How Late It Was, How Late
Ever wonder what’s going on in the mind of the guy you see on the highway being arrested for DWI late in the evening? Maybe it’s after you’ve had a few beers yourself and are doing your best to keep the wheels straight on your Honda Civic. Or have you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of the poor soul shuffling around with nothing to do outside the homeless shelter? Or the guy or woman huddled up by a freeway off-ramp pitching work for food?
I imagine most of us would say no. Tuning out the unfortunate side of life makes the rest of us handle our own tough lives a little easier. It may not be right, but it’s human nature.
But James Kelman thrusts us into the mind of a street man, a petty criminal named Sammy, in his novel How Late It Was, How Late, and it’s a jolt for readers. Here’s some plot: Sammy is a thug in Glasgow, an ex-con on the dole living off his girlfriend Helen. Sammy receives a savage beating from the police, and after a couple of days is thrust into the street. The beating has rendered Sammy blind, and he suffers through a sightless nightmare to make it home to Helen’s flat.
Once there, he discovers Helen has left the apartment, for good it seems. Since he’s blind, Sammy tries to get disability. But he runs into the quagmire that is the Scottish welfare state, and things get tied up. A doctor tries to onvince Sammy that he’s not really blind. And the police resurface, threatening to charge Sammy with crimes — but Kafka-like, they won’t tell Sammy what it is he’s done wrong. Sammy is reduced to wandering the streets of Scotland with a sawed-off broomstick, searching for the lost Helen, trying to meet his old mates and dealing with the craziness that’s infested his life.
That’s all the plot I’m going to mention because How Late It Was, How Late is open to interpretation by the reader. This is a stream of consciousness novel without chapter breaks, and we are permitted a glimpse into Sammy’s mind as he deals with this private nightmare. Despite Sammy’s outward appearance, it’s a very bright mind Sammy possesses, and he manages his hardships with intelligence, humor and stick-to-it-ness.
Let’s get into Sammy’s mind, courtesy of Kelman: “Every day was a... problem. And this was a new yin. So ye thought it out and then ye coped. That was what a problem was, a thing ye thought out and then coped with, and ye pushed ahead; sunshine and blue skies....”
Kelman’s provides a liberal dosage of Scottish slang. It’s so prevalent at times it would have been a nice idea to provide a glossary of Scottish street slang, like Irving Welsh does in Trainspotters. Also, the language is very rough, and four-letter words leap out at the reader on every page. But, hey, we’re in the mind of Sammy, a Scottish street thug, albeit abright one. Vulgar language is to be expected.
As mentioned, How Late It Was, How Late is Kafkaesque. It’s also a very funny black comedy. Becoming blind hasn’t changed Sammy’s outlook on life. He still thinks like a man who can see all, and it provides some chuckles for readers. For example, Sammy, waiting for Helen to return home, begins to wonder if she has left a note. He searches a while before it dawns on him that in his new dark world, writing paper is all the same
As a writer, Kelman is a worthy addition to Hanif Kureishi, Welsh, Allan Sillitoe, and Roddy Doyle, authors from Scotland, England and Ireland who write with insight about the working class in those countries. Although it may be tempting to compare How Late It Was, It Was with Trainspotting, the novel that most closely resembles Kelmar’s book is George Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris. Like Sammy, Orwell’s unnamed protagonist is a smart guy in a bad fix. Both encounter a lot of hard times without self pity, and often with humor. Orwell and Kelman also assign legitimacy to the opinions of their anti-heroes, no matter what the rest of the world thinks.
I like How Late It Was, It Was, mostly because the visit into Sammy’s netherworld is funny and interesting to us readers, most of whom will never see the inside of a jail cell or live on the dole, or do it blind for that matter. However, I’m not sure most will agree. On the Amazon.com reader review pages, most didn’t like it. A common complaint was that it was “boring.” It may be to a generation weaned on John Grisham, but if readers have patience, theywill appreciate traveling through Scotland’s streets, pubs, police stations and welfare offices side-by-side with Sammy.