Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics)

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Anderson, Carol and Norquay, Glenda (1983), Interview with Alasdair Gray, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp.6 – 10, ISSN 0264-0856 Glass, Rodge (2012). Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4088-3335-3. The two-room exhibition uncovers how Lanark was made and has been selected from the manuscripts and artworks created by Gray throughout the development of the novel that spanned three decades. A city imagined at length into being itself. I had fleetingly encountered so-called "magic realism" in translated Spanish, swallowed whole some oddball 19th-century Russians, a few American books that contained depictions of very "ordinary" lives told with grandeur and depth, but nothing of the kind about, well, home. I had barely encountered any of my country's writers at all, let alone one this engaged with the present tense, this bravely alive. Scotland, my schooling had at times implied, at times openly professed, was a small, cold, bitter place that had no political clout, not much cultural heritage, joyless people and writers who were all male and all dead. As modern Scots, we were unfit to offer Art, politics or philosophy to the world, we were fit only for losing at football games. Not so, this book said: on a number of levels, not so.

I wish I could make you like death a little more. It’s a great preserver. Without it the loveliest things change slowly into farce, as you will discover if you insist on having much more life.” Others, Lanark observes, have obviously succeeded; they have “disappeared when the lights go out.” This is a risky business. On the one hand, “the only cure for these—personal—diseases is sunlight.” On the other hand, “When people leave without a companion their diseases return after a while.” So the problem of reunification is not just cosmic as the Manichaeans thought; it is also personal and involves relationships with others. We’re in it together. Therefore Lanark’s plan is simple: Gray's first plays were broadcast on radio ( Quiet People) and television ( The Fall of Kelvin Walker) in 1968. [7] Between 1972 and 1974 he took part in a writing group organised by Philip Hobsbaum, which included James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Aonghas MacNeacail and Jeff Torrington. In 1973, with the support of Edwin Morgan, he received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to allow him to continue with Lanark. [15] From 1977 to 1979 he was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow. [35] He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.His Collected Verse (2010) was followed by Every Short Story 1951-2012. Hell and Purgatory, the first two parts of his version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, “decorated and Englished in prosaic verse”, appeared in 2018 and 2019. In November Gray received the inaugural Saltire Society Scottish Lifetime Achievement award. Just as Joyce fitted an ordinary day in Dublin into the armature of the Odyssey, so Gray reconfigures the life of Duncan Thaw into a polyphonic Divina Commedia of Scotland. The Joyce comparison is valid on many levels and I think provides an insight into Gray’s approach and methodology as a novelist.”

He related his definite-outline method to “fear or distrust” of “anything liable to shift or depart”. Much of his best work was executed in the spirit of friendship. As he promoted fellow writers, he enjoyed painting friends and their children. He had a likable tendency to idealise his sitters, making them appear more innocent than they were in life. In June 2015 Gray was seriously injured in a fall, leaving him confined to a wheelchair. [81] [96] He continued to write; the first two parts of his translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy trilogy were published in 2018 and 2019. [97] [98] [nb 8] Death and legacy [ edit ]But their efforts remain a constant, and something, at least something. Reward, even the effectiveness of the characters in living up to their own high expectations, is not the point, after all: the point and their - our - greatest justification is the striving itself. works available on Gray and his work.Especially useful is Crawford and Nairn's work The arts of Alasdair Gray Alasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.