Spike Magazine

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Interview [published March 2000]
Alan Warner: Existential Ecstasy
Zoe Strachan talks to Alan Warner about French intellectuals
and the chemical generation genre
ZS: Your story ‘After the Vision’ was in my opinion
the best in the Children Of Albion Rovers anthology
produced by Rebel Inc. It says it was taken from something
called The Far Places. Was this a novel? It seems
to have similarities to These Demented Lands.
AW: Yes, a section of a novel and parts of a linked
series of short stories called, believe it or not, Trend
Fault Team 2, about Highland kids who were into rap
music. I might rework some of these stories sometime.
These Demented Lands came from some other area of
my storm tossed imagination.
ZS: These Demented Lands was a little bit different
from your other novels, it was more surreal and included
illustrations. Did you think of it as a chance to
be more experimental with your text?
AW: Well, the illustrations you mention are already in
Morvern Callar, the map Red Hannah draws for Lanna,
for example, or the road sign. I enjoy breaking up the
language that way and it sort of takes the reader out of
the delusion of the text into another delusion!
ZS: Morvern Callar attracted lots of “Highland rave”
type comments. Do you think there is a point these days
BUY Alan Warner books online from and
in distinguishing between Scottish and other writing?
AW: It’s like Duke Ellington said about music … there
is good writing and bad writing and those are the only
two types.
ZS: And do you think that the chemical generation
genre has run it’s course now? Were you pleased at
being included in that whole thing?
AW: That was something invented by an editor called
Sarah Champion [music journalist and editor of the
1997 anthology Disco Biscuits, which included a short
story, ‘Bitter Salvage,’ by Alan Warner]. I mean I think
you can write a good story about a nightclub but I don’t
think you can base a whole literary movement on writing
about nightclub life and ecstasy use. What bothered
me about it is it was getting to be more about the writers
than the writing, there was something egotistical and
silly about it, ‘Look, we go to nightclubs but we are
writers,’ so fucking what. I’m interested in great books
not the social life of writers. On a personal level I used
to take ecstasy and go to Edinburgh Zoo. It was much
better than a rave, cheaper admission, prettier girls,
colourful parrots and there’s even a little licensed bar
531
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