The Red Door Read Free Page A

truly seeks its expression – the hobby of an obsessive wordsmith rather than his vocation . . . But to treat the prose
     fiction as subsidiary – either to earlier models of Scottish fiction or to Crichton Smith’s own poetic creations – is to miss the intensity of his commitment to the
     medium and the significance of his achievement in it.
    Indeed, we do a great disservice to Iain Crichton Smith’s memory by misunderstanding, or downplaying, the role of short stories in his contribution to literature.
    Survival without Error and other stories
(1970) was not Iain’s first short story collection to be published, but it was his first English-language short story
collection. He had won himself considerable recognition in the field of Gaelic literature since the publication of
Bùrn is Aran
(‘Water and Bread’, 1960), a book that,
in its first edition at least, contained both short stories and poems (an indication, perhaps, of the paucity of Gaelic publishing opportunities). He had also published the story collection
An
Dubh is an Gorm
(‘The Black and the Blue’, 1963), two English-language novels (
Consider the Lilies
, 1968, and the underrated
The Last Summer
, 1969), plus a number
of poetry collections.
    Iain wrote far more material in English than he did in Gaelic, but his Gaelic short stories were – and are – held in high esteem and, in contrast with critical responses to his
English-language work, his Gaelic prose is generally viewed among Gaelic speakers at least as favourably as his Gaelic poetry.
    Survival without Error
contains fourteen stories, many of them set in Scotland, and many of them concerned with the ways in which diverse people manage to find their way through
life’s day-to-day impositions and demands, individuals consciously trying to cause but the minimum of fuss and controversy while negotiating the varying weathers of desire and injustice. In
negotiating life this way, the individual often compromises him- or herself to the extent that they are personally diminished, sometimes almost drained of authenticity and true identity.
Survival without Error
is partly an examination of bourgeois values and
mores
– surviving ‘without error’ seems to be an impossibility – but this fine
collection feeds off fighting tensions that are often characteristically and tantalisingly ambiguous.
    The Black and the Red
(1973) is a more diverse short story collection than its predecessor, with stories taking place in, for example, hotels, universities, and World War II trenches.
Certain themes do emerge, however, especially alienation and separation. Characters, as is often the case in Iain’s stories, tend to be somewhat physically passive, though very active
mentally. They seem to be observers, not always fully engaged with their surroundings – attempting to understand, rather than change, the world.
    It is a wonderful collection, and contains some of Crichton Smith’s classic short stories, such as ‘The Dying’, ‘The Telegram’, and the title story. The twenty-one
stories focus primarily, though not exclusively, on themes of identity, exile, and human interaction. The narratives are mediated through a voice that is sometimes realistic and sometimes surreal,
but always recognisably Crichton Smith’s.
    It is a pleasure to make available again the stories from Iain’s subsequent collection,
The Village
(1976).
The Village
partially shares its title with
The Village
and other poems
, one of his finest poetry collections, though it seems, unfairly, to have had little of the latter’s recognition.
    The Village
comprises a series of interlinked tales set in a single Scottish – and, it must be admitted, darkly Lewis-like – community. That the village changes size and
appearance from time to time in no way detracts from the collection. The stories here are concerned with many aspects of insular Scottish life: the personal tensions simmering beneath a social
veneer, the