On the 27th of December 2019, the Scottish writer and painter Alasdair Gray died. On the 29th of October 2015 I bought a copy of his first novel, Lanark, and didn't read it until this year. I had planned to read it at some point in 2016 but I think summer ended and I didn't get the chance. The sense of guilt I experienced when he died surprised me. I know what it's like when artists I identify with strongly die. I know what it's like when artists I sort of like but have no strong feelings about die. I know what it's like when artists I sort of like but have no strong feelings about but think I would like them more if I bothered to try... die. Here was one I knew comparatively little about, despite him being prominent in a field and more importantly a location I have extensive experience in, whose death seemed to have an effect on me.
So, to Lanark. He spent decades writing this. It's a ~600 page novel split into two parts split into two parts themselves. Books One and Two are about Duncan Thaw, a mostly real but slightly fictionalised account of Gray's own life up to shortly after leaving art school. Books Three and Four concern Lanark, a man who wakes up on a beach and has a vague recollection of who he is and where he is, but soon finds he's in a surreal world which reads mostly like the most insane, impossible dream you've ever had. Along the way he has a son, becomes Provost of a place remarkably similar to the one he thinks he remembers inhabiting before waking up on the beach, and has a chat with the person writing the book that someone else is reading.
There are two important things to say about this book. The first is that it's probably the most scarily relatable thing I've ever read. The second is that it's probably the most experimental book I've ever read in terms of the structure and absurdity of some of the content. I've only ever read two things beside this which I found disquieting in their relatability, and this is worse since it's written by someone where I'm from and set there too.
I don't even know how to start describing why I find it relatable. I could list several of the stand out quotes from it, but that would defeat the purpose. Or maybe it wouldn't. What point is there in art, other than to find that other people feel the way we do, for the same reasons? If I feel I live in an oppressive, grim place which for generations has refused to fulfil its apparent potential, is it enough for me to recognise that myself? Is it enough to say that on a message board populated mostly by North Americans, in a thread that about a dozen people read with any regularity? Why do I feel as if it's significant that someone else thinks the same things I do, even if I didn't realise the proper way to describe it until I read them say it nearly forty years after they were first published?
The descriptions of physical locations are very nice and evocative. Whether it's the post-industrialised landscape of mid-20th century Glasgow or the surreal alternate universe of Unthank and its surrounding locations, the surroundings are always just there enough to be remembered but never overpowering unless they have to be. The early descriptions of Thaw's childhood in the countryside - as an attempted cure for his asthma and numerous other health issues - are just as striking as the urban stuff. There is clearly an eye for the world around the narrator here, and if you want an example of how to maintain the important of a novel's surroundings when the people in it are actually the main focus, you'd be hard pressed to beat this.
With that said, the human level is clearly where Lanark (the book) shines. It's not just the physical location that's inescapable, it's every human emotion possible. From not fitting in at home, at school, at work, with boys, with girls, especially with girls, with a constant sense that you're only there and around other people because they have no means of making you leave, not because they actually want you there. I'm not going to go into detail about the various symbolisms throughout for a few reasons. I could spend years charting all of them. I'd still do a bad job because I'm not smart. I also finished the book quite some time ago, so I'd mainly be paraphrasing the Wikipedia article about it. I can only repeat what I said about feeling a kindred spirit with the principal characters of this book, and clearly the person writing it. I mentioned that Gray was writing this for several decades, and it shows. His complaints about life at 15 are as earnest as those of 40 and every other age and stage of life in between. Whether it's his own place in the world, the people and systems he encounters, anything else, it's passionate without ever being overly whiny. At least, I don't think it is, but that might be because I share in so much of its sentiment.
When he was trying to get this published there were a few suggestions that he split it in two. Books One and Two, Thaw's story, would make a very good standard coming of age story. What's the fancy term for it. Bildungsroman? Am I thinking of the right thing? I'm not going to check. The problem with such a structure would be the lack of closure. I'm generally baffled by the apparent market for autobiographies of people under 70 years old. While such books about people in their 20s or 30s are almost certainly not worth printing never mind reading, I've always thought it weird that people would write about their life when there's still, presumably, lots of their life left, and lots of things to do. In Lanark this problem is mostly avoided, but it's not done with what I'd call certainty, or perhaps confidence. Duncan's story ends and Lanark's begins, and it's sort of a continuation, but it doesn't continue into much. The result is something that's thoughtful, but I'm not sure how much of a conclusion there is. I don't think there's really supposed to be one though.
(Looking over this review before I post it, this sounds more critical than I intended. Lanark(the character)'s story finishes in a way which isn't as typical as it starts, but it provides an appropriate counter to Thaw's story. Neither can exist on their own.)
If you look at the structure you might think it's weird. Book Three, a prologue, books One and Two, then book Four with the epilogue thrown in four chapters before the end. The prologue features an Oracle who tells Lanark who he is. The epilogue features the author telling Lanark why, or how, he is. The epilogue also features, printed at the sides of the page, a list of the writers and works Gray feels he plagiarised while writing the book. All of this sounds insane, it all sounds ridiculous, it is, yet it works. For as daunting as the book might seem with its list of profound sounding chapters at the start and its strange running order, it all feels natural. As time and the physical space stop conforming to reality in books Three and Four, you go along with it in the same way Lanark does. That's probably the point. We're forced, funnelled into areas and a way of life that doesn't seem natural, but to which we adapt. Nice thought.
I said earlier that I found this book to be something I identified with quite easily. The introduction to my copy - which I can't look at right now because I've put the book away and I can't be bothered fishing it out - was written by someone who wrote a review of it for a newspaper when it was first published. He said something along the lines of how certain books can mean different things to different people depending on which time of their life they read it in. I think this applies to anything. I don't feel the same way about certain albums right now that I have done previously, for instance. This isn't a criticism of anything's quality, it's just an admission that people change, certain things happen at certain points of their life, the things we think and feel and are certain about at one time won't always stay like that.
Lanark seems like it should contradict that notion. It was written over a period of decades. It's about one man and his view of the world over a period of decades. He is not the same person at the start and close of the book, yet he is. There may be differences in feeling, action, physical condition, but some things are consistent even in change. I think I would have enjoyed/have been terrified the book just as much if I'd read it shortly after buying it. Maybe moreso. Maybe my life would be different. Maybe I could have seen the things around me and my background that Gray summarises so neatly and with an equal amount of contempt and affection. Maybe not. Maybe if I'd read this instead of Atlas Shrugged when I was 19 my life would be different.
There are times when I'd like to offer something concise in this thread with the idea that people would read it and think me aloof or mysterious. I liked this book and I think everyone should have such a thing that answers a question in them they didn't know was there. I like that it's something that I feel applies to me at length and in its entirety, rather than select quotes or sections.
