Lanark (book)
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Lanark (subtitled A Life in Four Books; ISBN 1841951838) was the first novel of Alasdair Gray, and is still his best known. It was first published in 1981. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and fantasy depictions of his home town of Glasgow.
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The book
Spoiler warning: Plot details follow.
The novel comprises four books, arranged in the order three, one, two, four ( there is also a prologue before book three, and an epilogue four chapters before the end of the book). In the epilogue, the author explains this by saying that "I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another", and that the epilogue itself is "too important" to go at the end (p. 483).
Books one and two are a Bildungsroman telling the story of Duncan Thaw, an art student. These sections draw heavily on Gray's own experiences as a child and as a young man. In books three and four the reader follows a character who calls himself Lanark through a fantasy world in which the people of a city (Unthank, which shares some features with Glasgow) are exploited by the Institute, an organisation of people living underneath Unthank.
The connection between the two narratives is ambiguous; Gray has said variously that "one is a highly exaggerated form of just about the everyday reality of the other"; "the Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by [Lanark's] narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason" (page 484); and "the plots of the Thaw and Lanark sections are independent of each other and cemented by typographical contrivances rather than formal necessity. A possible explanation is that the author thinks a heavy book will make a bigger splash than two light ones." (page 493).
One of the most characteristically postmodern parts of the book is the epilogue, in which Lanark meets the author. An Index of Plagiarisms (some of which are fictional) is printed in the margins of their discussion. Gray anticipates criticism of the work and of the epilogue in particular, saying "The critics will accuse me of self-indulgence, but I don't care".
Genesis
Gray began writing the novel as a student in 1954. Book one was written by 1963, but he was unsuccessful in getting it published. The whole work was finished in 1976, and published in 1981 by the small Scottish publisher Canongate Press.
Reception
The novel was an immediate critical and commercial success. It prompted Anthony Burgess to call Gray "the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott", and won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and David Niven awards. The book has since become a cult classic and has remained continuously in print.
External links
- Lanark 1982 (http://www.bijoubooks.com/lanark1982/lanark.html)
- Inside the Box (http://www.redmachinedesign.co.uk/alasdairgray/lanark.html)