Literary crusade by the 'clever one' of the family

speakin' Fife? And teachers at school kept saying: how come you're so

intelligent? Is there anything in the family?''

Dr Anne Smith, writer and founder of The Literary Review is still

speaking Fife, and maintains that there were a great deal of brains in

the six-strong mining family in Leven. It was a question of getting the

chance. At the crucial age of 15 she was taken out of Buckhaven High by

her mother.

But the #2.18.4d a week she was earning as a dental nurse wasn't much

of a contribution to the household economy, so she was allowed to return

to school to take her Highers.

''My grandad said to my mother: are you sure it's Anne that's the

clever one? She canna be, she's got such a pleasant face. As she set off

for Edinburgh University to read English Literature, his concession to

her achievement was: ''If you get me a book on how tae write a letter,

ah'll write tae ye, hen.''

She did a Ph.D at Edinburgh on The Novel of Factory Life, 1832-1855.

Though there are no novels on this theme in the Scottish tradition, her

subject allowed her to do research on self-taught working men,

especially Hugh Miller, the Cromarty stonemason. Has her doctorate been

of any practical benefit?

''It gives a certain mental training. It gives a great tolerance for

frittering about, searching for this wee article here and that wee

article there, and when you finally find them, they aren't worth the

reading. It's a training in patience.''

After writing radio scripts for schools, she became a publisher's

editor. Her work at Vision Press was mainly on academic literary

criticism. ''I was fed up with the nit-picking touchiness of academics.

I could see no point whatsoever in academic literary criticism. I still

feel 90% like that; it's a kind of self-generating industry that throws

so little light on the actual text.'' The last book she rejected at

Vision Press was a study of the influence of the outside toilet on Alan

Sillitoe's works.

With The Times Literary Supplement on strike, she saw an opening, and

in 1979 used her savings to start The Literary Review. Was she

determined not to let the academic critics have their long-winded say in

her new magazine?

''I tried to get away from that, but found it very difficult because

very few people these days who aren't academics have the confidence to

criticise literary texts. I tried to find academics who could write

intelligently and who had still some degree of gut involvement in what

they were reading. I was never satisfied with it; I never felt I'd got

nearly far enough away from the academic approach.''

We discuss the state of literary criticism in Scotland. She agrees

with me ''wholeheartedly'' that in modern Scottish literature, critics

seem frightened to criticise. ''I used to feel that as regards Scottish

critics towards Scottish writers, the geese were all swans. That's a

ghetto mentality and it's very bad.

''On the other hand, if a Scottish writer's recognised outside

Scotland he comes back as a Messiah, like Kenneth White. A Scot has to

make it down south as best, or abroad at the very least, before he can

be accepted in Scotland as a success. Because of The Literary Review, if

I go down to London, everybody knows who I am, but nobody knows me up

here.''

We also discuss the patronising attitude of certain Scottish reviewers

towards contemporary working-class fiction. ''They're quite incapable of

criticising working-class fiction, and that's where the fallacy about

this critical detachment is exposed. It's the dog dancing on its hind

legs.

''There's this awful schism in Scotland between the middle-class

English culture that's overlaid on us, and the real vigorous culture of

the working-classes that's just stirring. What that attitude has done to

Scottish writers is to cause them to romanticise the working-classes in

order for them to be acceptable to the middle-class. That's tragic,

because to romanticise is to falsify.''

When she ran out of money she looked for a backer to keep The Literary

Review going. A journalist friend pointed her in the direction of a

Palestinian, Naim Attallah. ''I had no idea at the time that I had a

saleable commodity on my hand.''

She sold Attallah The Literary Review for #1 and edited it for him for

18 months until she was sacked towards the end of 1981. Disillusionment

over the Review fiasco interfered with her own creative plans, hence the

reason why a new novel hasn't appeared since the acclaimed The Magic

Glass. But she's working on a novel set in Fife and Edinburgh, among

other places, and there's a completed manuscript in her flat.

''In between times I fancied writing as comic novel somewhere between

Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse, letting go my English, constructing

long elegant ridiculous sentences just for the hell of it. I've never

taken it to a publisher.''

Another current project is a joint one with Iain Finlayson, A

Dictionary of Scottish Quotations, due for publication by Chamber next

September. ''It's an exciting job because there's so much marvellous

stuff.'' Her favourite quotation so far? ''There is something

incompatible between greatness and the provostship of a Scottish

burgh.''

One source is Neil Munro, and especially The Para Handy stories. She

has pages and pages of quotes to choose from. She would love to write a

biography of Munro. ''Why is he so undervalued? The Para Handy stories

are sheer comic genius. I know of nobody who's more funny than Neil

Munro, or who has a more subtle and economic observation of character.''

September is a major month for Anne Smith. A book of interviews with

octogenarian women, Women Remember, is coming from Routledge. At the

same time she becomes chief executive of Book Trust Scotland from which

Mary Baxter is retiring, having given years of dedicated service.

An educational charity founded in 1925 as the National Book Council,

Book Trust has done so much for the promotion and enjoyment of

literature, its efforts on behalf of children's books particularly

worthy of praise.

Though she has a fortnightly column in Observer Scotland, and is much

in demand as a reviewer in prestigious publications like The Listener,

she's going to Book Trust Scotland in order to have ''my bread and

butter more secure.'' But there's a wider concern, as one would expect

from a person of Anne Smith's calibre.

''The job attracted me because it's a non-partisan job to do with

books. You're promoting reading; you're not promoting a publisher or a

point of view. There's a fair degree of autonomy in the job, which suits

me.'' She hopes to continue to do some journalism.

Her new job means moving from a city whose environment she has come to

love. ''But, because of the people, I prefer Glasgow. The snobbery of

Edinburgh is palpable.''

The fact that The Literary Review is an established and highly

regarded title wherever there is commitment to literature speaks for

Anne Smith's achievement. Everyone who cares for reading can be

confident that this most likeable woman will keep Scots of all ages

interested in books. If her grandad was still around, he would have

written her a letter, admitting that the lass from Leven was a ''clever

one.''