You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free
By James Kelman
Penguin Books, 2004
437 pages
REVIEW BY ALEX MILLER
I've been a fan of James Kelman's books for nearly 20 years, but I have to admit that his last two works of fiction left me feeling disappointed: the stories in the 1998 collection The Good Times struck me as uninspired, while I found the 2001 novel Translated Accounts almost unreadable. However, Kelman's most recent novel marks a welcome return to the form of such previous masterpieces as The Bus Conductor Hines, How Late it was How Late, Not Not While the Giro and Greyhound for Breakfast. Once again, Kelman writes in the authentic voice of the west-of-Scotland working class to produce a book that combines in a single work the genius of both Beckett and Zola.
The main protagonist of You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free is a working-class Skarrisch man, Jeremiah Brown, who has been living in "Uhmerka" for the past 12 years. Kelman's Uhmerka is bizarre, to say the least, but bears a strong resemblance to the contemporary USA. Jeremiah is holder of a dodgy immigration ticket called a "Class III red card", and seems to be in constant danger of violating the Uhmerkan government's "extreme outpouring legislation".
The action all takes place on the evening before Jeremiah is due to return to Glasgow, and the novel follows him sinking beer after beer in the small town he is staying in overnight before catching his flight. Jeremiah is named after a Chartist ancestor who came to America in the 19th century and who became a "devout Christian and god-fearing body involved in the detective profession" while passing through Utah. Jeremiah retains at least some of his ancestor's qualities.
Speaking of his dodgy immigration status, Jeremiah says: "I was happy with my status. Imagine being related to der pinker WASP ingilander and her barrel-load of kowtowing arselicking subject cunts. No sir, Ah am a republican, vive la republique! Ah am a socialiste, vive le socialiste! Ah am a Worker of the World; vive le internationale; vive vive vive, emancipation, egalite and the rights of man and woman and humanity, all humankind, which includes children ... And where is one's fucking beer?".
You can follow Jeremiah through his tussles with the "pentagon fucker" at the bar, hear his reminiscences of his role in the "Persian bet" fad, and find out about his job as a low-level airport security operative paid for securing "outer car park and patriot holding centre areas against encroaching malevolence", a job that takes him into the ambit of a mysterious creature known as "The Being". Jeremiah Brown is a brilliant creation, the "unassimilatit, unintegratit, alien, socialist, furnir-fucker" par excellence.
No short review can do Kelman's masterpiece justice: but "Joyce's Ulysses written by Irvine Welsh and spliced with Schubert's Wintereisse" may give a flavour of this wonderful and complex novel.
From Green Left Weekly, March 22, 2006.
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