, science fiction and erotic fiction should be considered serious art-forms, as they are, to some extent, in Continental Europe. There are two separate discourses here. The real problem, the central problem, in all of this is the cartelisation of the publishing-retailing industry, the concentration of wealth – power – in ever-fewer hands and the ongoing imperialistic structural and attitudinal formations of the social classes who inhabit those eyries which are labelled, ‘Objectivity’ and ‘Quality’ but which really ought to be branded, ‘Bankruptcy’ and ‘Willfull Ignorance’.
The other problem is that most people now have been brain-washed into believing exactly what their masters tell them on most issues and to think - and this is a truly majestic sleight-of-hand - that they are being subtle and 'cool' by so doing. Living in a bowery of bread and circuses has led to the situation where "Elitist" or intellectual are the worst insults that can be hurled at anyone, and to me, this is redoelnt of a sort of proto-Fascist attitude. Yet those who really are elitist - those who hold power so close to their chests it has become indistinguishable from their hearts - get away with everything in the name of a sham, manufactured and paradoxical populism. Most people now seem essentially to have bought the C21st equivalent of the 'working-class Tory' line. What they fail to see is that in this very dynamic, they reveal themselves as little more than 'supplicating peasants in the court of the king'. Unconsciousness, as a state of being.
In my darker moments, I do wonder whether in fact the censorhsip is conscious. However, in fact, it is more difficult to fight against somehting which is denied, hidden and systemic than it is against an actively-held position. So, in this sense, a dead rat is worse than a bad rat; at least you can kill the bad rat, whereas sooner or later, the dead rat will kill you.
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