Admittedly I entered the book launch with free drink on my mind. I passed a guy in the corridor giving a side kiss to a woman dressed in new vintage attire. He wore tight jeans and a drum sergeant major jacket. I rolled my eyes and mentally noted giving it 10 minutes. The publisher soon addressed the room and gave the run down of the evening which included a couple of bands as well as excerpts read out by Bissett. I settled down with my complimentary glass of fizz as the trendy boy from the corridor took to the stage. Alan Bissett began to read.
His first excerpt was set in a Glasgow nightclub; he noted the music playing- a nod to a band he has toured with before. Bissett’s posture relaxed but confident mirrored the description of lead character Charlie Bain perfectly…as did his “pretentious outfit”- the room began to giggle. Taking a deliberate pause he looked up over the book. I was laughing, I liked this man.
As book launches go this was different. Yes, the Waterstones reps were set up in the back corner, but the night was conducted with a likeable energy and genuine appreciation of the musicians and his accompanying performer. Taking to the stage for a closing speech he paused looked around the room and smiled, “I just want to take this all in”. And I just wanted to interview him.

It is hard not to praise Alan Bissett. An author, screen writer and playwright it seems his attempts are successful whenever putting pen to paper. A former English teacher Alan then moved to lecturing in Creative Writing for both Glasgow and Leeds University. He has captured the interest of children and adults alike with reading workshops and his gift for storytelling has translated into a role as a live performer. This encompasses his work in schools, at book festivals and even as a support act for musicians. He is a regular fixture at the literature night Discombobulate {Arches, Glasgow} mixing humour and wit into his readings. His latest work of fiction Death of a Ladies’ Man launched at the Arches at the end of July.

When telling people of the chance of a chat with you, I was intrigued by the reaction. It seems that everyone knows you in one form or another. Musical performer, author, academic, screen writer and even high-school teacher you are a respected figure in several areas, but what came first? And how did it begin?

Well that’s very nice to hear. Boyracers came out when I was 25, which is fairly young for an author, meaning I’ve been on the scene for 8 years now. Even before that, I was teaching in high-schools and universities, and in the 4 year gaps between my books, I’ve kept very busy doing short films, recordings, plays, and countless performances in schools, festivals, libraries, prisons and at music gigs. Basically, I never turned down an opportunity to read, and at one point was doing them almost every day. I guess this is why my name has spread so widely. But as for how it ‘began’? I avoided manual labour by becoming a school teacher. I avoided school teaching by becoming an academic. I avoided academia by becoming a novelist. I avoided novels by becoming a performer.
Basically, as soon as anything starts to get boring, I get the hell out and do something more exciting. My whole life has been about focused skiving.
But for 8 years I’ve been solidly on the road performing to crowds, the same way bands do. That’s why, now that Ladies’ Man has come out, things have gone suddenly big. The audience has been building steadily for yonks, but there was nothing new for them to buy or for the media to latch onto. Now there’s probably too much of it!

You are frequently tagged with the line “born in Falkirk based in Glasgow” how much of an influence has your hometown had on you and your career?

Enormous. The source of my power! Falkirk to me is like New Jersey is to Bruce Springsteen. If you look at the Boss’s early albums, like Born to Run, they’re roaring with the energy of youth, when all you have is your mates, a car, your music, and (too rarely!) girls. That’s the same energy I was trying to get into Boyracers. But then you see Springsteen age and all of his characters get a bit older and things are harder and you realise that those freedoms start to narrow very quickly. Soon, it just becomes about the getting by. So Springsteen sees New Jersey in its totality, and as a prism through which he can give his worldview and talk about ordinary life and humanity to his audience. That’s what Falkirk is to me. It’s the prism. Between Boyracers, Adam Spark, The Shutdown, Times When I Bite, and the novel I have out next year, Falkirk has remained the voice I talk most naturally in. Obviously I’ve been away from there a while, and so there’s a certain fault line where the tectonic plates in your mind don’t quite meet anymore. But that’s okay. The writing will peer down through that gap, and the books will change.

I don’t want to romanticise the place too much. I mean, it’s a Scottish town with many of the constrictions that Scottish towns have, but the personal dramas that people go through there are just as significant as those of people in LA or London, are they not? Life in places like Falkirk is kept largely offstage in print and film, and, coming from that background, I wanted to redress that. It’s as good a place to start looking at the world as any.

That said, Ladies’ Man is a Glasgow book. I did feel I had a big Glaswegian beast seething around in there that wanted to come out in the strange, alien, beautiful, fucked-up way it did in the new book.

So to the book, Death of a Ladies’ Man is your third fictional outing; tell us a bit more about your use of humour as a narrative device?

As the American writer, Jonathan Franzen, once said, ‘I could no more love a humourless book than I could love a humourless woman.’ It’s just vital, I think. Even very dark books like American Psycho, Trainspotting and The Catcher in the Rye are, in their own ways, hilarious. The darker you go, the funnier it has to be; otherwise you’re just bludgeoning people with misery. Also, you can create quite neat effects where you keep the audience light and laughing, then sock them in the mouth when they’re not expecting it. Conversely, you can release tension with a joke. You can just create contrasts and dynamics using humour which you can’t if you’re writing more ‘flatly’.

And is there any personal experience peppering the prose?

I think Falkirk and Glasgow can answer that on my behalf.

Although Death of a Ladies’ Man follows the hedonistic exploits of womaniser Charlie Bain, feminism arguably plays a thematic role. Did you write this with a female audience in mind?

You never write with a specific ‘audience’ in mind, but it does seem that women have reacted to the book more enthusiastically than men. I worried, when I was writing it, that women would accuse me of peddling adolescent, sexist fantasies. Actually, all of the flak has come from men. I think they feel a bit accused by it. I know a guy who said it ‘traumatised’ him! Women, on the other hand, totally get it, and feel it’s a book which is generally on their side. I’m happy at that result.

2009 is said to be ‘your year’ already there are plans for a film version of your Aye Write Festival performance ‘Times When I Bite’. Your play The Ching Room at the Traverse Theatre was well received as was the screening of The Shutdown at the Edinburgh Film Festival, but what for 2010 and beyond?

2009 is just the rehearsal! August 2010 I’ll have another novel out, based around Glasgow Rangers’ disastrous trip to Manchester for the UEFA Cup Final last year. I’m also working with Adam Stafford (director of The Shutdown and frontman of Y’all is Fantasy Island) on a short film he wants to direct about a mining disaster in Falkirk. I’ll be touring my one-woman show, Times When I Bite, round Scotland and hopefully hitting the Fringe with it. There’s a Boyracers film at the script stage. I’ll be writing more new plays, as well as trying to get adaptations of Adam Spark and Ladies’ Man into theatres. And I fancy having a go at more performance-based stuff, maybe even some stand-up or TV presenting. Everything feels possible, just now, it’s great! Speak to me in 2011, when I’m a sad, shrivelled sack of a man…

Oh I certainly doubt that. This last question is on the basis that you are a huge U2 fan; say Bono’s life depended on it you had to choose to teach, write or perform which would it be?

Teaching and performing are the same thing, so I’ll go for writing. Everything flows from that. I’m still happiest moving commas round a page, endlessly, and listening to the music of the (Joshua Tree! Say it!) words. But I dunno. How many commas is Bono’s life worth?

Death of a Ladies’ Man, is on sale and released by Hachette Scotland. alanbissett.com
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This article was published in Scotcampus (Sep 09) scotcampus.com/freshers09