Shades of Gray still
Glasgow author and painter’s unique and timeless vision retains the power to impress
Alasdair Gray, born 28 December, 1934 in Glasgow.
Best known for his novel Lanark, which led him to be described as “the greatest Scottish writer since Sir Walter Scott” by Anthony Burgess, Alasdair Gray is a unique voice in Scottish art and literature, both of which have won critical acclaim.
He describes himself as a civic nationalist (albeit one deeply critical of English immigration into Scotland) and a republican. His novel Poor Things won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize and all his books include themes such as fantasy, realism and science fiction, detailed by his own illustrations.
Born in Riddrie, Glasgow, Gray described his childhood to the Scotsman in his own unique way: “Wordsworth is right to say ‘the younger we are, the brighter our world appears’. I was born in a pleasant home, a flat in a newlybuilt Glasgow housing scheme with gardens, trees and skies as good as anywhere else, but when these had grown familiar by the age of two I wanted extravagantly different experiences.”
As a Glasgow School of Art student he started what would become Lanark, which took almost 30 years to complete. During this time he worked as a portrait painter, artist and, of course, a writer, participating in a writing group that included James Kelman, Liz Lochhead and Jeff Torrington.
As well as writing, Gray’s art is also a part of the fabric of Glasgow with his longest-standing mural on show at the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant in the west end. He also created a huge mural of the city, which can be seen at Hillhead subway station.
Author, arts writer and journalist Jan Patience has been in thrall to his genius ever since reading Lanark as a schoolgirl in the early 1980s.
She said: “I had never read anything like Lanark before – and I was a voracious reader in my teens, hoovering up everything from George Elliot to TS Eliot.
“The structure of Lanark is topsyturvy. A Life in Four Books was the subtitle but Gray’s dystopian vision of a hellish Glasgow and one young man’s struggle to make sense of it all (and find love) didn’t take the usual numerical path. It started at Chapter Three and then moved into the prologue. It did, however, end at Chapter Four. Very Alasdair Gray.
“His writing was often difficult to penetrate but worth persevering with. All the illustrations were by Gray himself and they were filled with incredible minutiae and injokes.
“It was as if a latter-day da Vinci had illustrated a work by a modern Dante. I’ve just dug out my original copy and the front page – in black, white and gold – shows a huge king-like figure with sword in one hand and ornate staff in the other. Engraved on the sword is the word Force and on the stave, is Persuasion. He is presiding over a kingdom, which is illustrated in relief. The detail is infinitesimal.
“Gray sees the world in such an individual way that it is impossible not to feel the shock of the new. He is a one-off.”