It was a large class. Each session centred on the work of one or more of those present. Philip chaired the sessions. He would have had our stuff photocopied and ready for distribution the previous week. Thus people had at least seven days to study the poetry or stories properly. It was a good and thorough method. I was 25 and had been writing for three years. When it came my turn I passed five stories on to him.
This was the second time I had shown my work to anyone other than Marie. We had met in London not long after I started writing, in early 1969; she was twenty, a Swansea girl. I had begun writing only a few weeks before, and planned on returning to the U.S.A. where I had lived for a spell in my teens. I was in touch with the U.S. Embassy, had completed most of the paperwork and it appeared a formality.
Thereafter I forgot about it. Marie’s dowry comprised four albums; Nina Simone, Los Paraguayos, the seminal What is Soul? anthology, and the fourth was by The New Seekers for which she makes no apologies. My one and only album which I won in a game of cards was the 1964 Newport Folk Festival recording featuring Boozoo Chavis, Doc Watson, the Swan Silvertones and old Fred McDowell. Only the New Seekers album is missing from our current collection but dastardly practices were not involved.
All my early stories were written in longhand until 1971 when I purchased an elderly desktop typewriter. Then I used both techniques. I have longhand drafts of stories as late as ‘Nice to be Nice’ and ‘Remember Young Cecil’. Then we got a neat little portable typewriter that chased itself across the table when I pounded the keys. Occasionally Marie typed out the stories. She would not disclose if she read them. It is better not to show work to family and friends if you seek critical comment, as a general principle. I learned that from Marie. She earned a living as a shorthand typist and was very efficient. Efficient shorthand typists scan thoroughly but do not necessarily read. She gave me a certain look if I asked. Yet over the years I have heard her muttering ‘Fair do’s and all that pish’. This very line can be found in the first story I ever wrote and finished: ‘Abject Misery’. She denies she got it from me. Maybe I got it from her.
Philip Hobsbaum photocopied and distributed my five stories to the other class members. On the night he said I should select three and read them. I had expected him to choose. I read ‘He Knew Him Well’, ‘Abject Misery’ and cannot remember the third.
At these sessions a critique of the work followed the reading. Philip chaired the sessions and avoided talking too soon, otherwise his contribution would have shaped the discussion. His way allowed class members to go off on their own. When the poem or story was being read he spent the time gazing over the top of his spectacles, watching the class. Maybe he saw me watching him.
After my reading came the critique. I enjoyed hearing people discuss my stories but certain aspects began to irritate me. I appeared to be absent. ‘What Kelman should do is this.’ ‘No, instead he should do that. .’ ‘Oh but what if he. .’
Occasionally textual suggestions were made as though they never would have occurred to me. There was a vague assumption that the stories had just come. All I did was write them down. It was weird. I sweated blood over the damn things. Seventeen years later my novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for prizes and a member of an adjudicating panel asked if I ever revised ‘or did it just come out?’
It jist comes oot, ah says, it’s the natchril rithm o the workin klass, ah jist opens ma mooth and oot it comes. Similar to the American dancer in reply to a related question, ah jes closes ma eyes an ma feets git to movin.
Some of what I encountered from those early days prepared me for later struggles. But the blatant elitism encountered by so-called working-class writers still surprises me. I can never predict it. I assumed that anybody who thought about art and writing would know that my finished work was hard won.
During the session at Philip’s class there were lapses in the conversation, fewer people took part. Maybe some were intimidated, not only by the language of the stories but by the subject matter. It was not the stuff of literature and they were peeved, but they remained silent; I think because there had been a very positive response from Philip and at least two others.
Philip entered the discussion earlier than usual. He read aloud from ‘He Knew Him Well’. He was good at accents, in particular that of South London where for a couple of years he taught secondary school. It was an odd experience hearing somebody else speak the words and sentences so familiar to me. He brought to life the old man of ‘He Knew Him Well’. It sparked ideas. It was exciting.
Later it became clear that for some in the class my work had been an ordeal. Hostile comments arrived. A letter came from a schoolteacher of English with an antipathy to ‘the language of the gutter’. She found my stories disgusting and unreadable and did not see why they should have been forced upon her. She and her friend were among the small number who left the class never to return.
But why had they come in the first place? They had had a week to read the stories. They knew what to expect. Or did they? Perhaps they were there for the kill.
Philip was upset by their reaction. I assumed he would treat it ironically. Instead he took it seriously; he worried how it might affect me. It is true that I was unprepared. But equally I had been unprepared for his pleasure in the stories. At that time I was not prepared for much. It was my first experience of the world of letters — any response was noteworthy. I felt quite confident in what I was doing. In the face of the schoolteacher’s outrage there was little to be done other than give up writing, which by then was impossible.
Anyway, the negative stuff was insignificant in the face of one simple truth: Philip Hobsbaum, a real writer, had enjoyed my stories.
I have heard criticism of Philip over the years but he loved literature. Young writers did not scare him; he was not in competition and was generous towards them. Philip made me feel like a real writer.
Although he showed me the English teacher’s letter he did not give me it to keep. I speak from a distance of 35 years. She must have been hurt by something deeper than my five stories. Perhaps it was Philip’s response that provoked her. He was supposed to be an authority. She and others would have considered him a guardian not only of English Literature but of Standard English literary form. He could give that impression. He had the speech and mannerisms of a Cambridge professor. Yet Philip spent much of his boyhood in a working-class Yorkshire environment, and was Jewish. He knew how to assimilate: sometimes he did, other times not.
I had no experience of higher education and English Literature as a field of study but was used to discussing books and writers with various people in my various jobs since leaving school. Friends, family and workmates shared information. I read voraciously and wrote whenever possible. I never thought about my writing as part of anything. If it was I hoped it might include Albert Camus, Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevski. I had read a great many English-language writers but none had made such impact.
After Philip’s class some of us walked down the road to the Rubaiyat Bar at the corner of Byres Road and University Avenue, to continue the conversation. It was a long way home but who cared about that. And I had company for much of the walk, a colleague from the class, John Roy, who was a poet and member of the Socialist Workers Party. I was always interested in horse racing. He was antagonised when I asked what happened to horse racing after the revolution. I thought it a fair question, he thought it frivolous. What has horse racing got to do with anything?