INTERVIEWER: When somebody asks you to describe your book LANARK, what do you say to them?
ALASDAIR GRAY: I say it is a Scottish petit bourgeois model of the universe.
I: Just like that?
AG: Yes, I’ve rehearsed it & honed it down to as few words as possible.
It’s #GrayDay! Alasdair Gray’s LANARK was first published on 25 Feb 1981
@bookstodon
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preface/
🎨 Screenprint of the title page to LANARK, by Gray & Murray Robertson
#GrayDay marks the anniversary of Alasdair Gray’s LANARK – published #OTD, 25 Feb, 1981
The cover of this edition shows Gray’s frontispiece for Book 4. Based on Abraham Bosse’s 1651 frontispiece to Hobbes’ LEVIATHAN, it depicts a figurative State towering over a panoramic view across Scotland
1/8
Discernible landmarks include Glasgow University tower; John Knox’s statue in the Glasgow Necropolis; the Wallace Monument; the Grangemouth oil refinery; St Giles Cathedral; Edinburgh Castle; the Forth & Tay bridges; & the experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor at Dounreay. Also visible are oil rigs in the North Sea, nuclear submarines in the Irish Sea & Holy Loch, & the paddle-steamer PS Waverley sailing down the Clyde.
2/8
The frontispiece carries the quotation
“By Arts is formed that great Mechanical Man called a State, foremost of the Beasts of the Earth for Pride”
which is also from Hobbes: “For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE…”
3/8
https://alasdairgrayspace.net/who-is-alasdair-gray/lanark
#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark #Hobbes #Leviathan
A colour print of Gray’s frontispiece to Book Four is held by the Tate
4/8
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gray-lanark-book-four-p20974
#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark #print #screenprint #printmaking #visualart
The second half of Gray’s slogan draws on the Bible – specifically, the description of the sea-monster Leviathan (Job 41.34):
“He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.”
Alasdair Gray’s LANARK: Calvin & Hobbes, avant la lettre
5/8
Which academic will finally dare to write the long-awaited paper “The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Alasdair Gray’s LANARK: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes”?
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(although we’re still waiting for “The Provision Merchant as Agent of Evil in Scottish Literature from Galt to Gunn” tbh – though there’s no particular rush)
7/8
“Taken together, the four prints underscore the oft-disputed unity of LANARK, as well as the sheer will of Gray’s effort to portray the individual’s capabilities for art & love against the backdrop of the modern industrialized state”
—David Auerbach on Alasdair Gray’s art
8/8
https://www.waggish.org/2020/alasdair-grays-lanark-the-four-frontispieces/
#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark #visualart #print #printmaking #illustration
Envoi
Prof Alan Riach, University of Glasgow – who appears, briefly & fictionally, in Alasdair Gray’s 2007 novel OLD MEN IN LOVE (although not, I should add, as an old man in love) – discusses LANARK at our 2022 Schools Conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTCGw6e_OSI&list=PLEP9HxY4X7WaVgzFyI3JdP1V-XAopXEgR
Assoc for Scottish Literature