Where Do You Stand on Charm?

This is the clever book previously alluded to and I've been working my way through it. It's in three parts and the first part is called  Hugh McDiarmid and the Arts of Modern Scotland.

 

That's not terribly surprising of course. Hugh McDiarmid stands, a monolith,  in the history of  20th Century Scotland. No consideration of language, poetry, prose, criticism or politics in modern Scotland would be complete without reference to him. As he would have been the first to point out.

 

The thing is I have a problem with McDiarmid, and the problem is that, given what I know about the man,  I suspect that I would have loathed him on sight, and with what I would consider to be good reason.

 

But anyone who ever expresses doubt about McDiarmid is instantly silenced by others  who knew him, and assert that the doubters would, on meeting the great man, be captivated by his charm and end up an admirer like everyone else.

 

I don't buy that, and not because I think McDiarmid was devoid of charm. By all accounts he had it by the bucketload. But I don't like charm. I don't trust people who have it. It's insincere and specious and those who possess it use it ruthlessly to gain their own ends. I've been in rooms with charmers, watched them work and resisted them and yes, if you do that, you end up looking like a sulky teenager while everyone else gives them what they want and wonders why  you have to be such a wet blanket. 

 

But I'd rather be a wet blanket with her wits about her than someone who despised herself for falling for a charmer's hypocrisy.

 

So although the next few years will undoubtedly change my mind about lots of things, and I may well end up an admirer of McDiarmid's work, nothing will ever convince me that I'd have found him personally congenial.

 

Charm? Not a recommendation in my book.