Alex

Old Boy is mint. The orginal Korean version that is. Got it on Betamax

Difficult to know whether you believe this to be the case or if you're not as daft as you're making out. Erring towards the former tbh. You're arguing with people who know what they're talking about after already admitting (and taking some sort of perverse pride in the fact) you don't and claim it's just baiting when people argue with you? It's certainly 'classic' behaviour anyway.

And facts

I like how he seems to back up what he says, rather than the rhetoric from Taylor. Me and Tooj were on about that on Saturday night. But agree I it's too early for him to get the armband. He needs to concentrate on being a consistent first team performer first.

Vote Corbyn, vote Tory

Btw, if you like a bit of Irvine Welsh, have a go at Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon

I guess he was an influence. I'd never heard of him before 94 but you would tend to study Scottish Literature more in Scottish schools. I guess Alexander Trocchi would've been too, although he didn't write in the dialect. The difference between Welsh and someone like Kelman (How Late it was, How Late is the only novel of the latter I've read) is that the former is accessible and popular. That Kelman book was like wading through treacle. I read it at university for a course of post-War British novels. It was only picked, I would suggest, because of its recent award. I don't think a single person I spoke to enjoyed it if they were being honest.

Tell you what, tell me what you thought about the novel and why you thought it was a worthy winner.

I think it's pretty obvious he wouldn't have. It was shit as well. You read it like?

Funny you should mention that. Do you think Kelman would've won the Booker Prize if Trainspotting hadn't come out the year before?

This thread

Forgot about that.

Well, I suspected you'd try to rather than display any interest in discussing the book. Looks like I got that right

Aye, I obviously wasn't inferring it was the first book to do those things, but the combination of the style, subject matter, complexity and, at the same time accessibilty to lots of people who (quite understandably) found lots of literature boring as fuck is what combined to make it unique and important. Basically it was funny, clever and different without being up it's own arse

That repsonse is precisely why I didn't answer you tbh.

Obviously I haven't read every British novel in that period but I can't think of anything else that had an impact like it. It was innovative in its use of Scots dialect, its subject matter and it had a massive appeal beacuse of that to people who wouldn't normally read novels of its complexity. Its timing was culturally important too. The British literature scene was pretty staid at that time and a novel of that depth and complexity being based around working class 'low lifes', for want of a better phrase, was (and to an extent still is) revolutionary. It gave the scene a massive boot up the arse

Wouldn't be far off yours. Would like to see Bell-Drummond open with Cook, Hales at 3 then shuffle everybody up a place with Rashid/Wood/Finn vying for the final spot based on form / pitch etc.

Bore off, man.

Plunkett or Wood are good shouts and either should bat higher than Broad

Odd

Agree about re-reading Trainspotting. Probably the most important British novel of the last 25 years.

Fair do's Doesn't solve the problem that England rely far too heavily on Root and Cook as far as the top order batting goes though. That and hoping that long tail keeps wagging.