Kelman is a meticulous chronicler of working class Glaswegian men, raising them from the gutter to give them literary representation. His work draws on the output from both European existentialists and American realists, with a nod to African writers with their verbal rhythms, rather than pay tribute to the English canon.

A collection of short stories, his first work – An Old Pub Near The Angel – was published in America in 1973 by Puckerbrush Press, a one woman operation in Maine. Despite a few cooperatively published works, his breakthrough in the UK would come ten years later with Not Not While The Giro (1983), a further collection of short stories. Beyond that, a series of novels (his fourth, amid much controversy, winning the Booker Prize in 1994), more short tales, and essays.

Almost fifty years on from his first publication he’s still going strong, with four books being released in 2022, all by a radical press in the US. (The U.K., it seems, has mostly washed its hands of his work.)

This book – What I Do (2020) – billed as memoirs is less a biographical chronology than a gathering of mostly old friends by “obituary, memorial, or eulogy”. In discussing writers or political figures that Kelman knew or read we build up a picture of the influences that have shaped him as both writer and person.

In this volume we take in Glasgow’s radical past. But everything is political and Kelman takes us to African writers – Alex La Guma and Amos Tutuola – under apartheid and colonialism – and feminists, June Jordan and Tillie Olsen. The shadow of the Vietnam War is there in the sad story of John Mulligan.

There’s time also for friends and Kelman gives space to a generation of Glasgow’s writers: Jeff Torrington, Agnes Owens, and Tom Leonard. Plus opening it all is memory of Mary Gray Hughes, the American poet that effectively kickstarted his career.

Memoirs it may be, but it’s ultimately less a picture of Kelman than a partial understanding of how he came to be. But it’s thoroughly engaging and any reader will leave with a list of books that need to be explored further.