Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics)

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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. Alasdair Gray's big book about Glasgow is also a big book about everywhere. Its insistence on the literal if mistrusted truth - that Glasgow and Scotland and every small nation and individual within it are part of the whole wide world - is something worth saying indeed. Dear reader, delay no longer. Engage with the text. Imagine. Admire the view. As his public profile began to rise, Gray began to publicly support Scottish independence, publishing a short polemic called Why Scots Should Rule Scotland in time for the 1992 election. Devolution was never enough for the author, who agreed with Margaret Thatcher when she claimed Tony Blair as her greatest achievement. “Like US citizens,” Gray argued, “the UK electorate has no chance of voting for a party that will do anything to seriously tax our enlarged millionaire class that controls Westminster.” a b Lea, Richard (29 December 2019). "Alasdair Gray, influential Scottish writer and artist, dies aged 85". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 January 2020. This new Hunterian exhibition is dedicated to the work of renowned Scottish writer and artist Alasdair Gray (1934–2019).

Gray, Alasdair (19 September 2008). "Alasdair Gray gives his reaction to reading his life in print". The Guardian . Retrieved 9 January 2020.The novelist Ali Smith called Gray “a modern-day William Blake” and said: “He was an artist in every form. He was a renaissance man. His generosity and brilliance in person – felt by everyone who knew him even a little – were a source of astonishing and liberating warmth. The few times I met him in life, he was all these things in a unique combination of polite, frank, detached (or maybe more truly differently attached), sanguine, many-voiced, wise, warm, kind, hilarious, acutely truth-telling, uncompromisingly articulate.” Visit & Learn > Explore Parliament > About The Building > Parliamentary Buildings > Canongate Buildings > Canongate Wall > quotations". Scottish Parliament . Retrieved 5 November 2020. According to the tailpiece present in Canondale’s The Canons edition: “How Lanark Grew” Lanark is both largely autobiographical—a fact made more interesting by the book’s fantastical nature—and was written over the course of thirty years. Alasdair Gray’s early masterpiece definitely has some flaws—weak secondary characters, poorly written female characters—but is such a wild ride that I didn’t mind them too much. 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. Braidwood, Alistair. "80 Years of Gray" (PDF). Discover NLS. National Library of Scotland (26): 28–30.

Alasdair Gray: Magnificent Citizen, a video profile by National Galleries Scotland about the artist’s relationship with his native Glasgow Gray was a Scottish nationalist. He started voting for the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the 1970s, as he despaired about the erosion of the welfare state which had provided his education. He believed that North Sea oil should be nationalised. He wrote three pamphlets advocating Scottish independence from England, [nb 5] noting at the beginning of Why Scots Should Rule Scotland (1992) that "by Scots I mean everyone in Scotland who is eligible to vote." [71] [72] In 2014 he wrote that "the UK electorate has no chance of voting for a party which will do anything to seriously tax our enlarged millionaire class that controls Westminster." [73] Gray described English people living in Scotland as being either "settlers" or "colonists" in a 2012 essay. [71] [74]

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Davies-Cole, Andrew (22 October 2009). "Gray's anatomy of the bigger picture". The Herald. Archived from the original on 20 June 2014 . Retrieved 21 May 2014. Sayers, Louise (13 January 2015). "Surge for Herald during referendum". BBC News . Retrieved 12 January 2020. Alasdair Gray died at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on 29 December 2019, the day after his 85th birthday, following a short illness. He left his body to science and there was no funeral. [99]

The historical originators of Gnosticism were the Manichaeans, Persian followers of the sage Mani, who developed a rather elaborate, and empirically based, theory of human existence. Look up in the night sky, they said, and you will see clearly that there is another world beyond that enclosed by the solid vault of heaven. Those points of light we call stars are actually holes, imperfections, in that vault, the casing of our world, through which we can see bits of the world beyond. That is the realm of light whence we came and to which we are meant, according to cosmic logic, to return. The real mission and spiritual duty of all human beings is to seek the knowledge by which such a home-going can be achieved. Kelly, Stuart (18 December 2014). "Alasdair Gray at 80: The liberation of Lanark". BBC . Retrieved 6 January 2020. Tait, Theo (14 November 2012). "Every Short Story 1951-2012 by Alasdair Gray - review". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 January 2020. 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.”

Littler, Jo (25 September 2009). "Alasdair Gray by Rodge Glass". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 January 2020. Poor Things (1992) discusses Scottish colonial history via a Frankenstein-like drama set in 19th-century Glasgow. Godwin 'God' Baxter is a scientist who implants Bella Baxter with the brain of her own unborn child. [10] It was Gray's most commercially successful work and he enjoyed writing it. [51] The London Review of Books considered it his funniest novel, and a welcome return to form. [52] It won a Whitbread Novel Award and a Guardian Fiction Prize. [53] 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. a b c Fleischer, Evan (26 August 2015). "How Alasdair Gray Reimagined Glasgow". New Yorker. Archived from the original on 20 September 2017 . Retrieved 6 January 2020. According to some, the most serious impediment to explaining the world isn’t the absence of a unified physical theory or the inadequacy of human language. It is the presence of what can only be called a pervasive evil. Evil is an irrationality, an inherent contradiction, which clearly exists - in nature everywhere and especially in people - but which defies explanation. Yet consciousness demands one. How can such an absurd universe produce beings who question its very absurdity?

In my travels, as I walked through many regions and countries, it was my chance to happen into that famous continent of Universe. A very large and spacious continent it is; it lieth between the heavens. It is a place well watered, and richly adorned with hills and valleys, bravely situate, and for the most part, at least where I was, very fruitful, also well peopled, and a very sweet air.” From a lesser writer, stygian darkness and baroque structure might see off a mass audience and reduce a book to cult status. In Gray's hands, the simple, direct prose found him a wide readership.

The inaugural Gray Day marks 40 years since the publication of Lanark

And as further proof, if proof were necessary, the planets then deposit their luminous cargo periodically onto that other celestial body we call the Moon. Thus the monthly waxing of the Moon as these sparks are added to it. And also the monthly discharge of these from the Moon, its waning, through the vault of heaven as they are merged with the infinite light beyond.