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 novel about wars in the world, fought like sporting events, that is set in Scotland in the 23rd century. This is the first British edition. The images of the dust jacket differ between the British and American editions. The book was designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This is novel about wars in the world, fought like sporting events, that is set in Scotland in the 23rd century. This is the first American edition. The images of the dust jacket differ between the British and American editions. The book was designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray. -- 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 theme of this novel is a parody of the making of a British prime minister modeled after Margaret Thatcher. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is the first American edition.The Guardian Ocober 5, 2007 Christopher Tayler: Not so long ago, it sometimes seemed as though the age's master plot revolved around a sexual encounter that caused at least one of its participants to be hauled up before a tribunal. Bill Clinton was this scenario's Exhibit A, of course, but his troubles only strengthened a fascination that started to grip writers at around the time of David Mamet's Oleanna (1992). By 2001, JM Coetzee, Philip Roth, Francine Prose, Jonathan Franzen and many other novelists had inadvertently made the shamed professor a stock figure in heavyweight fiction.Post Bin Laden, post Bush, different characters have proliferated. Terrorists and traumatised New Yorkers have flourished, but the prevailing figure is almost certainly the horrified western intellectual trying, and usually failing, to sort out his or her responses to the carnage on the world stage. These characters have come in a range of varieties, from glassily...

Scope and Contents

On the last page is a poem in which each line has a different color. It reads THE GRAVE COLOURS OF EARTH - BRIGHTEN TOWARD - AN - OPEN BOOK - OF - LIGHT UNSTAINED - BY - WORD. The Sackners visited Gray in September 2004 and saw this poem as a wall embroidery (done by a friend) hanging on a wall in his library. Both the cover of the book and the dust jacket were designed by Gray. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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

Each poem is briefly annotated by Gray. There is also an unspecified number of unsigned copies. The publisher, Morag McAlpine, is Gray's wife. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This story in this book deals with lesbian love and sexual bondage. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This volume actually contains 14 short stories, or as Gray writes, "This book contains more tales than ten so the title is a tall tale too, I would spoil my book if I shortened it, spoil the title if I made it true." Each page that is numbered in its upper outside corner is accompanied by a brief caption of the title of the story on the left sided page and the subject on the right sided page, e.g., 22 Houses And Small Labour Parties, 23 A Willing Young Worker, 24 Houses And Small Labour Parties, and 25 The Appearance of Authority, etc. A section at the end of the book provides notes on the background of each story. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This book consists of 12 critical texts about the life, art, and literary works by Gray as compiled and edited by Robert Crawford and Thom Nairn. The facing page of the title page depicts a self portrait drawing by Gray rendered in visual poet terms. Four paintings are also reproduced as plates in addition to small drawings scattered throughout the book. There is marginalia from the previous owner -- 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...

Scope and Contents

This is a play for physically disabled actors. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.