A Son of the Rock

One World Classics, 2008, 158 p.

Another from the list of 100 best Scottish Books. This one was first published in 1954 and amended in 1961.

Young Adam is structured in three sections. In the first we find narrator Jim working on a canal barge on the morning he and bargee Leslie fish a woman’s body from the River Clyde. The day’s events help trigger in Jim a desire for Leslie’s wife Ella. The remainder of this part dwells on the course of the resultant affair. Only once does Jim reminisce on a former girlfriend, Cathie, in an account of their first meeting.

Part two throws in a twist at its outset. Jim was present when the girl whose body he had helped retrieve fell into the water. This revelation immediately calls into question Jim’s motives and veracity. Moreover it was in fact Cathie, whom he claims to have met by chance on the fateful night. That he had ever known her is something he does not mention to the police. Plus he had taken pains to remove the fact of his presence from the scene. Later, he recounts a previous incident in which he had attacked Cathie, yet says they drifted apart a few weeks after. Then too there is his casual treatment of Ella who, the affair having been revealed, expects him to marry her. Her sister Gwendoline is more perceptive but still is not averse to having sex with him herself. Jim’s eye for women – he frequently dwells on their states of dress or, quite often, partial undress – thus becomes a signpost to his possible guilt.

Part three sees Jim attend the murder trial of the entirely innocent man the police have arrested in connection with Cathie’s death. (Only Leslie has been called as a witness.) Jim sends the judge a letter stating his knowledge of the facts of the case but knows it will make no difference.

As is usual with these things it is better to leave Stewart Home’s introduction till after reading the novel. In it he says that in his writing Trocchi was forging a new kind of novel and is important as a proto-postmodernist. Irvine Welsh has called Trocchi “the George Best of Scottish literature.” Whether this is because of his talent or that his compulsions undermined it (or both) is not vouchsafed. The introduction also tells us Young Adam was first published under a pseudonym as a “dirty book.” While there are sex scenes in this edition there is little to justify that tag to modern readers, nothing truly graphic (though Trocchi did write pornography for his 1950s publisher.)

Pedant’s corner:- velours is nowadays more often velour, wains (weans) plus four instances of missing punctuation.