Let it Rip! and Don't Explain! Were the slogans Andrew Murray Scott pinned on his wall while writing Tumulus. When you've studied English literature from a critical perspective you need aides memoires like that to keep the "rules" at bay. Did he succeed? You'll have to read the book to find out. Certainly the judges - David Robb, Liz Lochhead and Marion Sinclair - were impressed. They described it as a "tour de force". And novelist Carl MacDougall a former University writer in residence and an early influence wrote of it: "An alluring puzzle, wrapped in an impressively entertaining and poignant first novel that is not only experimental and packed with good yarns, but succeeds in placing 1960s Dundee on the edge of expectancy, making it as hopeful as London, New York or Paris. No wonder Stella searches for the author."
Murray Scott himself is more circumspect. "I'm not very good at talking about it," he confessed. Maybe he took that last slogan to heart? What is clear is that he wanted to "get away from all that nitpicking stuff" - by which we take it he means literary theory - and declare "the hell with the rules"; to write in fact, a post-Lanark novel, but based on his own home town, Dundee.
It was not Murray Scott's first book by any means. He had already published a string of non-fiction titles including biographies of characters as diverse as Alexander Trocchi and Grahame of Claverhouse; a work on tartan terrorism and an account of Dundee's history; while unpublished forays into fiction were piling up under his bed.
But, in his own words: "Before, I had been plodding along, constructing things from underneath as it were. What I gained from studying English literature was an overarching way of looking at things, a sense of meta-narrative if you like. I felt that if I could get a huge theme then I could create everything from that, and once I got that right, everything else would just fall into place."
As soon as he says this Murray Scott senses, with awful Scottish self deprecation that he may be overstepping the modesty mark. He corrects the balance: "But that English literature background also gave me a desire to show off how much I knew. The book is littered with literary reference points, with in-jokes, and some I regret already."
For the record Murray Scott (45) entered the University as a mature student, to take English and modern history in which he graduated with first class honours in 1997. Along the way he names among the many lecturers who influenced him Chris Whatley, David Robb, Chris Davey, Chris Storrs, Keith Williams and Jim Stewart.
Murray Scott's winning of the Dundee Book Prize has a certain eerie resonance about it. Almost as if it brought a range of different and singular notes in his life together into one major chord. Take for example the material. It starts with a manuscript found in a loft. Murray Scott's father, Charles Cameron Scott, was a lecturer in bacteriology at the University of Dundee where he made his mark as something of an inventor. He was perhaps best known for inventing an air flow system for operating theatres which sucked air in from above and blew it out at the sides, reducing the opportunity for airborne infection. Long after he died in 1973 - "When I was a student I used to go past his old office at the back of the College Shop every day where he used to make coffee on a bunsen burner in a little pot with a long handle" - Murray Scott found a video and some papers in the family loft. The video was a clip of a Nationwide programme featuring his father; the papers a pile of short stories he had written revealing a creative side of his life that his son had never known.
Or look at Murray Scott's own background. He was a Dundee novel waiting to happen. Steeped in Dundee history and literature - while writing Tumulus he was teaching writing courses at Dundee College - with a passion for the place that had been unrequited by his efforts in the non-fictional direction. Enter the £6,000 Dundee Book Prize. He turns to fiction more resolute than ever to explore what he really needs to say about a city that has clearly got under his skin.
Then there is the prize dimension. Murray Scott is no stranger to prizes - almost a natural collector of them, in fact. Look at the list: the Sloan Prize for his second year student attempts at writing about Kansas City in pure Scots; The Carlaw Martin Prize for history; the Samuel Selvon Memorial Prize for English … Another resonance is struck.
Tumulus - the name refers to an ancient burial mound - is a tale of two parts. The first tells the story, via the narrator. The second investigates it. The book details bohemian Dundee through the 1960s and 70s to the present day blending fact, myth, pub tales and autobiographical account. Says the author: "It is about being young and exuberant and much of it concerns young people partying in squalid flats in the West End and hanging around in the pubs and cafes including the student union, Art College, Laings, Frews, Mennies, the Old Tav… amidst the ambience and the music of the times." But it also moves in the world of the Picts.
The novel is woven around a manuscript discovered in mysterious circumstances in an attic. This autobiographical record of a Dundee artist is investigated by council archivist Stella Auld. Eventually Stella's life and the most basic facts of the manuscript are undermined by alternative versions leading to a suspense filled conclusion.
This sense of history's long fingers reaching from the deep past to touch the present is fundamental in the psyche of Murray Scott. History is almost palpable as far as he is concerned. Standing stones, old manuscripts, museum artefacts whisper almost inaudibly of forgotten times, of deeds, incidents and characters with whom he strains through his writings to connect. It is perhaps his own particular strand of the great metaphysical tradition of Scottish literature.
But as we talk over coffee in the new Dundee Contemporary Arts, all that seems far away. He has already finished the first draft of a "kind of a sequel" to Tumulus, called Estuary Blue. In fact it will be the third book in the trilogy, with the middle book yet to be written. In Estuary Blue the first person narrator from Tumulus is back as a rootless and shiftless character. As one might guess from the title, the book is based around the Firth of Tay with two sets of characters - the "downshifters" - a group of exhippies, environmentally conscious intellectuals based at Errol and the chancers - a rather nasty bunch of opportunists and property developers. The overarching theme relates to the complexities of estuarial flow. An animated Murray Scott embarks on a technical treatise on fluid mechanics which seems to boil down to the fact that whereas rivers flow only one way, estuaries also have tides pulling them sideways which means you have "two momentums". This, he says is reflected in the four strands of the book which is also loaded with liquid references, even down to the choice of the pub names and music.
The last, or as an Alasdair Gray fan, middle volume will be "the book I have tried many times to write - an out and out full blooded onslaught on London".
Murray Scott admits he has no problem in creating quantities of text. "I can crack out a chapter a day no problem." The real work for him lies in reworking - "getting rid of the rubbish. I produce so much rubbish!" And that, he says, is the trap. "You can sit down and plan a book and write it and think that it's all right because I kept to the plan. But there's a laziness creeps in, a great laziness. You find yourself line editing and fiddling about with minor things when what you should be saying is: 'Rewrite - half of this is rubbish!'"
We part, and I'm left with an impression of a restless intellect, of energy and ideas and a certain downbeat Scottish self consciousness which makes an uneasy alliance of self mockery and sensitivity. Above all of a man driven, a man still hungry for something - success? Recognition? I sense we will hear more of Andrew Murray Scott.
Andrew Murray Scott (MA English/Modern History1997) won the first
Dundee Book Prize with his novel Tumulus due to be published by Polygon in
February 2000.
