turn the page: alexander trocchi — the scottish beat

I think Alexander Trocchi came to me via John Fante whose Ask The Dust had just been reprinted by Rebel Inc. They had the moody black and white covers and were finally getting the treatment that they deserved after a long time of languishing in obscurity. I went to the library and tried to track down The Book Of Cain, Young Adam and anything else that I could find. What I found was Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds: A Trocchi Reader edited by Andrew Murray Scott (1991) and it gave enough of an idea of his breadth and brilliance to hook me.

Young Adam was made into a film starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton which captured parts of the text — the social reality and the characters contained therein, but it lacked the wonderful poetry of the stories. Trocchi, like some of those in the loose orbit of the Beat generation is in many ways a superior writer to those who are placed higher in esteem by popular culture. Unfortunately there was no large scale renaissance that saw him lifted up and placed where he belongs in the highest echelons of British Literature which seems the preserve of the staid and cobweb bedecked.

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