Originally published in Scotland on Sunday, 18 September 2011.
While Jerome K Jerome’s fictionalised travelogue about three male friends (and a dog) journeying along the Thames has been in print constantly since 1889, it’s now largely forgotten how the literary establishment of the day condemned it as vulgar (in all senses of the word) and even “an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-education of the lower orders”. Such blatant snobbery has thankfully not reared its head in print regarding Alan Bissett’s latest novel but, given his track record in exploring modern “working-class” Scotland, some readers might be surprised he so blatantly references such an “English” novel.
For it goes beyond just a few quotes; Pack Men is his story of three Falkirk friends (and a child) who we first encounter traveling down the motorway to Manchester to watch Glasgow Rangers FC play in a European final — a match now chiefly remembered for the subsequent riots. Pack Men, though, is no more about football than Three Men In A Boat is about the Thames; even more than Jerome, Bissett writes — subtly, intelligently and yet also passionately — about men. And, as 1980s music-loving “Wee Wife” states early on, the psychology’s simple enough: “That’s boys… int it? Got tae be in some kinday gang.”
At the heart of Pack Men are the main cast from Bissett’s debut novel, Boyracers, but you needn’t have read that to understand how, even though just in their mid-to-late 20s, the “greatest hits” — of “Kids. Jobs. Wives. Soon to be ex-wives. Emigration.” — have changed its core trio. “How had everything become so adult, so friendless?” asks Alvin, our narrator; the trip to Manchester is a deliberate attempt to reconnect, but the distance they need to travel is more than geographical.
For Alvin is the latest in a long line of working class kids who have made the culturally significant, if geographically short, journey to university. Yet he’s troubled how even “the deep mental cleansing” of an English degree hasn’t entirely taken Falkirk out of the boy, symbolised by his subtle slippage from Uni-learned RP to “Fawkurt” as the novel’s long day progresses. “I want to know what being a working class Scotsman truly means cos I haven’t a fucking clue any more,” he later admits to the reader, all the while standing “in the thick of men addicted to tradition”.
In Jerome’s novel, the character of George makes the point of throwing away the unnecessary “lumber” of life during their trip; of keeping only “the things that we can’t do without.” For Bissett, that would include always accepting where you came from. For the rest of us, it certainly includes this outstanding novel.
© paulfcockburn
