rigorousintuition.ca

Laura Hird's site:

http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/alasdairgray.html

(numerous other links on the sidebar)

Recent interview from The Big Issue, scanned and all. Not sure how it'll look. Might require zooming in (or zooming out) to read, depending on your screen and settings. Some interesting nuggets of wisdom from The Big Man, and information on his new self-illustrated autobiography.

...all twittering is to be treated as a sign of hopelessness!

- Lanark

Laodicean wrote:...all twittering is to be treated as a sign of hopelessness!

- Lanark

The man was a prophet.

Mind you, if it weren't for Twittering, the super-injunction stopping reportage of Trafigura's illegal toxic waste dumping off the Ivory Coast might never have become known about - and the super-injunction might never have been lifted. I like anything that hurts Carter-Ruck and their clients, so Twitter deserves a pass.

Not looking to argue with Alasdair Gray about it, though.

Ahab, thanks a million for that. My brother had just told me about Gray's autobiography finally coming out, so I'm going to have to get it.

Oran Mor is stunning, and I'm delighted to hear he's now been commissioned to do the murals at Hillhead station. Alasdair Gray will totally pwn Byres Rd.!Seriously, if anyone deserves to leave his mark (literally) on Glasgow's West End, it's him.

The BBC did a very good short film about Gray's life and work when he turned 70; I've posted it here:

The Life and Times of Alasdair Gray (so far)

PS Here's one page from Gray's storyboard for a projected (and never-made) film version of Lanark: A Life in Four Books:

Prompted by you, MacCruiskeen, I went and found out some more about Gray and have ordered Lanark for my summer holiday fiction reading.

We all know Mac's a big fan. Hi Mac!

This Gray fellow is an interesting chap.

I read Lanark quite a few years ago, plus some short stories and other bits I think.

I thought Lanark was tremendous. The whole emotional armouring thing reminded me very much of Wilhelm Reich. I think that's been mentioned before around here, but then so has everything under the sun, and quite frankly my memory fails me.

I hope you enjoy the read Stefano.

It's lovely to see you back, Mac!

Hello, HoL! Thanks, and it's very nice to see you're still around too. We seem to like the same writers. Blake was a big inspiration to Gray, and they really have a lot in common.

Hammer of Los wrote:The whole emotional armouring thing reminded me very much of Wilhelm Reich.

Yes, Gray explicitly acknowledged that debt too, in his 'Index of Plagiarisms' halfway through the book. Lanark's 'dragonhide' is a metaphorical heightening of the eczema (& asthma & neurotic imagination) that afflicts the boy Thaw in the 'realistic' half of Lanark. And the other weird diseases rife in Unthank (mouths, softs, twittering rigour) also owe a lot to Reich's concept of 'emotional armouring' and especially his Character Analysis. In fact, it was thanks to Gray that I first read Wilhelm Reich and found him to be a hell of a lot more brilliant and fascinating and insightful than any psychologist I had ever read, including Freud. (For years I've been meaning to do a big post about Reich here at RI, but he's very hard to do justice to.)

stefano wrote:Prompted by you, MacCruiskeen, I went and found out some more about Gray and have ordered Lanark for my summer holiday fiction reading.

Pleased to hear it, stefano. I hope I haven't over-sold it now! "Summer holiday fiction reading" - hmm, I find it hard to imagine reading Lanark on a beach, or anywhere at all in the sunshine. It's always been a winter kind of a book for me. And it does take place in a cold wet dark northern city. And Unthank (the nightmare version of Glasgow) is a place where the sun literally never shines.

But at the very least it will take you to another world for a while. And I've been pleased over the years to meet Germans and Swedes who had read it and loved it in German or Swedish (or in English). I hear it's been translated into many other languages now, including Japanese, so I guess the book "travels" better (is more universal) than I imagined when I first read it and loved it in my dark rainy native city in 1981.

I think my wife introduced me to Gray about 15 years ago. I was already very fond of Blake and Reich by then.

Everything's connected you know. At least in my world, a world created from connections.

We seem to like the same writers.

Well, so many of us have such similar interests around here.

For many years I thought that my interests and opinions were so idiosyncratic and unorthodox, that I must be utterly unique in the world. What a joy it was to find out that I was wrong. There are so many like minds here, it's marvellous! There is far more that connects the folk here than seperates them. Me, I'll be here, lurking at least, until I pass from this world, or until Jeff closes the forum, or until Barracuda bans me! I have no idea which will happen first. Probably the lattermost.

I finished the book (in less sunshine than I'd hoped for in a summer break, ha), and found it intriguing, the kind of book I'll read again. To be honest the Thaw part didn't grab me as much, I found it overlong and kept wanting to get back to the magical scenes, but the Lanark part was fantastic, particularly the last book in which we start getting an outline of the creature (the which is a better way than most of thinking about our predicament). I also like the oracle's prologue which Gray writes off in his self-effacing Epilogue.

I underlined a lot of quotes by the Grant character, and particularly liked the one that is used I think three times by different characters: "man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation". The theme of separation, and its antidote wholeness, is one used by a lot of critics whom I admire. Gray has a poet's subtle feel for the nature of the conspiracy, as much so as better-known writers, and it's a pity his book isn't as canonical as theirs.
_______
The creature still puts time and energy into vast weapons and sells them to the council, but recent wars have been fought with smaller weapons and kept to the less industrial continents. Meanwhile the creature has invented peaceful ways of taking our time and energy. It employs us to make essential things badly, so they decay fast and have to be replaced. It bribes the council to destroy cheap things which don't bring it a profit and replaces them with new expensive things which do. It pays us to make useless things and employs scientists, doctors and artists to persuade us that these are essential.
_______
It is a dangerous thing to suddenly deprive a man of hope - he can turn violent. It is important to kill hope slowly, so that the loser has time to adjust unconsciously to the loss. We try to keep hope alive until it has burned out the vitality feeding it.
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"Why do they pay you anything?"
"I think they employ a lot of well-educated people to keep us comfortable," said Lanark. "And because they're afraid we'd be dangerous if we had no work at all."
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You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.

I'm an idiot, and here's why. Was down in York not long ago, mucking about, and went to Ken Spelman's Rare and Antiquarian Bookshop in the Micklegate, which is famous on account of it has lots of books which are both old and good and buyable. I wasn't all that impressed, to be honest.

A lot of the stuff wasn't very old, and most of it wasn't good, and it felt like they were charging a very high premium just for letting you have the experience of roaming around an old-style shop that smells of books.

But there was a copy of Reich's Character Analysis there, a big hefty blue textured wooden hardback with gold lettering. Probably not a first edition, but quite an early one, and with the scribbles of an earlier owner in the margins. Perfect for me, as a beginner, or it should have been. I held it in me own hands. I even sniffed it.

Fifteen quid it was, though. Not having that.

I know nothing about Wilhelm Reich other than the very basics. A glance over "Listen, Little Man!" didn't make me like his work much either, possibly due to poor translation or because I am a resistant little man meself who still seeks to not admit it.

But I wish I'd bought the book now.

Mind you, I got As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela: Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade for £3 at the Oxfam just down the road, and Bankrupt: The BCCI Fraud for two. Still quite dear, in my opinion, but essentially the same kind of books for a lot less money.

York is a great city, though. It's got good books in it, and is otherwise splendid in all ways.

1. The main mural at Hillhead subway station is unveiled. Typically, it's not just beautiful but also useful (as a guide to the area), as well as containing both written and pictorial acknowledgement of his friends and collaborators.



2. Gray explains why he changed "nation" to "world" and credits the original line to the Canadian poet Dennis Lee:





3. Unveiling of R.D. Laing commemorative plaque at Laing's birthplace, 21 Ardbeg St., Govanhill:



- with Karen Laing and Alasdair Gray on 7 October 2011 - RDL's 84th birthday.