The Sound of My Voice by Ron Butlin (1987)

I need to posit two scenarios to get at this one. Scenario One: BBC Scotland, 1978ish, a commissioning process for a series of one hour TV plays on social issues. Scenario Two: a creative writing class 'senior project'. Weave these two together and we're virtually there. I think the press for this one is most unkind to the author, delivering expectations of grand brilliance and mind-elevating poetry which simply are not here. What is here, however, is a good apprentice piece. This is a novel which speaks of a mid-life alcoholic who has not yet come to a full realisation of his circumstances. Morris Magellan works in middle management in a biscuit factory in a Scots city in the 70s sometime, and has got to the point where he's beginning to slip drinks in between most activities, including drinks. Butlin has a neat knack with ways of tracing the steps of this process. He illustrates it with, for example, a vision of Morris feeling the need to 'clear the mud off everything', which only a drink will do in his mindscape, or of him drinking the ocean of emotion he feels he's been immersed in all his life dry. The whole setup has a simple, staccato, "problem play" feeling; this could almost be backstory for a much more modern crime drama - this family, updated, could be the surrounds of a red herring on Silent Witness, until the real psychopath turns up. Elegiac moments, lost in a slight mistiness, moody sideways shots of kids playing in a back yard, a discarded bottle glinting under a bush, Boards of Canadaesque soundtrack...The family are 'stock characters' in essence - the unplumbable, sometimes viciously angry, sometimes endlessly forgiving wife Mary - unplumbable unfortunately because she's not really there to be understood. The two youngish children are very aptly named 'the accusations' which is a fine notion, beginningly elaborated, but goes no further. Morris' associates and helpmates at the factory are in the same vein, but it's a credit to Butlin that he tries to inject some almost-humour into the scenes here, and appropriately it's a humour which quickly slips lurchingly into awkwardness and social pariahdom in a miasma of alcoholic fumes. The background to Morris' mindknot is again very sketchy - there are a few 'shots' of bewildered childhood and a silent domineering father. There's a skeleton here, and some of the muscles and tendons are showing up, have some heft about them, but the big, bright, soulful human essence is yet to come. I look forward to reading it when it does. I think there's been a temptation in some circles to see the simpleness of this as part of its excellence; the difference between workmanlike ordinariness and virtuous simplicity is the telling one - that's the transformation needed.