Alasdair Gray | |
|---|---|
_by_Guenter_Prust.jpg) Gray in 1994 | |
| Born | (1934-12-28)28 December 1934 |
| Died | 29 December 2019(2019-12-29) (aged 85) Govan, Glasgow, Scotland |
| Occupation | Novelist, artist, playwright, academic, teacher, poet, muralist, illustrator |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Alma mater | Glasgow School of Art |
| Genre | Science fiction,dystopianism,surrealism,realism |
| Literary movement | Postmodern literature |
| Years active | 1951–2019 |
| Notable works | Lanark 1982, Janine Poor Things The Book of Prefaces |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| Official website Alasdair Gray Archive | |
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English andScots literature. His works of fiction combinerealism,fantasy, andscience fiction with the use of his owntypography and illustrations, and won several awards.
Utilising apostmodern writing style, Gray's works have been compared with those ofFranz Kafka,George Orwell,Jorge Luis Borges andItalo Calvino; and often contain extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced them. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, includingIrvine Welsh,Alan Warner,A. L. Kennedy,Janice Galloway,Chris Kelso andIain Banks. His first novel,Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction; in a 2016 public poll by the BBC, it was named the third-best Scottish novel of all time.[1] He was writer-in-residence at theUniversity of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979 and professor of Creative Writing from 2001 to 2003; simultaneously holding the latter position at theUniversity of Strathclyde.
Gray studied at theGlasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits andmurals, including at theÒran Mór venue and one atHillhead subway station. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is held in several important collections. BeforeLanark, he had written plays for radio and television.
Gray was aScottish nationalist and arepublican, and wrote in support ofsocialism andScottish independence. He popularised theepigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation"[note 1][2] which was engraved in the Canongate Wall of theScottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004. He lived almost all his life in Glasgow, married twice, and had one son. After his death in 2019,The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".
Gray's father, Alexander, had been wounded in the First World War. He worked for many years in a factory making boxes, often wenthillwalking, and helped found theScottish Youth Hostels Association.[3] Gray's mother was Amy (née Fleming), whose parents had moved to Scotland from Lincolnshire because her father had beenblacklisted in England fortrade union membership.[4] She worked in a clothing warehouse.[5][6] Alasdair Gray was born inRiddrie in north-eastGlasgow on 28 December 1934;[7] his sister Mora was born two years later.[8] During the Second World War, Gray wasevacuated toAuchterarder in Perthshire, andStonehouse in Lanarkshire.[9] From 1942 until 1945 the family lived inWetherby in Yorkshire, where his father was running a hostel for workers inROF Thorp Arch, a munitions factory.[7][9]
Gray frequently visited thepublic library; he enjoyed theWinnie-the-Pooh stories, and comics likeThe Beano andThe Dandy.[10][11] Later,Edgar Allan Poe became a powerful influence on the young Gray.[10] His family lived on acouncil estate in Riddrie, and he attendedWhitehill Secondary School, where he was made editor of the school magazine and won prizes for Art and English.[7][12][13] When he was eleven Gray appeared on BBC children's radio reading from an adaptation of one ofAesop's Fables, and he started writing short stories as a teenager.[12][14] His mother died of cancer when he was eighteen; in the same year he enrolled atGlasgow School of Art.[15] As an art student he began what later became his first novel,Lanark, which originally carried the namePortrait of the Artist as a Young Scot.[6] He completed the first book in 1963; it was rejected by theCurtis Brown literary agency.[9] It was originally intended to be Gray's version ofA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.[16]
In 1957 Gray graduated from art school with a degree in Design andMural Painting.[17] That year he won a Bellahouston Travelling scholarship, and intended to use it to paint and see galleries in Spain. A severeasthma attack left him hospitalised inGibraltar, and he had his money stolen.[18][nb 1] From 1958–1962 Gray worked part-time as an art teacher in Lanarkshire and Glasgow, and in 1959–1960 he studied teaching atJordanhill College.[9][19]
Gray married Inge Sørensen, a teen-aged nurse from Denmark, in 1961.[6] They had a son, Andrew, in 1963, and separated in 1969.[6][17] He had an eight-year relationship with Danish jeweller[20][21] Bethsy Gray.[22][23][24] He was married to Morag Nimmo McAlpine Gray[25] from 1991 until her death in 2014.[6][26] He lived in Glasgow his entire adult life.[27]
After finishing art school, Gray paintedtheatrical scenery for theGlasgow Pavilion andCitizens Theatre, and worked as a freelance artist.[7] His first mural was "Horrors of War" for the Scottish-USSR Friendship Society in Glasgow.[14] In 1964 the BBC made a documentary film,Under the Helmet, about his career to date.[28] Many of his murals have been lost; surviving examples include one in theUbiquitous Chip restaurant in theWest End of Glasgow, and another atHillhead subway station.[29] His ceiling mural (in collaboration with Robert Salmon, Nichol Wheatley and others for the auditorium of theÒran Mór theatre and music venue onByres Road is one of the largest works of art in Scotland and was painted over several years.[30][31] It showsAdam and Eve embracing against a night sky, with modern people from Glasgow in the foreground.[27]
In 1977–1978, Gray worked for thePeople's Palace museum, as Glasgow's "artist recorder", funded by a scheme set up by theLabour government. He 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 atKelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.[32]
In 2003 Gray began working with gallerist Sorcha Dallas who, over the next 14 years, helped to develop interest in his visual practice, brokering sales to major collections including theArts Council of England, theScottish National Galleries andthe Tate. His paintings and prints are also held inGlasgow Museums, theVictoria and Albert Museum, theNational Library of Scotland and theHunterian Museum.[33][34]
In 2014–2015 Dallas devised the Alasdair Gray Season, a citywide celebration of Gray's visual work to coincide with his 80th birthday.[35] The main exhibition,Alasdair Gray: From the Personal to the Universal, was held at theKelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum[36] with over 15,000 attending.[7]
His first solo London exhibition took place in late 2017 at the Coningsby Gallery inFitzrovia and the Leyden Gallery inSpitalfields.[37][38]
In 2023, Glasgow Museums acquired Grey's 1964 muralCowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties, which the artist described as "my best big oil painting", for display at the Kelvingrove Gallery.[39]
Gray said that he found writing tiring, but that painting gave him energy.[27] His visual art often used local or personal details to encompass international or universal truths and themes.[40]
Gray's first plays were broadcast on radio (Quiet People) and television (The Fall of Kelvin Walker) in 1968.[9] Between 1972 and 1974 he took part in a writing group organised byPhilip Hobsbaum, which includedJames Kelman,Tom Leonard,Liz Lochhead,Aonghas MacNeacail andJeff Torrington. In 1973, with the support ofEdwin Morgan, he received a grant from theScottish Arts Council to allow him to continue withLanark.[17] From 1977 to 1979 he was writer-in-residence at theUniversity of Glasgow.[41]
Lanark, his first novel, was published in 1981 to great acclaim, and became his best-known work.[6][nb 2] The book tells two parallel stories. One, the first written, is aBildungsroman,[43] arealist depiction of Duncan Thaw, a young artist growing up in Glasgow in the 1950s. The other is adystopia, where the character Lanark visits Unthank, which is ruled by the Institute and the Council, opaque bodies which exercise absolute power.[44] Lanark enters politics believing he can change Unthank for the better, but gets drunk and disgraces himself. Later, when he is dying, his son Sandy tells him "The world is only improved by people who do ordinary jobs and refuse to be bullied."[45] There is an epilogue four chapters before the end, with a list of the work's allegedplagiarisms, some from non-existent works.[46] The title page of Book Four, which was used as the cover art on the paperback, was a reference toLeviathan byThomas Hobbes.[47]
Lanark has been compared withFranz Kafka andNineteen Eighty-Four byGeorge Orwell for its atmosphere of bureaucratic threat, and withJorge Luis Borges andItalo Calvino for itsfabulism.[48][49] It revivified Scottish literature,[41] inspired a new generation of Scottish writers, includingIrvine Welsh,Alan Warner,A. L. Kennedy,Janice Galloway andIain Banks,[50] and has been called "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction",[51] but it did not make Gray wealthy.[6] His 2010 illustrated autobiographyA Life in Pictures outlined the parts ofLanark he based on his own experiences: his mother died when he was young, he went to art school, suffered from chroniceczema and shyness, and found difficulty in relationships with women.[6][nb 3] His first short-story collection,Unlikely Stories, Mostly, won theCheltenham Prize for Literature in 1983. It is a selection of Gray's short fiction from 1951–1983.[41]
Gray regarded1982, Janine, published in 1984, as his best work. Partly inspired byHugh MacDiarmid'sA Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle,[53] thestream-of-consciousness narrative depicts Jock McLeish, a middle-agedConservative security supervisor who isdependent on alcohol, and describes how people and sectors of society are controlled against their best interests, over a background of thesadomasochisticsex fantasies that McLeish concocts to distract himself from his misery.[12]Anthony Burgess, who had called Gray "the most important Scottish writer since SirWalter Scott" on the strength ofLanark, found1982, Janine "juvenile".[54]
The Fall of Kelvin Walker (1985) andMcGrotty and Ludmilla (1990) were based on television scripts Gray had written in the 1960s and 1970s, and describe the adventures of Scottish protagonists in London.[6][41]Something Leather (1990) explores female sexuality; Gray regretted giving it its provocative title.[55] He called it his weakest book, and he excised the sexual fantasy material and retitled itGlaswegians when he included it in his compendiumEvery Short Story 1951-2012.[56]
Poor Things (1992) discusses Scottish colonial history via aFrankenstein-like drama set in 19th-century Glasgow. Godwin 'God' Baxter is a scientist who implants a suicide victim with the brain of her own unborn child.[12] It was Gray's most commercially successful work and he enjoyed writing it.[57] TheLondon Review of Books considered it his funniest novel, and a welcome return to form.[58] It won aWhitbread Novel Award and aGuardian Fiction Prize.[59] It was later adapted into afilm starringEmma Stone, directed byYorgos Lanthimos; the novel was adapted for the screen byTony McNamara.
A History Maker (1994) is set in a 23rd-century matriarchal society in the area aroundSt Mary's Loch, and shows autopia going wrong.[60]The Book of Prefaces (2000) tells the story of the development of the English language and ofhumanism, using a selection ofprefaces from books ranging fromCædmon toWilfred Owen. Gray selected the works, wrote extensive marginal notes, and translated some earlier pieces into modern English.[61]
Around 2000, Gray had to apply to the Scottish Artists' Benevolent Association for financial support, as he was struggling to survive on the income from his book sales.[6] In 2001 Gray, Kelman and Leonard became joint professors of the Creative Writing programme at Glasgow andStrathclyde Universities.[41][62][63] Gray stood down from the post in 2003, having disagreed with other staff about the direction the programme should take.[64]
"Glasgow is a magnificent city," said McAlpin. "Why do we hardly ever notice that?" "Because nobody imagines living here… think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively."[65]
— Lanark (1981)
Gray's books are mainly set in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. His work helped strengthen and deepen the development of the Glasgow literary scene away from gang fiction, while also resisting neoliberal gentrification.[29] Gray's work, particularlyLanark, "put Scotland back on the literary map", and strongly influenced Scottish fiction for decades.[49][66] The frequent political themes in his writing argue the importance of promoting ordinary human decency, protecting the weak from the strong, and remembering the complexity of social issues.[67] They are treated in a playfully humorous andpostmodern manner, and some stories, especiallyLanark,1982, Janine, andSomething Leather, depict sexual frustration.[6][67]
My stories try to seduce the reader by disguising themselves as sensational entertainment, but are propaganda for democratic welfare-state Socialism and an independent Scottish parliament. My jacket designs and illustrations—especially the erotic ones—are designed with the same high purpose.[68]
— Contemporary Novelists (1996)
Will Self has called him "a creativepolymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision"[69] and "perhaps the greatest living [writer] in this archipelago today".[70] Gray described himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".[71] In 2019 he won the inauguralSaltire Society Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Scottish literature.[52][59][72]
His books are self-illustrated using strong lines and high-impact graphics, a unique and highly recognisable style influenced by his early exposure toWilliam Blake andAubrey Beardsley, comics,Ladybird Books, andHarmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia,[73] and which has been compared to that ofDiego Rivera.[74][75][76]
He published three collections of poetry;[nb 4] like his fiction, his poems are sometimes-humorous depictions of "big themes" like love, God and language.Stuart Kelly described them as having "a dispassionate, confessional voice; technical accomplishment utilised to convey meaning rather than for its own sake and a hard-won sense of the complexity of the universe…. His poetic work, especially when dealing with the relationship, or lack thereof, between the sexes, is memorable and disconcerting in the way only good poetry is."[17]
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Gray was aScottish nationalist. He started voting for theScottish National Party (SNP) in the 1970s, despairing about the erosion of thewelfare state which had provided his education. Gray believed thatNorth Sea oil should be nationalised, and wrote three pamphlets advocatingScottish independence from the United Kingdom,[nb 5] noting at the beginning ofWhy Scots Should Rule Scotland (1992) that "by Scots I mean everyone in Scotland who is eligible to vote."[77][78] In 2014 he wrote that "the UK electorate has no chance of voting for a party which will do anything to seriously tax our enlarged millionaire class that controls Westminster."[79] In a 2012 essay, Gray expressed his disapproval of English immigrants to Scotland who in his view only came to Scotland to advance their careers in the arts.[77][80]
He frequently used theepigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" in his books; by 1991, the phrase had become a slogan for Scottish opposition toThatcherism.[41][nb 6] The text was engraved in the Canongate Wall of theScottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004.[83] It was referred to by SNP politicians during the2007 Scottish Parliament election campaign, when they became a minority government for the first time.[84]
In 2001, Gray was narrowly defeated byGreg Hemphill when he stood as the candidate of theGlasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association for the post ofRector of the University of Glasgow.[85] A longstanding supporter of the SNP and theScottish Socialist Party, Gray votedLiberal Democrat at the2010 general election in an effort to unseat Labour, who he regarded as "corrupted";[86] by the2019 election he was voting Labour as a protest against the SNP for not being radical enough.[87]
Gray designed a special front page for theSunday Herald in May 2014 when it came out in favour of a "Yes" vote inthat year's independence referendum, the first and only newspaper to do so.[88] The newspaper described independence as "the chance to alter course, to travel roads less taken, to define a destiny", and the editor, Richard Walker, criticised the scare tactics of the "No" side and stressed that independence was normal.[89] Gray's design, and his and the paper's support for independence, attracted widespread coverage at the time and later. The cover consists of a large thistle surrounded byScottish saltires.Iain Macwhirter of theHerald wrote that it was "striking",[90] andThe National said Gray's image had "galvanised the 'Yes' movement".[84] TheSunday Herald's website doubled its traffic, and the newspaper's sales rose by 31% after it supported "Yes".[91][nb 7] Despite Scotland narrowly voting against independence, Gray felt the result was more favourable than a narrow Yes win.[93]
In 1990, he co-founded the publishing companyDog and Bone Press withChris Boyce and Chris's wife, Angela.[94][95]
In 2008, Gray's former student and secretaryRodge Glass published a biography of him,[96] calledAlasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography.[23] Gray was broadly approving of the work.[97] Glass sums up critics' main problems with Gray's writing as their discomfort with his politics, and with his frequent tendency to pre-empt criticism in his work.[23] Glass's book won theSomerset Maugham Award in 2009.[98]
In 2014 Gray's autobiographyOf Me & Others was released,[99] and Kevin Cameron made a feature-length filmAlasdair Gray: A Life in Progress, including interviews with Liz Lochhead and Gray's sister, Mora Rolley.[100][101][102]
In August 2015 a dramatisation ofLanark was performed at theEdinburgh International Festival. was adapted byDavid Greig and directed byGraham Eatough.[29] It had previously been dramatised at the festival by theTAG Theatre Company in 1995.[103][104]
In June 2015 Gray was seriously injured in a fall, after which he used a wheelchair.[87][105] He continued to write; the first two parts of his translation ofDante Alighieri'sDivine Comedy trilogy were published in 2018 and 2019.[106][107][nb 8]
Alasdair Gray died atQueen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow on 29 December 2019, the day after his 85th birthday, following a short illness. He left his body to science and there was no funeral.[108]
Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, remembered him as "one of the brightest intellectual and creative lights Scotland has known in modern times."[109] Tributes were also paid byJonathan Coe,Val McDermid,Ian Rankin,Ali Smith and Irvine Welsh.[109][110]The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".[6]
His personal and literary archive, including manuscripts, typescripts, diaries and correspondence, is held at theNational Library of Scotland.[111][112]
Sorcha Dallas was responsible for packing and organising his items posthumously and establishing the Alasdair Gray Archive in March 2020.[113][114][115] The Archive is a free community resource caring for Gray's studio and visual and literary materials. It commissions new works, offers access and education opportunities as well as partnering on projects and events. One such event is Gray Day, held annually on 25 February in celebration of Gray's life and works.[116]
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