God's Teeth and Other Phenomena

Jack Proctor, a celebrated older writer and curmudgeon, goes off to residency where he is to be an honoured part of teaching and giving public readings. He soon finds the atmosphere of the literary world has changed since his last foray into the public sphere. Unknown to most and unable to work on his own writing, Proctor is surrounded by a host of odd characters, would-be writers, antagonists, handlers, and members of the elite House of Art and Aesthetics. He finds himself driven to distraction (literally in a very tiny car). This is a story of a man attempting not to go mad when forced to stop his own writing to coach others to write.

Proctor's tour of rural places, pubs, theatres, fancy parties, where he is to be headlining as a 'Banker-Prize-Winning-Author', reads like a literary version of Spinal Tap. Uproariously funny, brilliantly philosophical, and gorgeously written, this is James Kelman at his best.

Probably the most influential novelist of the post-war period. - The Times

God's Teeth and Other Phenomena is electric. Forget all the rubbish you've been told about how to write, the requirements of the marketplace, and the much-vaunted 'readability' that is supposed to be sacrosanct. This is a book about how art gets made, its murky, obsessive, unedifying demands, and the endless, sometimes hilarious, humiliations literary life inflicts on even its most successful names. - Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians

James Kelman is an extraordinary writer—smart and incisive, witty and warm, with prose so alive it practically sparks off the page. God's Teeth and Other Phenomena is one of the wisest, funniest, and most brutally honest books I've read in ages. I loved it. - Molly Antopol, author of The Unamericans