Duncan McLean’s Followers (12)

Duncan McLean

Born

Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Genre

Fiction, Travel

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Duncan McLean (b. 1964) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright, and editor. His debut, Bucket of Tongues won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1993.

McLean has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines, and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co, a street theatre and comedy act with agitprop tendencies. The Merry Macs won various awards, and were twice nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award.

In the 1990s, McLean was part of a loose grouping of writers centred on Edinburgh whose characters were mainly poor, working class and young, whose themes were drugs, drink, dance music, violence, and alienation, and who took their inspiration variously from the Glaswegian writers of t Duncan McLean (b. 1964) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright, and editor. His debut, Bucket of Tongues won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1993.

McLean has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines, and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co, a street theatre and comedy act with agitprop tendencies. The Merry Macs won various awards, and were twice nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award.

In the 1990s, McLean was part of a loose grouping of writers centred on Edinburgh whose characters were mainly poor, working class and young, whose themes were drugs, drink, dance music, violence, and alienation, and who took their inspiration variously from the Glaswegian writers of the previous generation, notably James Kelman, and from overseas writers like Richard Brautigan and Knut Hamsun.

In December 1990, with the writer James Meek, McLean set up and ran the Clocktower Press, a small but influential publishing house, which helped bring a new generation of Scottish writers to wider attention. McLean, Meek and the artist Eddie Farrell invested £50 each to print the first booklet, Safe/Lurch, with both writers contributing a story and Farrell illustrating the cover. After the first three booklets, Meek moved to Kiev and McLean went on to publish seven more, including the first separately-published extracts of what would later become Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. The fifth of the Clocktower series, it was printed in April 1992 in an edition of 300 under the title Past Tense: four stories from a novel.

In 1992, McLean published his first book, a collection of short stories called Bucket of Tongues, and since then has published several more books, including the acclaimed coming-of-age novel Blackden and a collection of plays, entitled Plays:One. In 1995, he published the novel Bunker Man and in 1998 his travelogue Lone Star Swing was published, which saw McLean tracing the roots of country music precursor Bob Wills.
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Duncan McLean’s books

Average rating: 3.52 · 483 ratings · 54 reviews · 32 distinct works

	Bunker Man 3.28 avg rating — 155 ratings — published 1995 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bucket of Tongues 3.63 avg rating — 96 ratings — published 1992 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lone Star Swing 3.92 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 1997 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blackden (Norton Paperback) 3.64 avg rating — 58 ratings — published 2000 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ahead of its Time 4.11 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	تنها چیز قطعی by Duncan McLean, نورا موسوی‌نیا 3.15 avg rating — 13 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	ترجیح می‌دم کور بشم by Duncan McLean, نورا موسوی‌نیا (Translator) 1.90 avg rating — 10 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Plays 1: Julie Allardyce / One Sure Thing / Rug Comes to Shuv / Blackden / I'd Rather Go Blind 2.57 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1999 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Aalst 2.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2007 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Description of the largest ship in the world by Duncan McLean, A sailor 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2010 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Duncan McLean (?)

“Or even a really good hug! Jesus, your arms around another person, someone's arms round you, tight, so tight. Cause it's impossible to be happy all the time, to have a happy whole life, but you can be happy in bursts: with a really good hug you could be happy for...for half an hour maybe, and then that would be the best way, not to waste your time trying to get permanently happy, but just the next half-hour you are happy for, well immediately after, just fucking kill yourself.”
― Duncan McLean

tags: bucket-of-tongues

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Duncan McLean’s Followers (12)

Duncan McLean

Combine EditionsDuncan McLean’s books

Combine Editions
Duncan McLean’s books