Just Go Down to the Road: A Memoir of Trouble and Travel

Description

'A memoir which is also a work of art' - Allan Massie, The Scotsman The story begins with Campbell, aged 14, in a police cell in Glasgow. He's been charged with stealing books - five Mickey Spillane novels and a copy of Peyton Place. At 15, he became an apprentice printer, but gave that up in order to 'go on the road', fulfilling the only ambition he ever had while a pupil at King's Park Secondary School in Glasgow - to be what RLS called 'a bit of a vagabond'. On his hitchhiking journeys through Asia and North Africa, an interest in music, reading and writing grew. Campbell also took a keen interest in learning from interesting people. In 1972 he worked on a kibbutz, living in the neighbouring cabin to Peter Green, the founder and lead guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, with whom he formed a two-man musical combo. At the same time, he was part of a group of aspiring writers in Glasgow, including Tom Leonard. His literary heroes of the time were Alexander Trocchi and John Fowles: Campbell tracked them down to their homes and wrote extensively about both. The stories Campbell are recounted in this book. A crowning moment of his life was forming a friendship with the American writer James Baldwin. Campbell visited him more than once at his home in the South of France, and persuaded him to come to Edinburgh for the Book Festival in 1985. Campbell later wrote the acclaimed biography of Baldwin, Talking at the Gates.

James Campbell was born in Glasgow in 1951. Between 1978 and 1982 he was editor of The New Edinburgh Review. He is the author of Invisible Country: A Journey Through Scotland and Gate Fever: Voices from a Prison. He lives in London and was a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His critically acclaimed biography of James Baldwin, Talking at the Gates, was published by Polygon in February 2021.

'This memoir is one of a youth that remains vividly alive in memory, and now comes alive again on the page. It is very Scottish, revealing and yet also restrained in its selection of moments in a life - a memoir which is also a work of art. I hope there will be a sequel' -- Allan Massie * Scotsman * 'This deftly written memoir, like "Lord of the Flies," is about more than it appears to be about. It is the story of a writer finding his own voice. "The hardest thing of all in writing is to sound like yourself," he reflects. "The kind of writing I liked kept its feet on the ground. It was a Scottish style: commonsensical, skeptical, impatient of cant, alert to the value of subterranean humour".' -- Barton Swaim * The Wall Street Journal * 'Just Go Down to the Road brings an exciting time in world and literary history to life. It's a remarkable travel account that began with the simple suggestion: "Just go down to the road, Jim. You'll get a lift"' * Foreword magazine * 'An enthralling and compulsively readable memoir: James Campbell is a marvelously charming teller of his improbable progress from high school dropout to literary critic and intellectual. There is no resisting the humour and modesty, the humanity and tenderness of his vivid account' -- Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction 'Written with clarity, brio and the sometimes rueful introspection of one who has spent much time thinking about his past, Just Go Down to the Road sings with colour and character.' -- Rosemary Goring * Literary Review * 'More than a conventional memoir. It is in part thief's journal... a travelogue, from the blissful days when it was both possible and safe to hitch to the Greek islands, or Israel, or more conventionally to Marrakech... Above all, this is a memoir not so much of trouble - though Campbell acknowledges that but for the grace of literature, trouble might have been his lot - as of opportunity. Campbell joins a line of modern Scots, running from Robert Louis Stevenson to the anarchist vagabond Stuart Christie, who have just gone down to the road and taken it from there' -- Brian Morton * Times Literary Supplement * 'Readers will enjoy the memoir for what it is: an engrossing account of a young man discovering what he wants to do with his life' -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post * 'stylishly written - dusted with delinquency, buffed with bohemianism, cutting into Seventies counterculture' -- David Robinson * Books From Scotland * 'Memoirs of hitchhiking adventures like this make me nostalgic for something I've never nor likely will ever experience' -- Megan Amato * Scottish Field * 'There is plenty of subterranean humour on display in Just Go Down to the Road, much of it to do with the vagrant entourage maintained by the American novelist James Baldwin... Ditto some beguiling glimpses into a bygone world of books' -- DJ Taylor * Spectator * 'An intriguing account of [Campbell's] formative years in Glasgow and elsewhere' -- DJ Taylor * The Tablet *