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diseases, orifices growing on their limbs and body heat fading away. Lanark begins to associate with a group of twenty-somethings to whom he cannot fully relate and whose mores he cannot understand, and soon begins to suffer from dragonhide, a disease which turns his skin into scales as an external manifestation of his emotional repression. Lanark is eventually swallowed by a mouth in the earth, and awakes in the
Institute, a sort of hospital which cures patients of their diseases but uses the hopeless cases for power and food. Upon learning this, Lanark is horrified and determines to leave.
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imagination trimmed off and built into the furniture of the world you occupy". He also writes: "The plots of the Thaw and Lanark sections are independent of each other and cemented by typographical contrivances rather than formal necessity. A possible explanation is that the author thinks a heavy book will make a bigger splash than two light ones".
249:
Book Four sees Lanark begin a bizarre, dreamlike journey back to
Unthank, which he finds on the point of total disintegration, wracked by political strife, avarice, paranoia and economic meltdown, all of which he is unable to prevent. In the course of the journey, during which he meets his author, he
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parts of the book is the
Epilogue, in which Lanark meets the author in the guise of the character "Nastler". He makes the first two remarks about the book quoted above, and anticipates criticism of the work and of the Epilogue in particular, saying "The critics will accuse me of self-indulgence, but
229:
In Book Three, a young man awakes alone in a train carriage. He has no memory of his past and picks his name from a strangely familiar photograph on the wall. He soon arrives in
Unthank, a strange Glasgow-like city in which there is no daylight and whose disappearing residents suffer from strange
266:
is mirrored by Lanark's skin disease 'dragonhide'). He also writes in the novel itself: "The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason" and (spoken to Lanark) "You are Thaw with the neurotic
262:. (Thaw drowns in the sea; Lanark arrives in Unthank with the same belongings, and seashells and sand in his pockets.) The connection between the two narratives is ambiguous; Gray said that "One is a highly exaggerated form of just about the everyday reality of the other" (for example, Thaw's
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beginning in pre-war
Glasgow, and tell the story of Duncan Thaw ("based on myself, he was tougher and more honest"), a difficult and precocious child born to impecunious and frustrated parents in the East End of Glasgow. The book follows Thaw's wartime evacuation, secondary education and his
324:
as a major influence on the atmosphere of the novel. He also referred to his own experiences in the media industry which he states is reflected in Lanark's numerous encounters in labyrinthine buildings with individuals talking in jargon. The
Institute he describes as a combination of
29:
361:(and unfinished Inner Ring Road) to the north and west. Gray said Glasgow Cathedral was the only location he purposefully visited to make notes about during the writing of the novel; all other locations he wrote about from memory.
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rapidly ages. He finally finds himself old, sitting in a hilltop cemetery as
Unthank breaks down in an apocalypse of fire and flood, and, his time of death having been revealed to him, he ends the book calmly awaiting it.
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Gray began writing the novel as a student in 1954. Book One was written by 1963, but he was unsuccessful in getting it published. The whole work was finished in 1976, and published in 1981 by the
Scottish publisher
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in London. More immediately evident inspiration can be seen in the cathedral and necropolis episodes in
Unthank, whose proximity to an urban tangle of roads is mirrored in Glasgow's real-life
320:
Gray added an appendix to the 2001 edition of the novel, in which he included a brief biography and elaborated on some of the influences on and inspirations for the novel. He cited
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to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another", and that the epilogue itself is "too important" to go at the end.
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four chapters before the end of the book). In the
Epilogue, the author explains this by saying that "I want
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https://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2021/02/thinking-about-alasdair-gray-and-lanark-forty-years-since-.html
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Shades of Gray: science fiction, history and the problem of postmodernism in the work of Alasdair Gray
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Blurring The Edges Fantasy, Reality, And The Fantastical Realism Of Alasdair Gray (Ian Phillip, 1997)
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The Unthank parts of the book may be considered as part of the "social-commentary" tradition of
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comprises four books, arranged in the order Three, One, Two, Four (there is also a
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is printed in the margins of the discussion. For instance, Gray describes much of
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by Alastair Cording was staged by Glasgow's Tag Theatre Company at the
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theatre programme, Edinburgh International Festival, August 1995
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Alasdair Gray talking about the inspiration behind Lanark
189:. The book, still his best known, has since become a
203:as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction."
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286:as an extended 'Difplag' (diffuse plagiarism) of
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374:. The novel was an immediate critical success.
627:"BBC - Scotland - Alasdair Gray: Lanark at 30"
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258:Lanark could be viewed as Thaw in a personal
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333:along with three real-life structures: the
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463:. Bucknell University Press. p. 18.
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669:Campbell, James (29 December 2019).
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605:. Galda & Wilch. p. 102.
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307:has often been compared with
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218:before Book One, and an
921:Scottish bildungsromans
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544:Gray, Alasdair (1981).
353:is yards away from the
169:to call Gray "the best
518:. London. 22 July 2008
414:Craig, Cairns (1981),
936:Canongate Books books
926:Novels set in Glasgow
846:McGrotty and Ludmilla
484:Glass, Rodge (2012).
343:BBC Television Centre
240:Glasgow School of Art
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357:to the east and the
310:Nineteen Eighty-Four
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901:1981 fantasy novels
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588:13 May 2008 at the
579:Scottish Television
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581:, 1993) quoted in
335:London Underground
275:I don't care". An
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853:Poor Things
754:Lanark 1982
400:David Greig
378:Adaptations
359:M8 motorway
279:Plagiarisms
193:. In 2008,
890:Categories
432:References
425:Cencrastus
355:Necropolis
272:postmodern
156:surrealist
636:1 October
631:Bbc.co.uk
455:Cited in
277:Index of
199:heralded
153:dystopian
90:hardcover
57:Publisher
729:18 March
723:"Lanark"
707:18 March
586:Archived
347:Townhead
220:Epilogue
216:Prologue
125:12635568
80:Scotland
49:Language
563:27 July
410:Reviews
365:Genesis
244:suicide
160:Glasgow
149:realist
88:Print (
52:English
22:Lanark
876:(2007)
868:(1996)
862:(1994)
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179:Lanark
173:since
134:Lanark
100:560 pp
39:Author
791:Works
522:7 May
322:Kafka
97:Pages
731:2018
709:2018
638:2017
607:ISBN
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552:ISBN
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260:Hell
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