Scotsman
It was perhaps the most brilliant stroke of obstinate luck that prevented Gray publishing Lanark in 1976, when most
publishers were keen to go ahead on the condition the book was split in half (it famously has two narratives: the realistic
story of Duncan Thaw, a Glaswegian artist, and the fantastic story of Lanark in the surreal city of Unthank, welded
together).
Lanark wasn't the only Scottish novel published in 1981, and a comparison with some of the others is telling.
This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 6 March, 2011
When Alasdair Gray’s first novel, Lanark: A Life in 4 Books was published in 1981, it was met with immediate critical
acclaim. Lanark is set partly in the Glasgow of the 1940s and 1950s and partly in a nightmarish otherworld where the
normal rules of reality appear, like almost everything else, to have broken down. The novel begins, unusually, with
Book Three, where Lanark arrives in the city of Unthank having lost his memory, and finds that he is developing
Dragonhide, a disease which makes his skin scale over the longer he remains there. He is eventually swallowed by a
huge mouth which opens in the ground of the city necropolis and finds himself recovering in the Institute, where he is
told about his earlier life as a boy and young man in Glasgow.
Books One and Two then tell the story of Duncan Thaw’s childhood and young adulthood as a Glaswegian art student
who eventually drops out of the Art School and suffers a breakdown while painting a mural based on the book of
Genesis in a Glasgow church. In Book Four the story returns to Lanark and Rima in the Institute. On their journey back
to Unthank, Rima gives birth to a son. Lanark finally awaits his death having failed to negotiate a better deal for the
people of Unthank as the city’s provost.
No such summary can do justice to Gray’s achievement in Lanark, a novel which Iain Banks described as ‘the best in
Scottish literature this century’. Lanark attempts to take a familiar landscape and to make it strange again, asking us to
look at the world around us with fresh eyes. It is also a highly political novel. The Institute, where people survive by
eating the flesh of its patients, provides an allegory for the capitalist world order at the end of the twentieth Century.
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
1 Most publishers were keen to publish the book in 1976, provided it was divided into 2 books –
the realistic story of Duncan Thaw, a Glaswegian artist, and the fantastic story of Lanark in the surreal city of
Unthank
Do you think this would have been an improvement or otherwise ?
2 Lanark begins with Book 3 and then on to Books 1 and 2 ;the epilogue is several chapters before the end.
Do you think this facilitates our reading of the narrative or does it add to the confusion?
3 Why do you think the title is “Lanark” - rather than “Duncan Thaw”... or anything else ?
4 Are there characters you admire/ have sympathy with in the novel ?
Who and why ?
5 Is there a passage in the novel that stands out for you – for any reason – beauty, peace, horror, mystery,
nostalgia, fun etc.
6 At the end of Book 2, Duncan Thaw appears to have committed a murder. Whom did you understand to be
the victim?
7 Lanark remains an influential and entertaining novel, though its science-fiction elements have not perhaps
aged well.
Would you agree?
8 We read in the epilogue,The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is
enclosed by your narrative which shows civilisation collapsing for the same reason.
Iis this an apt summary of the novel?
9 Lanark attempts to take a familiar landscape and to make it strange again, asking us to look at the world
around us with fresh eyes. It is also a highly political novel. The Institute, where people survive by eating
the flesh of its patients, provides an allegory for the capitalist world order at the end of the twentieth
Century.
Do you agree?
Are there other meanings to be taken from the novel?
10 Ian Banks describes this novel as the best in Scottish literature this century. Do you agree? What other
novels would also be deserving of this praise?