Abstract

Duncan Bush’s 1991 novel Glass Shot registers one of the key historical moments in the UK economy's uneven transition from coal to oil: the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike. Narrated by car-mad Cardiff tyre fitter, Stew Boyle, who drives a large American car around south Wales in the summer of 1985, the novel juxtaposes a residual society founded on coal mining communities against an emergent neoliberal culture based on the individual 'freedom' afforded by the motor car. This article takes a petrocritical approach to Glass Shot, contending that it critiques a US-inspired individualism which, when adopted and promoted by the Thatcher government, lays the ideological groundwork for the attack on collective solidarity, for the ‘breaking of the miners’ and the neoliberal economy that would follow. This individualism is closely associated with the lifestyle choices afforded by petroleum-based products, not least the motor car. The article adds a Welsh dimenion to the emerging corpus of literary petrocritical studies, and brings a particular focus on the literary representation of the energy transition from coal to oil. As we embark on another energy transition - this time from oil to renewables - Glass Shot is a bleak reminder of the need to put community and social justice at the heart of any change.

Keywords: Duncan Bush, Glass Shot, coal, Welsh Writing in English, oil, petrofiction, energy transition, neoliberalism

How to Cite:

Webb, A., (2025) “Duncan Bush's Welsh Petrofiction: Energy Transition and Neoliberalism in Glass Shot  ”, International Journal of Welsh Writing in English 12(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16922/ijwwe.12.2.