(This has got a couple of expletives in it. Deal with it)
https://107cowgate.com/2012/08/17/kelman-edinburgh-writers-conference/
This is the reference; checking the footnotes points the reader to my interview:
So that's a Booker Prize-winning legendary Scottish writer referencing me talking about Alex Trocchi and Hugh MacDiarmid meeting. It's obvious why I am pleased with that. Now, this is the 2009 interview Kelman is referencing. It's one of my all-time favourite things I have ever done out of literary passion, and I'm still extremely proud of it:
https://realitystudio.org/interviews/interview-with-alex-neish-editor-of-jabberwock-and-sidewalk/
Last year there was a centenary event in Glasgow for Alex Trocchi's birth, Alexander Trochi at 100: A Symposium. I never heard anything about it until yesterday. It was held by the Association For Scottish Literature (ASL), and the Andrew Hook Centre For American Studies, whatever the Hell that is. The event was to "re-examine and celebrate Trocchi's complex literary contributions, cementing and solidifying his place in Scottish literary history," as the ASL put it. As distasteful an individual as I find Trocchi to be, for reasons anybody who knows anything about him will understand, I still think he is worth studying and has a real place in Scottish literary history. Obviously. So I found a text of a talk, given at the event, somewhat bizarre, disgusting, and anger-making, for reasons I will articulate in a moment:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/06/15/cosmonauts-and-stale-porridge-alexander-trocchis-influence-on-radical-scottish-media/
The talk was given by Mike Small, a journalist whose name I vaguely recognised from the Scottish media, and whom I had very briefly been in contact with years ago. Scotland is a small country, no pun intended, and the same newspaper names crop up again and again. As well as a working hack, he's also the editor of Bella Caledonia, the site that published the talk text. I was not aware of this until I researched him today. I don't pay much attention to Scottish cultural and political websites, to be honest. And the newspapers are mostly just comical unionist rags, spewing constant hatred towards Scotland, fourth estate agents advertising the country as a nice getaway/retirement home for white settler (as a Northern friend's mother calls them) middle class English pricks. Small also contributes to The National, owned by the same people putting out unionist dross like the Herald. I regard The National as a children's crusade comic spewing warmed-over banal left-wing extremist Americana, a tiny-circulation self-righteous joke. Ho-hum.
But why am I vexed here? Well, it's very simple. By a process of revisionism by omission Small, in the talk he gave, completely erased my name from Scottish literary research history, in a small (pun intended) way. Let me elaborate. About a quarter of the way down, Small said the following in the talk:
"Neish was a Scotsman who put out an issue of the Edinburgh University Review entitled Jabberwock in 1959 with the superb first chapter of Naked Lunch in it: 'And Start West'.
Asked what was the state of Scottish writing at that time? (sic) He replied:
"It was very introverted. Trocchi had not been recognised as the most important writer of the last 50 years - nobody had shown such ability since Lewis Grassic Gibbon in a completely different context. Scottish literature was still in the mists and for minorities. I still find it amazing that I was living in Edinburgh at the same time as that genius Sorley MacLean and knew nothing about him. He was not recognised in Scottish Renaissance circles which just about sums up their vision."
Asked how he met Trocchi, he replied:
"We were very friendly with John Calder and his then wife Bettina and when visiting London would stay with them. A frequent guest was Samuel Beckett who was charming and ordinary - and had a great fascination with bicycles. I persuaded John to publish Robert Creeley and then Alex Trocchi whom he had met in Edinburgh after he jumped bail (financed by Norman Mailer who agreed) and escaped to Canada where he caught a fishing boat to Aberdeen. This was Cold Turkey. He stayed with us in our Edinburgh flat but was soon back destroying himself. Before that once we went out to Milne's Bar where MacDiarmid was holding court. I introduced Trocchi to him and the hostility was immediate. MacDiarmid as always had too much to drink, had never read anything by Trocchi, and was soon calling him "an illiterate cunt." Trocchi looked down at him and said simply "You have a peculiar sense of gender."
(I still love that hilarious Trocchi zinger, especially as the two melodrama queens became backslapping penpals after it)
Now. If you read my interview with Alex Neish, the above lengthy paragraphs may seem familiar - they are lifted verbatim from my interview. Even the first introductory paragraph, not purporting to be from the Neish interview, is lifted word-for-word from the same source. Now, Small does say that he's quoting from a nebulous "interview" from "2018", but you'll notice one thing - he does not mention my name once, does not accredit me at all. He does not even link to the interview, as he does with other stories there. This is ironic because he links to, and accredits, work on BC republished by Jed Birmingham, a great guy and friend of mine whom I put in contact with BC when I communicated with...Mike Small in 2018. BC's logic in doing this was obvious, and sound: they wanted to republish material from Reality Studio, the world's top William S Burroughs website, that pertained to Scotland.
And why had BC been in contact with me? Because they were asking to republish my Alex Neish interview. Which they did, in 2018:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/05/28/interview-with-alex-neish-editor-of-jabberwock-and-sidewalk/
This explains the '2018' tag Small evasively mentions in his BC-published talk text, but the actual initial Reality Studio interview was done in 2009, for the 50th anniversary of the publication of Naked Lunch in Paris by Maurice Girodias. So the plot sickens and thickens: here we have an ostensibly professional journalist and editor indulging in literary revisionism by omission. He neglects to mention my name, or link to the interview I graciously allowed him to republish (it was also republished in an issue of The Poets Republic in 2019; the Scottish literary and poetic crew loved it), as he had done with another piece done by somebody from the same website both initial pieces had come from! Mental! Shaking my head here.
You know, I have absolutely no idea why Mike Small did not want to mention my name with regard to my fine piece and, indeed, actively avoids mentioning me after I had allowed him to republish the piece in the first place! He even plagiarised me! Talk about unprofessional! Jealousy? Who knows. Or cares. Mind you, it's not the first time that has happened to me with regard to that interview. In 2015 another plagiarist hack, Stephen Burgen, nicked bits of my interview and published them as his 'own' work in the UK-government-agitprop-publishing comic The Scotsman. See if you can spot the lifts:
https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/scots-literary-maverick-alex-neish-salutes-heroes-1505954
When I emailed him and asked if he'd simply credit me, this clown just never bothered emailing me back. I mean, let him get on with it, but it's really pathetic behaviour. It's clear where Burgen got the idea for his own piece from - mine. Nobody had ever interviewed Neish before, and I would imagine Burgen just thought ah, the Hell with it, I'm in Barcelona, nobody will ever see it, I'll get away with it. Sad, small man. Pun intended.
So what do we have here? A clumsy, ludicrous attempt by somebody I helped out by allowing his site to republish a piece of my work to remove my name from it, sorta-presenting it as being an original BC piece when it was anything but. Even that wouldn't be so bad but for the fact that the interview is still up on their site, as I linked to above! Talk about a slap in the face, eh, Small? I'm good to you, you spit in my face, don't credit me, steal chunks of my work...and yet still keep it up for clicks on your bloody site! Ye've goat a helluva bloody cheek, man, a real bloody brass neck, ah'm telling ye!
I have zero idea why Small would even do that to me, because I have never said a word out of place to him in my life. I do know there are people in the Scottish literary scene who don't like me. The feeling is mutual, and I find it hilarious. Couldn't care less. I can only surmise that somebody else intimately involved with BC (who I won't name - not interested in handbag-slapping feuds) whom I used to not get along with (it was so long ago I can't even really remember details; not heard from them in years) just wanted me to be persona non grata around the precious, precocious wee literary scene. Maybe I'm wrong. I couldn't care less, ultimately. But Small still mucked me around, bottom line. What I would like him to do is please take down my interview. He even used the exact same illustrative photos from my original RS interview on the site when he republished it, and one of them in his talk! If he can't be bothered crediting me when he quotes my work, he's damned well not getting any more fucking clicks out of it.
Ironically, the Association for Scottish Literature, whom I had never even heard of, frankly, posted a link on Facebook, as I just found out, advertising the BC piece in 2018. It's kind of like doubly getting the boot in, somehow, as that's who the Trocchi talk was done for:
But that hardly matters, really. Ultimately none of it really matters. What just gets me is the gall of some people to think they can just steal from people, spit on them, and they will never find out - especially when that person has been nothing but amenable to them and allowed them to republish his work! There's nothing else that can be said, really.
Except for one thing.
Mike Small's talk was about how Scottish literature has basically, in the views of some, tried to erase the contributions of Alex Trocchi. "It's noted that Scotland has a problem with institutional memory loss," as he puts it in the talk. To have the exact same thing done, in a small way, to myself, only seven months ago quite simply beggars belief. It renders the concepts of irony and hypocrisy almost redundant! I am actually sitting here laughing in genuine bemused amusement as I type this, shaking my head at the hilariously sad parochial Scottish literary scene circus tent aspect of it all. I stay away from all artistic scenes. I know a couple of Scottish poets and writers. Zero interest in anything or anybody beyond that. I write about whatever eccentric personal interest-obsession takes my twisted wee fancy. But that doesn't mean I am going to allow wannabe gatekeepers who should know better to just spit on me for whatever petty personal reasons they have. The material I have presented speaks for itself.
And on that note:
The Neverloving End.
Peeyes, Mike Small: if you need any more uncredited Trocchi material to use, you may not have seen the extremely obscure stuff I dug up out of my own volition, as usual, a few years ago. Fire on! 😁
https://whorattledyourcage.blogspot.com/2021/07/alex-trocchi-uncosm0politan-scum.html
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