File:Todd-mcewen-mcx.jpg

The Cover of MCX by Todd McEwen, published 1990 by SECKER AND WARBURG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX1cHMSnjcg

In the novel Todd McEwen balances the two oldest cliches about Scotland, and finds the truth somewhere between. Aware of the nation's deep schizophrenia he has written on one hand a corrosive satire of a grey and sodden place full of drinkers crippled by Calvanism and anal retention, and on the other, a glorious literary send-up of Scots romanticism - - where the glens are always alive with the sound of bagpipes, and the baronial halls are decked in claymores and tartan. Somewhere between the two stands the round-shouldered, uncomfortable figure of McX, squinting through cigarette smoke: a man of our times, a good Scot, a kind of hero.

McX is unhealthy, unsightly, unloved, and as if that wasn't enough, he comes from Fife. His grim existence centres on The Auld Licht, a dank and malodorous public house haunted by the dank, malodorous and dreadful McPint - - a man who survives gleefully on a diet of beer, peanuts and pornography.

McX meanwhile dreams of fair women and requited love in a rural idyll - - a Scotland without rain, without repression, and without McPint. he resolves, quite simply, to escape.

Scottish Books Todd McEwen Books