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God's Teeth and Other Phenomena
Jack Proctor, a celebrated older writer and curmudgeon, goes off to residency where he is to be an honored part of teaching and giving public readings, he soon finds the atmosphere of the literary world has changed since his last foray into the public sphere. Unknown to most, unable to work on his own writing, surrounded by a host of odd characters, would-be writers, antagonists, handlers, and members of the elite House of Art and Aesthetics, Proctor finds himself driven to distraction (literally in a very very tiny car). This is a story of a man attempting not to go mad when forced to stop his own writing in order to coach others to write. Proctor’s tour of rural places, pubs, theaters, fancy parties, where he is to be headlining as a “Banker-Prize-Winning-Author” reads like a literary version of Spinal Tap. Uproariously funny, brilliantly philosophical, gorgeously written this is James Kelman at his best.
Praise
“God’s Teeth and Other Phenomena is electric. Forget all the rubbish you’ve been told about how to write, the requirements of the marketplace and the much vaunted ‘readability’ that is supposed to be sacrosanct. This is a book about how art gets made, its murky, obsessive, unedifying demands and the endless, sometimes hilarious, humiliations literary life inflicts on even its most successful names.”
—Eimear McBride author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians
“James Kelman is an extraordinary writer—smart and incisive, witty and warm, with prose so alive it practically sparks off the page. God's Teeth and Other Phenomena is one of the wisest, funniest and most brutally honest books I've read in ages. I loved it.”
—Molly Antopol, author of The Unamericans
“Probably the most influential novelist of the post-war period.”
—The Times
“Kelman has the knack, maybe more than anyone since Joyce, of fixing in his writing the lyricism of ordinary people’s speech … Pure aesthete, undaunted democrat—somehow Kelman manages to reconcile his two halves.”
—Esquire (London)
“The greatest British novelist of our time.”
—Sunday Herald
“A true original … A real artist … it’s now very difficult to see which of his peers can seriously be ranked alongside [Kelman] without ironic eyebrows being raised.”
—Irvine Welsh, Guardian
“A writer of world stature, a 21st century Modern.”
—The Scotsman
“The real reason Kelman, despite his stature and reputation, remains something of a literary outsider is not, I suspect, so much that great, radical Modernist writers aren’t supposed to come from working-class Glasgow, as that great, radical Modernist writers are supposed to be dead. Dead, and wrapped up in a Penguin Classic: that’s when it’s safe to regret that their work was underappreciated or misunderstood (or how little they were paid) in their lifetimes. You can write what you like about Beckett or Kafka and know they’re not going to come round and tell you you’re talking nonsense, or confound your expectations with a new work. Kelman is still alive, still writing great books, climbing.”
—James Meek, London Review of Books
“The greatest living British novelist.”
—Amit Chaudhuri, author of A New World, Frieze Magazine
“What an enviably, devilishly wonderful writer is James Kelman.”
—John Hawkes, author of The Blood Oranges
About the Author
James Kelman was born in Glasgow, June 1946, and left school in 1961. He travelled and worked various jobs, and while living in London began to write. In 1994 he won the Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late. His nove, l A Disaffection, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. In 1998 Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. His 2008 novel Kieron Smith, Boy won the Saltire Society’s Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. He lives in Glasgow with his wife Marie, who has supported his work since 1969.
Praise
“God’s Teeth and Other Phenomena is electric. Forget all the rubbish you’ve been told about how to write, the requirements of the marketplace and the much vaunted ‘readability’ that is supposed to be sacrosanct. This is a book about how art gets made, its murky, obsessive, unedifying demands and the endless, sometimes hilarious, humiliations literary life inflicts on even its most successful names.”
—Eimear McBride author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians
“James Kelman is an extraordinary writer—smart and incisive, witty and warm, with prose so alive it practically sparks off the page. God's Teeth and Other Phenomena is one of the wisest, funniest and most brutally honest books I've read in ages. I loved it.”
—Molly Antopol, author of The Unamericans
“Probably the most influential novelist of the post-war period.”
—The Times
“Kelman has the knack, maybe more than anyone since Joyce, of fixing in his writing the lyricism of ordinary people’s speech … Pure aesthete, undaunted democrat—somehow Kelman manages to reconcile his two halves.”
—Esquire (London)
“The greatest British novelist of our time.”
—Sunday Herald
“A true original … A real artist … it’s now very difficult to see which of his peers can seriously be ranked alongside [Kelman] without ironic eyebrows being raised.”
—Irvine Welsh, Guardian
“A writer of world stature, a 21st century Modern.”
—The Scotsman
“The real reason Kelman, despite his stature and reputation, remains something of a literary outsider is not, I suspect, so much that great, radical Modernist writers aren’t supposed to come from working-class Glasgow, as that great, radical Modernist writers are supposed to be dead. Dead, and wrapped up in a Penguin Classic: that’s when it’s safe to regret that their work was underappreciated or misunderstood (or how little they were paid) in their lifetimes. You can write what you like about Beckett or Kafka and know they’re not going to come round and tell you you’re talking nonsense, or confound your expectations with a new work. Kelman is still alive, still writing great books, climbing.”
—James Meek, London Review of Books
“The greatest living British novelist.”
—Amit Chaudhuri, author of A New World, Frieze Magazine
“What an enviably, devilishly wonderful writer is James Kelman.”
—John Hawkes, author of The Blood Oranges
About the Author
James Kelman was born in Glasgow, June 1946, and left school in 1961. He travelled and worked various jobs, and while living in London began to write. In 1994 he won the Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late. His nove, l A Disaffection, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. In 1998 Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. His 2008 novel Kieron Smith, Boy won the Saltire Society’s Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. He lives in Glasgow with his wife Marie, who has supported his work since 1969.
384 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 2022
About the author
James Kelman
94 books276 followersKelman says:
My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city. Four brothers, my mother a full time parent, my father in the picture framemaking and gilding trade, trying to operate a one man business and I left school at 15 etc. etc. (...) For one reason or another, by the age of 21/22 I decided to write stories. The stories I wanted to write would derive from my own background, my own socio-cultural experience. I wanted to write as one of my own people, I wanted to write and remain a member of my own community.
During the 1970s he published a first collection of short stories. He became involved in Philip Hobsbaum's creative writing group in Glasgow along with Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, and his short stories began to appear in magazines. These stories introduced a distinctive style, expressing first person internal monologues in a pared-down prose utilising Glaswegian speech patterns, though avoiding for the most part the quasi-phonetic rendition of Tom Leonard. Kelman's developing style has been influential on the succeeding generation of Scottish novelists, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Janice Galloway. In 1998, Kelman received the Stakis Prize for "Scottish Writer of the Year" for his collection of short stories 'The Good Times.'
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/au...
My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city. Four brothers, my mother a full time parent, my father in the picture framemaking and gilding trade, trying to operate a one man business and I left school at 15 etc. etc. (...) For one reason or another, by the age of 21/22 I decided to write stories. The stories I wanted to write would derive from my own background, my own socio-cultural experience. I wanted to write as one of my own people, I wanted to write and remain a member of my own community.
During the 1970s he published a first collection of short stories. He became involved in Philip Hobsbaum's creative writing group in Glasgow along with Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, and his short stories began to appear in magazines. These stories introduced a distinctive style, expressing first person internal monologues in a pared-down prose utilising Glaswegian speech patterns, though avoiding for the most part the quasi-phonetic rendition of Tom Leonard. Kelman's developing style has been influential on the succeeding generation of Scottish novelists, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Janice Galloway. In 1998, Kelman received the Stakis Prize for "Scottish Writer of the Year" for his collection of short stories 'The Good Times.'
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/au...
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 8, 2022
Another masterpiece from the master. Bewilderment, self-doubt, hubris, rage, hopelessness: the main character Jack Proctor experiences all these emotions and more, and so does the reader, thanks to James Kelman's talent. I'd say this is one of his most "accessible" books (would love to hear Jack's views on that!) but it's still an absolute classic, full of pathos, humour and everything else in between.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
June 19, 2022
Yes absolutely you should read this. Probably the funniest and least stressful James Kelman novel I have ever read but so full of tension and liveliness and movement that I found myself nearly fifty pages in before I even came up for breath. If you are interested in Creative Life Fiction Novel Short Story Lyrics Writing Performance etc., then there is plenty in here to chew on…or not - it’s a great trip regardless.
August 15, 2023
"Find that original voice and fucking read it, listen to it, look at it for that is the source, the seminal voice; one human being in the act of discovery, coming to terms, finding the terms, creating the terms."
God's Teeth and Other Phenomena is James Kelman at his most digestible and funniest. Probably his most autobiographical novel, we follow 66 year old writer Jack Proctor giving lectures and public readings on creative writing in an unknown country (what feels like north eastern America, perhaps New York state... it feels like Proctor is in Kafka's vision of America). Invited on an extended residency, Proctor encounters students, aspiring novelists, "successful" writers, professors and other bizarre characters in the literary world, often wound up to Basil Fawlty levels of frustration to hilarious effect at times. The result is an often funny, frequently philosophical and engaging portrait of an uncompromising artist.
Kelman himself is an uncompromising artist, an utterly incredible one too. God's Teeth contains the recurring stylistic literary devices that make up a Kelman novel: The stream of consciousness prose, Glaswegian patter, his obsessive and meticulous use of syntax and language, mixing of high and low culture, existentialism and absurdism, the creation of art, and the unwavering commitment to having his culture alive on the pages. All are contained within the pages of this novel, only more digestible as the novel has 45 vignettes of Proctor's adventures, almost reading like interconnecting short stories, that allows Kelman to display all of his qualities without compromising his artistic vision.
A highly recommended novel and one of Kelman's greatest efforts. Shelf it right next to his other masterworks How late it was, how late, A Disaffection and his short story collections, as it definitely belongs there.
God's Teeth and Other Phenomena is James Kelman at his most digestible and funniest. Probably his most autobiographical novel, we follow 66 year old writer Jack Proctor giving lectures and public readings on creative writing in an unknown country (what feels like north eastern America, perhaps New York state... it feels like Proctor is in Kafka's vision of America). Invited on an extended residency, Proctor encounters students, aspiring novelists, "successful" writers, professors and other bizarre characters in the literary world, often wound up to Basil Fawlty levels of frustration to hilarious effect at times. The result is an often funny, frequently philosophical and engaging portrait of an uncompromising artist.
Kelman himself is an uncompromising artist, an utterly incredible one too. God's Teeth contains the recurring stylistic literary devices that make up a Kelman novel: The stream of consciousness prose, Glaswegian patter, his obsessive and meticulous use of syntax and language, mixing of high and low culture, existentialism and absurdism, the creation of art, and the unwavering commitment to having his culture alive on the pages. All are contained within the pages of this novel, only more digestible as the novel has 45 vignettes of Proctor's adventures, almost reading like interconnecting short stories, that allows Kelman to display all of his qualities without compromising his artistic vision.
A highly recommended novel and one of Kelman's greatest efforts. Shelf it right next to his other masterworks How late it was, how late, A Disaffection and his short story collections, as it definitely belongs there.
October 16, 2022
Nobody captures that inner voice quite like James Kelman, the running commentary in your head critiquing your every thought and omission. In this new novel an aging novelist endures a residency with a "House or Art and Aesthetics". While leading creative writing classes and community groups he tries to express what "art" should mean, but suffers the small indignities and condescension that make you really feel his bubbling frustration. There is humour in these situations, but also an existential frustration. If you have an ounce of empathy in your body it can be an uncomfortable insight into the day to day realities of a creative artist.
July 27, 2023
I've typed the final page or so of the novel below. I wouldn't call it a spoiler; if you have any familiarity with Kelman and his work, it might read as a neat distillation of the underlying tension in his work, which, in its struggle to exist in defiance of the all-consuming Monoculture, depicts characters who, in their everyday, find the strength of their spines tested by the force of hegemony.
The favored perspective in his work always feels right, but the trick is that the reader understands, too, that the perspective is "wrong", in that it exists in conflict with the status-quo, with the assumed truths that result from observing only what is, and never considering what should be. Thus, "right" is actually wrong, and becomes just another turd we have to eat.
--
The pursuit of knowledge as the end, that the uttermost radical history is intellectual history, our hidden history is the intellectual history of we the people;
our ignorance, naivete
authority's seat of learning
universities and colleges cannot be what we make of them, we just steal, we steal, we steal in and we steal out, stealing away with our stolen goods. These shelves where lurk the uncut pages, the dust, fine dust
avoiding internet encyclopaedias and all secondary sources, the fucking lot of them. Glossy outers and glossy inners, updated last chapters, preface to the preface. Find that original voice and fucking read it, listen to it, look at it for that is the source, the seminal voice; one human being in the act of discovery, coming to terms, finding the terms, creating the terms.
It will take more work, return you to the labyrinth. Exams become less straightforward. But it puts you someplace else, if you are the one to read that book then its writer is writing to you. Aint it fucking wonderful! Aint it a fucking marvel! All you do is find a corner and pay attention.
You will not be alone. Not even among the staff: at least one accomplice will be found in any department. See the drinkers, failures, self-abusers, the untenured, unpromoted, those prone to emotional outbursts, embittered.
Maybe not. Maybe they head departments. They might well do. People find their way. They disguise what they are, disguise what they do, and do it in their own time and you will find them, you will smell them out. Dont be depressed. Be ordinary, just fucking fight. Ye're used to fighting so fight. Of course it's shite ye know it's shite.
One needs to talk art too, just talk it as ye go on, as ye go ahead, that is what ye do, ye do it, it's not as hard as all that.
(ending here)
The favored perspective in his work always feels right, but the trick is that the reader understands, too, that the perspective is "wrong", in that it exists in conflict with the status-quo, with the assumed truths that result from observing only what is, and never considering what should be. Thus, "right" is actually wrong, and becomes just another turd we have to eat.
--
The pursuit of knowledge as the end, that the uttermost radical history is intellectual history, our hidden history is the intellectual history of we the people;
our ignorance, naivete
authority's seat of learning
universities and colleges cannot be what we make of them, we just steal, we steal, we steal in and we steal out, stealing away with our stolen goods. These shelves where lurk the uncut pages, the dust, fine dust
avoiding internet encyclopaedias and all secondary sources, the fucking lot of them. Glossy outers and glossy inners, updated last chapters, preface to the preface. Find that original voice and fucking read it, listen to it, look at it for that is the source, the seminal voice; one human being in the act of discovery, coming to terms, finding the terms, creating the terms.
It will take more work, return you to the labyrinth. Exams become less straightforward. But it puts you someplace else, if you are the one to read that book then its writer is writing to you. Aint it fucking wonderful! Aint it a fucking marvel! All you do is find a corner and pay attention.
You will not be alone. Not even among the staff: at least one accomplice will be found in any department. See the drinkers, failures, self-abusers, the untenured, unpromoted, those prone to emotional outbursts, embittered.
Maybe not. Maybe they head departments. They might well do. People find their way. They disguise what they are, disguise what they do, and do it in their own time and you will find them, you will smell them out. Dont be depressed. Be ordinary, just fucking fight. Ye're used to fighting so fight. Of course it's shite ye know it's shite.
One needs to talk art too, just talk it as ye go on, as ye go ahead, that is what ye do, ye do it, it's not as hard as all that.
(ending here)
September 20, 2022
If you are a writer...
I believe that you would love the writer at the center of the story, whose reminder to everyone, writers, would be writers, readers, is that, at the end, it's about the blank page which needs to be covered, and, in the process of covering it, a writer writes, good, bad, save, toss, useful, wasteful, but without the precept of the story, which finds itself by filling the blank page.
I believe that you would love the writer at the center of the story, whose reminder to everyone, writers, would be writers, readers, is that, at the end, it's about the blank page which needs to be covered, and, in the process of covering it, a writer writes, good, bad, save, toss, useful, wasteful, but without the precept of the story, which finds itself by filling the blank page.
May 4, 2023
Apparently this guy is a living modernist master (I'd never heard of him till now)? - well yes, I agree! Very funny, bitingly so - cantankerous, exasperated, but still with a zest for life, the narrator (presumably Kelman himself) is endearing, good to spend a few hundred pages with.
February 25, 2023
“Art is the beating heart of liberty“ p. 343
The main narrator is an author, Jack Proctor, who shares many characteristics with Kelman. Proctor is invited to a weeks long writers residency only to suffer a long sequence of ignominies.
Kelman's style leaves the literary five-bar gate delightfully open to ordinary ruminations. The literary field is invaded with all kinds of kinds of scruffy ifs and buts. Everyday worries nestle together with rich literary allusions.
The main theme of the book is the struggle to make Art rather than any old hackneyed literary product fashioned for success. Many of the workshop dialogues describe Proctor cajoling the attendees to make Art springing unselfconsciously from their inner being. His talks don’t always provide an easy satisfaction to the attendees, they are confrontational, challenging and anti-conventional. His audience often seem to be left dumbfounded. Writing as Art only happens by working hard at the writing but also by allowing stories to follow the quicksilver of intuition rather than be driven by institutional goals and expectations.
“Find the original voice and fucking read it, listen to it, look at it for that is the source, the seminal voice; one human being in the act of discovery…” p. 341
Proctor is a literary star, he has won ‘The Bankers Prize’, but remains a prickly subaltern. Quite a bit of the narrative heat is generated by his repeated wire brushes with the cultural establishment. This builds up to be an important satire of the cultural apparatus that surrounds writers and artists. Pity the squirming Regional Arts Education officer reading this. Proctor observes “A peculiar absence of intellect within the contemporary English literary tradition. “ p.322
Kelman as working class radical who won ‘The Booker Prize’ - a key to the doors of places, or palaces, he didn’t feel like entering. And no wonder because, as he says: “Art is the beating heart of liberty," and in such settings Art is asphyxiated. This is Kelman fighting back against the machine with all the integrity, humour and eloquence that he still has up his sleeve.
This was all of particular interest to me because it parallels the themes of my recent blogs:
https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com...
September 14, 2023
Celebrating fifty years as a published writer, Kelman’s latest novel is something of a literary laxative, a havering huff-and-puff through the exploitative world of the eminent novelist. Chosen for a residency at the House of Art & Aesthetics, Jack Procter is an amiably cantankerous former Banker Prize (sic) winner known for the liberal use of sweary words in his novels. He navigates his way through writing workshops with petulant, self-aggrandising students—notably a former child actor desperate to publish a snoozefest of showbiz anecdotes—and through public readings and events, sidelined by local and younger writers, perpetually shunted around by the administrators who keep skimping on accommodation and frequently fail to inform him of events he’s supposed to attend. The comedy of errors aside, the novel is a rumination on Kelman’s approach to making art, the seriousness with which he takes the writing process and the compulsiveness of his own creativity (borne out by the vastness of his output). A richly rewarding comic perambulation, powered by Kelman’s own off-kilter sense of humour and satire wrung from hard-won experience, God’s Teeth and Other Phenomena shows a writer for whom making art truly is of transcendent value, lifting him aloft from the grievance of the grind.
February 19, 2023
Èibhinn. Dh’fhaodar leughadh mar chùrsa sgrìobhaidh chruthachail. Mholainn e do sgrìobhaiche. Sruth-mhothachaidh dìreach ealanta aig Kelman. Cuirm nan duaisean Booker 199 2(?); rud eagallach, do-chreidsinneach àrd-chùiseach, làn snobs; mas do bhuannaich Kelman airson How Late, thuirt tè aca – Germain greer? – nach creideadh iad gun tigeadh na seòrs smuaintean a bh’ anns an leabhar bho inntinn duineigin a bhruidhneadh coltach ris an neach-aithris (i.e. blas albannach, neo-sìobhalta). Co-dhiù, chòrd God’s teeth rium math. Cha robh sgeulachd ro chudromach ann. Kel agus na bha e ris, rudeigin surreal, ach càillear an-dèidh sin.
August 15, 2022
James Kelman can look inside our heads.
James Kelman knows how we think.
James Kelman knows how we express things.
James Kelman can express this.
James Kelman can build a story like no other.
James Kelman can be funny as ****.
James Kelman can leave you hanging on.
James Kelman will leave you grateful for the experience.
Simple,............... dan de ran dan!
James Kelman knows how we think.
James Kelman knows how we express things.
James Kelman can express this.
James Kelman can build a story like no other.
James Kelman can be funny as ****.
James Kelman can leave you hanging on.
James Kelman will leave you grateful for the experience.
Simple,............... dan de ran dan!
November 4, 2025
abandoned this, read the back of it in the library and it was described as "uproariously funny", can't go wrong with that. 120 pages in and I am not amused. can't stick with it.
August 21, 2026
a man grumbles and moans and hates everyone around him for 300 pages
December 14, 2023
“Such are the internal thoughts I have to contend with”
November 5, 2022
El Kelman ha estat un dels descobriments de la meva estada a Escòcia. M'ha agradat la seva manera de cagar-se en la indústria literària i les seves reflexions sobre l'ofici d'escriure. També el seu flux de pensament continu, que mal fet podria haver estat molt pesat de llegir i no és el cas.
August 20, 2022
Just on the right side of wry, cantankerous and techy - it could easily have gone the other way and just been overkill. Jack Proctor is a brilliant creation, lost in the bewildering events of being a writer-in-residence (against his will). Kelman really hits the mark with often hilarious results. A strong 4.5, not quite 5 stars.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews