Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray
Born Alasdair Gray
(1934-12-28) 28 December 1934
Glasgow, Scotland
Occupation Novelist, artist, playwright, academic, teacher, poet, muralist, illustrator
Genre Science fiction, dystopianism, surrealism, realism
Literary movement Postmodern literature
Notable works Lanark: A Life in Four Books
1982, Janine
Poor Things
The Book of Prefaces
Website
www.alasdairgray.info

Alasdair Gray (born 28 December 1934) is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel, Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years. It is now regarded as a classic, and was described by The Guardian as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction."[1] His novel Poor Things (1992) won the Whitbread Novel Award[2] and the Guardian Fiction Prize.[3] He describes himself as a civic nationalist[4] (albeit one deeply critical of English immigration into Scotland) [4] and a republican.

Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision",[5] and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today"[6] and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".[7] His artwork is held by museums including Kelvingrove & The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History[8]

Life

Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. His father had been wounded in the First World War and worked at the time in a factory, while his mother worked in a shop. During the Second World War, Gray was evacuated to Perthshire and then Lanarkshire, experiences which he drew on in his later fiction. The family lived on a council estate, and Gray received his education from a combination of state education, (at Whitehill Secondary School), public libraries, and the BBC: "the kind of education British governments now consider useless, especially for British working class children", as he later commented. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957, and taught there from 1958 to 1962. It was as a student that he first began what would become the novel Lanark. The artist crossed paths with a later student at Glasgow School of Art, Stewart Bowman Johnson.

After his graduation, Gray worked as a scene and portrait painter, as well as an independent artist and writer. His first plays were broadcast on radio and television in 1968. Between 1972 and 1974, he participated in a writing group organised by Philip Hobsbaum, which also included James Kelman, Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Aonghas MacNeacail and Jeff Torrington. From 1977 to 1979, he was Writer in Residence at Glasgow University. In 2001, he became, with Tom Leonard and James Kelman, joint Professor of the Creative Writing programme at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities.

Gray illustrates his books himself, and has produced many murals as well as paintings. One of his longest-lasting murals can be seen in the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant[9] in the West End of Glasgow, and more recently in the Hillhead subway station.[9]

Mural in the Oran Mor Auditorium, 26, july 2016

In 2001, he stood as the candidate of the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association for the post of Rector of the University of Glasgow, but was eventually narrowly defeated by Greg Hemphill. Formerly a supporter of the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Socialist Party, at the 2010 general election he supported his local Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate.[10] He describes himself as a civic nationalist, stating in his 1992 book Why Scots Should Rule Scotland: "The title of this book may sound threatening to those who live in Scotland but were born and educated elsewhere, so I had better explain that by Scots I mean everyone in Scotland who is eligible to vote".[11] Nonetheless, following an essay written in 2012, in which he characterised English people working in Scotland as either long-term "settlers" or short-term "colonists" Gray - though writing with approval about the former[4] - found himself being accused of being anti-English, and a critic of English immigration into Scotland. He disputes this.[12] Gray's full essay was published on the Word Power Books website [13] Gray responded to criticism of his essay by stating that "...many of [his] best friends are English".[4]

He has been married twice: first to Inge Sorenson (1961–1970), and in 1991 to Morag McAlpine. McAlpine died after a short illness in May 2014.[14] He has one son, Andrew, born in 1964. He still lives in the West End of Glasgow.

His ceiling mural for The Auditorium of the Oran Mor arts & entertainment venue on Byres Road in Glasgow is one of the largest works of art in Scotland.[15]

Gray frequently uses the quotation, "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation", which is engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament building. He attributes the quote to Canadian author Dennis Lee.[16]

Gray painted the artwork for Scottish band De Rosa's second studio album, Prevention, which was released in 2009.

In June 2015 he was seriously injured in a fall at his home in Glasgow.[17]

Quotes

"It split in two and fought itself."
"That's suicide!"
"No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation."
"I refuse to believe men kill each other just to make their enemies rich."
"How can men recognize their real enemies when their family, schools and work teach them to struggle with each other and to believe law and decency come from the teachers?"
"My son won't be taught that," said Lanark firmly.
"You have a son?"
"Not yet." Lanark[18]:411

Artistic works

A painting by Alasdair Gray. It was begun in 1968 as an ink on paper drawing, and completed in 2017 with acrylic paint.
Ink on brown paper drawing by Alasdair Gray.

Gray has been prolific as an artist since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 1957. Trained in mural painting, his Glasgow murals include those in the Hillhead subway station and in the Oran Mor, an arts and music venue. His paintings, drawings and prints are well known and widely collected. His works have often sold in the art market, for example by the London auction houses.[19] Examples of his paintings and prints are currently housed in various public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the National Library of Scotland, the Hunterian Museum, and the Arts Council of England collection. His art was celebrated in 2014-2015 with a major retrospective exhibition at Glasgow's Kelvingrove [20]

In 1977-1978 Gray worked for The People’s Palace, Glasgow's local history museum, as the city's "artist recorder". The job was make-work employment funded through a job creation scheme set up by the Labour government of the day. While it lasted, Gray produced hundreds of drawings of the city, including portraits of politicians, people in the arts, members of the general public and workplaces with workers. These are now in the collection of Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum,[21] and formed a major component of the works on display at the retrospective exhibition.

Literary works

Novels

Short stories

  • Unlikely Stories, Mostly 26 September 1984; Canongate Books ISBN 978-1-84767-502-6
  • Lean Tales (1985) (with James Kelman and Agnes Owens); Vintage, 1995, ISBN 9780099585411
  • Ten Tales Tall & True (1993) ISBN 9780151000906
  • The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories. Canongate Books. January 2005. ISBN 978-1-84195-626-8. 
  • Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012. Canongate Books. 15 November 2012. ISBN 978-0-85786-562-5. 

Poetry

  • Old Negatives (1989) ISBN 9780224026567
  • Sixteen Occasional Poems (2000)
  • Collected Verse (2010) ISBN 9781906120535

Dramatic works (incomplete)

Theatre

  • Dialogue - A Duet (1971)
  • The Loss of the Golden Silence
  • Homeward Bound: A Trio for Female Chauvinists (1973)
  • Sam Lang and Miss Watson: A One Act Sexual Comedy In Four Scenes (1973)
  • McGrotty and Ludmilla (1986)
  • Working Legs: A Play for Those Without Them (1997)
  • Goodbye Jimmy (2006)
  • Fleck (2008)
  • A Gray Play Book (2009)

Television

Radio

As illustrator

  • Songs of Scotland (Author, Wilma Patterson) (1996)

Non-fiction

  • Why Scots Should Rule Scotland (1992; revised 1997)
  • The Book of Prefaces (ed.) (2000)
  • How We Should Rule Ourselves (2005)
  • Alasdair Gray (22 October 2010). A Life In Pictures. Canongate Books. ISBN 978-1-84767-962-8. 
  • Of Me & Others: An Autobiography (Cargo Publishing.) (2014)

Other Appearances

Music

Anthologies

Books about Alasdair Gray

Academic

Biographical

References

  1. ↑ "Alasdair Gray". The Guardian. London. 22 July 2008.
  2. ↑ "Alasdair Gray". Nls.uk. Archived from the original on 22 August 2006. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  3. ↑ http://facstaff.unca.edu/moseley/guardian.html
  4. 1 2 3 4 Peterkin, Tom (16 December 2012). "Alasdair Gray attacks English for ‘colonising’ arts". The Scotsman. Retrieved 2 January 2013.
  5. ↑ Moores ed. Alasdair Gray: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography (2001) p. 4.
  6. ↑ Chris M (12 January 2006). "Blog Archive » Alisdair Gray: An Introduction". will-self.com. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  7. ↑ Gray, The Ends of Our Tethers, Dustjacket (recto).
  8. ↑ "Connoisseur of the curious". Retrieved 2015-10-04.
  9. 1 2 http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-alasdair-gray-reimagined-glasgow
  10. ↑ Currie, Brian; Settle, Michael (21 April 2010). "LibDems enjoy Clegg bounce in Scotland at expense of SNP". The Herald. Retrieved 25 October 2010.
  11. ↑ Williamson, Kevin (2009). "Language and culture in a rediscovered Scotland". In Perryman, Mark. Breaking up Britain: Four Nations after a Union (PDF). London: Lawrence & Wishart. pp. 53–67. ISBN 978-1-905007-96-7.
  12. ↑ Miller, Phil (18 December 2012). "Author Gray hits back at anti-English claims". The Herald. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
  13. ↑ "Word Power Books | Settlers and Colonists by Alasdair Gray". Word-power.co.uk. 20 December 2012. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  14. ↑ "Private funeral for wife of author Gray". Herald Scotland. 21 May 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  15. ↑ Andrew Davies-Cole (22 October 2009). "Gray's anatomy of the bigger picture". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  16. 1 2 Gray, Alasdair (5 May 2007). "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation". The Herald. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  17. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/18/alasdair-gray-seriously-injured-after-fall
  18. ↑ Gray, Alasdair (1981). Lanark: A Life in Four Books. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. ISBN 978-1-84767-374-9. Retrieved 27 July 2017.
  19. ↑ http://www.sothebys.com/en/search-results.html?keyword=alasdair+gray
  20. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-29566631
  21. ↑ A Life in Pictures, by Alasdair Gray, pages 172–198
  22. ↑ "Alasdair (James) Gray Biography". biography.jrank.org. Retrieved 13 September 2014.
  23. ↑ "Cindytalk - Wappinschaw". Discogs. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
  24. ↑ "Future Pilot A.K.A. - Secrets From The Clockhouse". Discogs. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
  25. ↑ "LAN Formatique - The Sadness Of Distances". Discogs. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
  26. ↑ "Leamington Books". Leamington Books. Archived from the original on 29 July 2013. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
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