Page 6 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: At the Foot o’ Yon Excellin’ Brae

Helen MacAlister

‘Man’s one method, whether he reasons or creates, is
to half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of
reality.’ 2
In trying to reason these works, you find
language. Language as process, register and reference.
It identifies. To that extent the works are documents.
But ‘kinship or authenticity does not come from
knowing the facts. Facts can be acquired easily enough.
It comes rather from the attitude of the author to the facts.’ 3
: and so to how a thing is read. By metaphor, the works
can figure with things political and the distinction of traits
& temper.
‘Some time ago a distinguished Scottish writer,
broadcasting on the efforts of his bethren, suggested that
our Scottish countryside had nothing more to give the
indigenous novelist. As if it were a place that had been
skinned, leaving the void beneath. How effectively Mitchell
proceeded to show that so far hardly even the skin had
been affected!’ : and back thereby to how a thing is read.
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1 Alias MacAlias – Hamish Henderson; edited by Alec Finlay,
p52 & p54
2 Robert Louis Stevenson – Ian Bell, p283
3 Belief in Ourselves - Neil Gunn; (The Novel at Home) p116
4 Belief in Ourselves -Neil Gunn; (Nationalism in Writing [on Lewis
Grassic Gibbon]) p88

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