UKH

Just read that Alasdair Gray has died, probably best known for his book 'Lanark' but wrote many others & was also an illustrator. Maybe little known outside Scotland but a major figure in Scottish 20th century art.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/29/alasdair-gray-influential-sco...

He was a very talented and unique individual. 

I predict that his reputation will continue to grow and that ultimately he'll be spoken of in the same breath as Burns, Hogg and such like. In fact his influence might prove to be even wider. Hats off to a true original.

To be honest I gave up on Lanark. I thought it borrowed too much from other authors and the story wasn't really that interesting. As for his art? Good enough I suppose but it didn't make my heart beat faster.

I think Scotland produced produced better artists and better writers in the 20th century than Alasdair.

I was a big fan. Such stylistic originality is in short supply in contemporary British fiction. Here's Gray's own back cover blurb for the excellent 1982 Janine (quoted by Ian Rankin on R4 this morning):

"This already dated novel is set inside the head of an ageing, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations who is tippling in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel. Though full of depressing memories and propaganda for the Conservative Party it is mainly a sado-masochistic fetishistic fantasy. Even the arrival of God in the later chapters fails to elevate the tone. Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books Lanark and Unlikely Stories, Mostly is to be found here in concentrated form."

If that doesn't make you want to go out immediately and get hold of a copy I don't know what will!

I read Lanark over 30 years ago so my memory is a bit hazy. I remember thinking every second chapter was great. - The ones about the main character growing up in Glasgow. Didn't enjoy the alternate chapters set in the fantasy world. Kept reading to the end hoping that the connection between the real and fantasy worlds would become clear. As far as I can remember I couldn't work out what it was all about.

I think Lanark is a bit like James Joyce's Ulysses. I lot of people claim to have read it but very few have.

I've read a few novels by Iain Banks. [Not the SciFi ones written as Iain M Banks.] I think he may have been a better author than Alasdair Gray. On the other hand, A.G. was, in my opinion, a fine artist as well.

Banks was a big fan of Alasdair Gray. I haven't read Lanark, but I wonder to what extent the structure of The Bridge and Use of Weapons alludes to it?

In its use of interwoven narratives, blurred realities and problematic consciousness I think The Bridge owes a clear debt to Lanark, as Banks himself acknowledged. Both great books, but I think Lanark is the masterpiece. 

A thistle fan apparently, which gazumps everything  written so far!

Good guy.

I'm another massive fan of Lanark. Great fantasy work entwined  with great social commentary. RIP AG