The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties
Alasdair Gray
 Kelvin, freed from his strict Calvinist upbringing through discovering Nietzsche and 'the divine Ingersoll' in the library of his home town of Glaik, travels to swinging-sixties London to succeed as a television interviewer and newspaper columnist through nothing more than his aptitude for spin and a diabolical will to power, only to return, chastened, to Scotland and to God. Drawing on a mixture of Scottish archetypes and British stereotypes and expressing all the author's cynicism towards religion, the media and the imperial British centre, this brief fable was reportedly inspired by Gray's own visit to London as a struggling artist to record a documentary called Under The Helmet (in which he tried to increase his sales by suggesting that he was dead).