Good morning everyone. It's gray and cold outside, so I will have a desk day and enjoy some good coffee. Maybe a bit of running after lunch.
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#GrayDay
1 post1 participant0 posts today
“Novels like LANARK do what all the best art does: awaken your imaginative capacities without swallowing them whole. It does not give you answers, but it does give you the right questions.”
—Stephen Durkan: “LANARK: an escape to reality”
https://stephendurkan.wordpress.com/2021/02/25/lanark-an-escape-to-reality/
Distant Music · Lanark – An Escape to RealityI put down the book. ‘He did it. He wrote THE book’. He was Alisdair Gray and the book was Lanark. I read the book in my mid 20s when I was working at a call centre in Glasgow. I had recently gotte…
"I regard a well-stocked library as the pinnacle of democratic socialism." - Alasdair Gray
Celebrate #GrayDay by delving into one of the many Alasdair Gray books in our well-stocked libraries.
Continued thread
Prof Alan Riach – who appears, briefly & fictionally, in Alasdair Gray’s 2007 novel OLD MEN IN LOVE (although not, I should add, as an old man in love) – discusses LANARK at our 2022 Schools Conference
8/8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTCGw6e_OSI&list=PLEP9HxY4X7WaVgzFyI3JdP1V-XAopXEgR
Continued thread
“Taken together, the four prints underscore the oft-disputed unity of LANARK, as well as the sheer will of Gray’s effort to portray the individual’s capabilities for art & love against the backdrop of the modern industrialized state”
—David Auerbach on the sources of the frontispieces for LANARK’s four books, and how Alasdair Gray used them
7/8
https://www.waggish.org/2020/alasdair-grays-lanark-the-four-frontispieces/
Waggish · Alasdair Gray's Lanark: The Four Frontispieces - WaggishCoded with symbolic meaning, the four frontispieces of LANARK deliver Alasdair Gray’s rejoinders to modern history.
Continued thread
(although we’re still waiting for “The Provision Merchant as Agent of Evil in Scottish Literature from Galt to Gunn” tbh)
6/8
Continued thread
Which academic will finally dare to write the long-awaited paper “The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Alasdair Gray’s LANARK: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes”?
5/8
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Continued thread
The frontispiece’s quotation
“By Arts is formed that great Mechanical Man called a State, foremost of the Beasts of the Earth for Pride”
is based on Hobbes: “For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE…”
The 2nd part draws on the Bible—the description of Leviathan (Job 41.34):
“He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.”
3/8
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gray-lanark-book-four-p20974
Continued thread
Discernible landmarks include Glasgow University tower; John Knox’s statue in the Glasgow Necropolis; the Wallace Monument; the Grangemouth oil refinery; St Giles Cathedral; Edinburgh Castle; the Forth & Tay bridges; & the experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor at Dounreay. Also visible are oil rigs in the North Sea, nuclear submarines in the Irish Sea & Holy Loch, & the paddle-steamer PS Waverley sailing down the Clyde.
2/8
Continued thread
The cover of this edition shows Gray’s frontispiece for Book 4. Based on Abraham Bosse’s 1651 frontispiece to Hobbes’ LEVIATHAN, it depicts a figurative State towering over a panoramic view across Scotland
1/8
INTERVIEWER: When somebody asks you to describe your book LANARK, what do you say to them?
ALASDAIR GRAY: I say it is a Scottish petit bourgeois model of the universe.
I: Just like that?
AG: Yes, I’ve rehearsed it & honed it down to as few words as possible.
It’s #GrayDay! Alasdair Gray’s LANARK was first published on 25 Feb 1981
@bookstodon 
preface/
Screenprint of the title page to LANARK, by Gray & Murray Robertson
Happy #GrayDay! Alasdair Gray’s debut novel Lanark was published #OnThisDay, 25 February, 1981.
Lanark – An Escape to Reality https://stephendurkan.wordpress.com/2021/02/25/lanark-an-escape-to-reality/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIqjSFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcTHkhu_NU6LEJm0pinJcpitbymYfx58r37ubfOmGdPIfNoPt9YSvwsdow_aem_3KBVXxqxZFGgdscdDd_PaQ
GRAY DAY
25 Feb, Òran Mór, Glasgow – tickets £22.50
The annual celebration of all things Alasdair Gray from the @agrayarchive.bsky.social – with live readings, comedy performances, film screenings & more
https://thealasdairgrayarchive.org/event/gray-day-2025-a-celebration-of-alasdair-gray-at-90/
Continued thread
The image illustrating the above article, if anyone doesn’t know it, is one part of a huge mural painted by Alasdair Gray over a number of years on the ceiling of the Òran Mór (formerly Kelvinside Parish Church), an arts & entertainment venue in Glasgow’s West End
#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #mural #art
https://oran-mor.co.uk/arts-for-all/celestial-ceiling-mural/
Òran MórCelestial Ceiling Mural | Òran MórAlasdair Gray at Òran Mór ‘Glasgow is a magnificent city… Why do we hardly ever notice that?’ Alasdair Gray, Lanark (1981). Alasdair Gray’s stunning ceiling mural in The Auditorium – commissioned by Colin Beattie for Òran Mór – is the largest public artwork in Scotland. Affectionately coined the ‘Sistine Chapel of the 21st century’, Gray’s mural has […]
Beyond POOR THINGS
Mazin Saleem’s Ode to Alasdair Gray’s Lesser-Known, Equally Deserving Books, Including a Gargantuan Retelling of the History of English Literature & a Bowdlerization of The Divine Comedy
#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #PoorThings
https://lithub.com/beyond-poor-things-an-ode-to-alasdair-grays-lesser-known-equally-deserving-books/
Literary Hub · Beyond Poor Things: An Ode to Alasdair Gray’s Lesser-Known, Equally Deserving BooksWhen a dead author has one of their novels made into a film, they get let out of the underworld for a season, though usually they return in their most familiar forms. Since Yorgos Lanthimos adapted…
INTERVIEWER: When somebody asks you to describe your book LANARK, what do you say to them?
ALASDAIR GRAY: I say it is a Scottish petit bourgeois model of the universe.
INTERVIEWER: Just like that?
ALASDAIR GRAY: Yes, I’ve rehearsed it and honed it down to as few words as possible.
From 25 Feb 2021 – the first ever #GrayDay, marking the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Alasdair Gray’s novel LANARK
