James Campbell (author)
James Campbell is a Scottish writer.
Early life
James Campbell was born in Croftfoot, on the southside of Glasgow.[1] He left school at the age of fifteen to become an apprentice printer.[2] After hitchhiking through Europe, Israel and North Africa,[3] he studied to gain acceptance to the University of Edinburgh (1974–78).[4]
Career
On graduating, he immediately became editor of the
Between 1991 and 1999, he wrote three books linked in theme: Talking at the Gates, Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian and Others on the Left Bank, and This Is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris. In 1993, Campbell's one-man play, The Midnight Hour, about a night in the life of James Baldwin, was staged at the Freedom Theatre, Philadelphia, with Reggie Montgomery in the role of Baldwin.[6] A revised edition of Talking at the Gates, with a new introduction and an interview with Norman Mailer about Baldwin, was published in 2021.
For many years, Campbell worked for the Times Literary Supplement. Between 1998 and 2020, he wrote the weekly NB column on the back page of the TLS, under the pen-name "J.C.". A selection of the columns was published in 2023 under the title NB by J.C.: A Walk through the Times Literary Supplement. Reviewing the collection in the New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote: "one part of the TLS no one skips, in my experience, is the NB column . . . . He was interested in everything."[7] The Herald's reviewer called Campbell "one of Scotland's finest under-recognised writers."[8]
As a writer for the Guardian in the first decade of the present century, he wrote some fifty profiles of literary figures, including
Personal life
Campbell's memoir, Just Go Down to the Road: A Memoir of Trouble and Travel, was published in Britain and the US in May 2022.
Bibliography
- Invisible Country: A Journey Through Scotland (1984)
- Gate Fever: Voices from a Prison (1986)
- Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin (1991; revised and reissued 2021)
- Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian and Others on the Left Bank (1994)
- Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank (US edition of above title, 1995)
- The Picador Book of Blues and Jazz, editor (1995)
- This Is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris (1999)
- Thom Gunn in Conversation with James Campbell (2000)
- Syncopations: Beats, New Yorkers, and Writers in the Dark (2008)
- Just Go Down to the Road (2022)
- NB by J.C.: A walk through the Times Literary Supplement (2023)
References
- ^ Williams, Bob (7 September 2008). "A review of Syncopations: Beats, New Yorkers, and Writers in the Dark by James Campbell". The Compulsive Reader. Retrieved 4 December 2010.
- ^ "My Theft". Areté. Spring/Summer 2018.
- ^ "Philosophy Lesson". Areté. Autumn 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-0571245741.
- ISBN 978-0297788560.
- ^ Zinman, Toby (13 March 1995). "The Midnight Hour". Variety. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 9 December 2023.
- ^ Goring, Rosemary (22 May 2023). "James Campbell is one of Scotland's finest under-recognised writers". The Herald. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
- ^ Munson, Sam (7 September 2008). "The Outsiders' Insider". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
External links
- Meet the Author: James Campbell Discusses NB by J.C. Meet the Author: James Campbell Discusses NB by J.C., 2023 video
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