Scope and Contents

This is Gray's second novel. The story deals with the life of an alcholic, Scottish electrician who fantasizes about sexual bondage scenes and akin those in "The Story of O." The protagonists relations with his mistress, wife and family as well as his friends constitutes the major portion of the book. Gray's Epilogue reveals sources for the story structures in the various chapters. The book includes several pages with highly experimental concrete poetic layouts. This American edition of the book is larger in size than its British edition, also held by the Sackner Archive. ln addition, this increase size is reflected in the image and typeface of the dust jacket. The dust jacket, that was designed by Gray, summarizes the content of the novel on its left side and depicts a self-portrait by Gray in the form of a line drawing on its right side. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This is Gray's second novel. The story deals with the life of an alcholic, Scottish electrician who fantasizes about sexual bondage scenes and akin those in "The Story of O." The protagonists relations with his mistress, wife and family as well as his friends constitutes the major portion of the book. Gray's Epilogue reveals sources for the story structures in the various chapters.The book includes several pages with highly experimental concrete poetic layouts. This British edition of the book is smaller in size than its American counterpart, also held by the Sackner Archive. ln addition, this decreased size is reflected in the image and typeface sizes comprising the dust jacket. The dust jacket, that was designed by Gray, depicts inverted 'Y's' in a grid on its left side and upright 'Y's' on its right side. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is the first American edition of the novel originally published by Canongate Publishing in England in 1981. The visionary drawings reproduced in this book were made by Gray. Andrew Crumey WEB 1999 wrote the following. "Alasdair Gray was born on 28 December 1934 in Glasgow, and trained as a painter at the Glasgow School Of Art. He worked as an art teacher, muralist and theatrical scene painter (experiences which are reflected in novels such as "Lanark" and "1982, Janine"), and his illustrations for his own books (as well as his bold use of typography) form a crucial part of their unique appeal. In the early seventies, Gray attended an informal writers' group run by Philip Hobsbaum, along with James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Agnes Owens and others. Work would be photocopied and distributed in advance for the group to discuss and criticise. Gray had already been working on "Lanark" since the fifties, and found Kelman's advice particularly helpful. The novel was finished...

Scope and Contents

The book was designed by the author and illustrated by William Strang. Set in and around Glasgow and the Mediterranean in the early 1880's, it describes the love lives of two Scottish doctors and a 25 year old woman who was created by one of them from human remains. The illustrations depict anatomic dissected parts of the body and portraits of individuals mentioned in the book. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents The dust jacket depicts a naked self portrait of Gray and a muse that appears to be Morag McAlpine, his wife. The Sackners met them in Glasgow in 2004. Kirkus Reviews stated: "A most curious collection of semiautobiographical stories, from the veteran Scots author (the Whitbread-winner Poor Things, 1993; etc.) and graphic artist. The tales feature different protagonists and narrators, but the dominant one is a long-married (sometimes divorced) male approaching old age, taking stock of his (disappointing) life, and drawing resentful contrasts between vigorous youth and enfeebled age. There are terse, flimsy vignettes like "Pillow Talk," which portrays a husband trying to goad his wife into leaving him; a memory of "failures of common decency" that blighted a schoolboy's childhood ("Sinkings"); and a description of a peace march ("15 February 2003") that's only an excuse for lambasting Bush-and-Blair's Iraq policies. Several stories address the volume's themes more directly, and...