Alasdair Gray (subject of my MA thesis) has died

This year's characteristic, home-drawn and printed Christmas-/ post-card from Alasdair

The Scottish writer and painter Alasdair Gray - who was the subject of my 1988 MA thesis at Durham University, and my friend for a decade around that time - died about a week ago. He lived to the age of 85, which was considerably more than would have been expected when he was an unhealthy child (hospitalised and nearly dying from asthma several times) - or indeed a wheezy, overweight adult who too-often drank too-much.

Alasdair is regarded as one of the major Scottish writers of the past century - mainly for his first novel Lanark (1981); which is in the modernist/ post-modernist genre - a hybrid work: realistic semi-autobiography sandwiched by the two parts of a SciFi dystopian fiction, both sharing an indirectly related main character. And an embedded 'Epilogue' where the author comes on-stage to exchange banter with his protagonist (and confess to the multiple stolen ideas or 'plagiarisms' deployed through the novel). The whole embellished by the author's very impressive illustrations (which often look like parody/ pastiche ancient engravings).

 From Thos. Hobbes Leviathan on the left, Gray's version from Lanark on the right

I bought a copy of Lanark in 1982, during perhaps the most 'miserable' year of my life, and went to Glasgow to buy a print of some of the artwork; and met Alasdair for the first time. Alasdair turned out to be the most eccentric person I had ever met, very genuine and kind, very funny, extremely interesting, and enjoyable to talk with.

His books' subject matter, his general artistic stance, his (socialistic Scottish nationalist) politics, all suited me at that point in my life.

And five years later, when I decided to do a one year research thesis - he allowed me to work from the collection of his diaries and journals in the National Library of Scotland; which meant that much of my work was published in The Arts of Alasdair Gray (1991) for which I also provided a short biography. So, for a while I was The expert on this author.

When I went to live in Glasgow in 1989 I saw a lot more of Alasdair and helped out with a couple of his later books - Poor Things and the Book of Prefaces - for which I was duly credited in the detailed acknowledgements (and 'plagiarisms') which had become something of a trademark.

I am top centre, having helped research the Malthus and Darwin prefaces - (Professor) Robert 'RAD' Grant and poet-novelist Frank Kuppner were both very good friends during my Glasgow years

After moving away from Glasgow, I only saw Alasdair once - when the above portrait was done. But we kept in touch - Alasdair especially being a very loyal correspondent. Rather sadly I "went-off" the books that had once meant so much to me;  and found - after that intense immersion of the late 1980s - I did not wish to re-read Lanark, or the books that followed. Perhaps because my infatuation coincided with that dark and depressing decade of my early adult-working life (aged 23-33) which I did not especially want to have revived in memory.

Also, Alasdair's best work is pretty gruelling to read - if there is a happy or hopeful resolution, this only comes after a very dark, dark night of the soul; and en route there is typically more pervy-ness and sordidness than I will willingly submit to nowadays.

For most would be readers it might therefore be best to go for the hardback, lavishly embellished edition of his first collection of short pieces - Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983); which is a sheer delight of wit and erudition throughout; and also packs a powerful punch - here and there.

"Writing is thinking"

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I read this somewhere, years ago, and at first could not understand it.

But as I continued writing, I found it was true. Writing is a kind of thinking (or can be).

One consequence is that a writer's writings are sometimes much more intelligent than he is in 'real life' - Kurt Vonnegut admitted this candidly - that he came across as smart in his writing, but not when people met him. This happened because Vonnegut could refine the written word, work on it to increase the concentration and wit - but could not do this in real-time.

Another example is JK Rowling who - with Harry Potter - managed to write a very extended and complex plot across seven books while creating characters people care-about and firing-off lots of fantasy ideas. Yet in interviews she comes across as incapable of having done this.

On the other hand, some writers are pretty much the same person on the page and in real life. I used to know the Scottish author Alasdair Gray quite well, and his conversation was very similar to his prose style. And Gray's prose style was pretty much the same in letters and diaries as it was in his novels. It may be relevant that he was a 'natural' writer who won a national competition and published a short story in his childhood (The Star) - and this was good enough to be re-published with adult work in Unlikely Stories, Mostly.

The contrast can also go in the other direction, with writers who are good enough at writing to become known as such - but who by all accounts were much better conversationalists: Samuel Johnson and Oscar Wilde spring to mind (none of Johnson's works are in the mainstream canon of English Literature, and only the Importance of Being Earnest from Wilde's ouvre).

I would guess that the explanation is that for some writers like Vonnegut writing is thinking - which allows them to extend their natural oral capabilities; for other writers (Alasdair Gray?) writing is transcription; while for others (like Wilde, perhaps) writing was a distraction from living ("I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works."); or even an actively unpleasant activity - as Sam. Johnson said: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

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Living with a biography

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It was not always thus - but in recent decades (since about the mid 1980s, perhaps) I have often 'lived with' a particular biography or autobiography for periods of weeks or months - dipping in frequently, and trying to get at the heart of the human subject of the book.

These books (which I am about to list) were not necessarily ones which I would (wearing a critical hat) regard as exceptionally well written books, nor would I necessarily recommend them, and sometimes I would regard them as rather disappointing (the subject was generally more important to me than the style)  nonetheless these are indeed biographies with which I spent a lot of time.

The following is incomplete - but in broadly chronological order, or rather the period of my life (some weeks or months) dominated by the book:

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Lucky Poet by Hugh MacDiarmid

JRR Tolkien and The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter

MacDiarmid: a critical biography by Alan Bold

Robert Graves by Martin Seymour Smith

Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick

Emerson: the Mind on Fire, by RD Richardson (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

The Flowering of New England by Van Wyck Brooks (group biography of early 19th century)

Robert Frost by Jay Parini

Joseph Campbell by Steven and Robin Larsen

Autobiography by John Cowper Powys

Charles Williams by Alice Mary Hadfield

Father Seraphim Rose by Heiromonk Damascene


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For example, the Emerson biography by Robert D Richardson is associated with a long period around 1996-8 - I was continually going back and re-reading certain parts, until my copy was fallen into pieces. I then was more easily able to carry pieces of the book to read in bed, the garden or cafes (it is, intact, a very thick book).

My interest in this, as in others listed, was that Emerson seemed (at the time, not now) to have lived a kind of life (not specifically his life - but in some specific respects) which I wanted (in some way) to live - and I think I was trying to learn from this. In fact my motivations were not clear to me, now or since, but anyway I kept returning to the book and trying to puzzle-out something.

Or, and this would apply to the next book - The Flowering of New England, I returned to the parts of these books because they 'cast a spell' on me. VW Brooks prose is incantatory, and evokes a delicious (to me) idyllic quality.

There was, here and elsewhere, an element of day-dreaming, wish fulfillment and escape. The book was working as a technology, or a magical device, to create an alternative world in my mind.

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Of course, most people get this from novels - which are, after all, designed to do it. But novels don't usually work for me; at least seldom since my late twenties (for example, the novels of Halldor Laxness did this for me, for a while circa 1999-2001, after visiting Iceland).

So biographies have been, for better or worse, a linking thread of life over the past 25 years.

It may have been for worse - in so far as they were a distraction (on the one hand) yet (on the other hand) apparently held out a (slender) promise of ultimate worldly gratification.

The idea that there had been satisfactory lives, and that these might perhaps be emulated - at least in their satisfactoriness - was a delusion, ultimately. 

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NB: It is probably not relevant - but I have myself written a (very) mini-biography. A chapter length account of the life of writer/ painter Alasdair Gray - published in The Arts of Alasdair Gray, 1991 - and based on a few months of  proper archival research in diaries, letters etc.

My MA thesis is online, apparently

*
Well, who'd have thunk it? My thesis The Literature of Alasdair Gray, which was awarded the degree of Magister Artium by the University of Durham, England in 1988 - is available online!

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/6450/1/6450_3750.PDF

So you can all read it, and I will set a test next week...

It was a one year research degree in English Literature (like a mini-PhD), and I lived in University College, Durham - which is in a castle

And ate my meals at high table in the Hogwartsian Great Hall

It was certainly one of the most enjoyable years of my pre-married life - full of reading, arts, writing, ritual and good conversation - but got me into rather bad habits of self-indulgence and dependence on external stimulation; so that it was followed by a rather miserable 'down' from which I did not emerge for several years.

I thought my thesis was pretty good for just one year's work - the second half of it (the library work) was later published as a book chapter.

Strangely, although this year briefly made me into the world expert on Alasdair Gray; and although I later went to live near him in Glasgow, got to know him pretty well and helped him in little ways with several novels and plays; I haven't re-read anything of his for a long time or kept up with his later work... so it goes.

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Poor Things - My first Hollywood movie (kind of...)

I've just heard that next week will see the release of a movie version of Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel - Poor Things. 

I have always had a kind of proprietorial interest in this work, because I was teaching in the Glasgow University Anatomy Department, and living nearby Alasdair at the time this was written - and went through the whole thing in draft, to correct the medical aspects (the story is about a doctor). 

Indeed, my recollection is that several whole sentences of my suggestions found their way into the final book; although I now have no clear idea which or where these were!

In my copy, Alasdair wrote a dedication:

14 August 1992. To Bruce who helped me get the medicine and surgery right, from a grateful Gray (Alasdair). 

I haven't re-read Poor Things since around that time, and my memory of it is hazy; but I recall it was a lively and witty story; and it seems the movie is supposed to be very good. 

Remote, minuscule, and indirect though my contribution is; this is probably the closest I shall ever get to "Hollywood" - thank heavens!

Two authors I used to like, but did me harm

I deplore the nonsensical trope that "books" are A Good Thing: only some books are Good - and a small minority. 

Others books are Bad, in the sense that they are actually intended (whether consciously or not) negatively to affect the reader. Indeed; nowadays this applies to a large majority of contemporary and famous books: fiction and non-fiction.

In particular reading the wrong books at certain times in our lives can do us spiritual harm. 

Perhaps this only applies to people like me who seriously engage-with, and are thus influenced-by the books they read. In my experience, to do significant spiritual harm we must like, or at least admire, a book at the time of reading (for whatever reason - and the reason for liking/ admiring may itself be a bad one). 

The first author to have a significantly bad influence on me was probably Michael Moorcock; whose Jerry Cornelius books I began reading aged 21 at a time when I was somewhat depressed, or at least frustrated. I also read quite a few other Moorcock books, but the Jerry Cornelius series were the ones that did the job. 

I got onto Moorcok via another writer called Jack Trevor Story, who was a friend of Moorcock and said that M was one of the major living writers, an excellent writer. 

So I read Moorcock with that expectation and belief; although I could not actually experience Moorcock's excellence. His prose seemed flat and drab, and I had great difficulty following what was happening. 

This difficulty (deliberate, in these "experimental" novels) had the effect of making me engage more intensely on the basis that I "must be missing something"; and as a result Moorcock's calculatedly "hip" hedonistic nihilism synergized with my mood of the time to produce its bad effects.  

A similar phenomenon came a couple of years later, when I read a good deal of Kurt Vonnegut, starting with Slaughterhouse 5 - which was actually recommended and lent to me by Alasdair Gray, at our first meeting. 

Vonnegut is a far better writer than Moorcock; being extremely skilful at construction, highly inventive, and deeply witty in his early books (up to Breakfast of Champions). 

But underneath this is an aggressively bleak, hope-less, and immiserating ideology; rooted in ultra-materialist assumptions; a trait that got worse and worse as V grew older. 

Vonnegut apparently sets-out to generate the belief that despair is the only outcome of honest realism - and he did a pretty good job on me - again at a point in my life when I was tending that way myself. 

In sum; at a couple of periods of my life in which - for whatever other reasons that were primarily causal - reading Moorcock and Vonnegut made bad things significantly worse; and tended to make me "get stuck" in a bad place. 

My interpretation nowadays is that M and V were both people who had chosen the dark side in the spiritual war of this world; and who chose further to propagate and infect others with their negative world-view by means of their writing. 

Moorcock - a lesser writer - did this in an obvious and in-your-face way; the brilliant Vonnegut sugared his bitter pill with wit and skill. 

Consequently, I have no desire to re-read anything by either of them*, and on-the-whole regret the attention I once gave them.

*Except for Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut, which is such a well-written, ideas-packed, and clever black comedy, that it is worth the temporary net-depression of spirits induced by reading.  

Sifting old papers

I'm engaged in the melancholy task of sifting an accumulation of my old papers; and throwing-out as much as possible.

The thing is, my Filing System is that - when I've decided something must be kept, I put it in a box.

When that box is full, I put the newer papers in another box.

After more than thirty years, I have a series of boxes in roughly chronological order (except when I later stuffed some papers into an earleir box) - each representing a phase of my professional life; each containing mostly-disposable stuff such as photocopies of academic papers, background reading and drafts for long-completed writing project - but as well as the disposable, also things I still want to keep; such as copies of my own magazine, journal and newspaper publications.

In sum, I need to sort-through every last piece of paper.

I find it a wrench even to discard material I haven't looked-at for thirty years - for example, material related to my long-abandoned MD research on neuroendocrinology of psychiatric disorders, MA research on Scottish author Alasdair Gray, or the papers from 1989-94 relating to the function of the human adrenal gland.

Some stuff I am pleased to be rid of: bad scientific papers by dishonest authors; nasty reviews of my books that I had kept 'for the record'; detritus of dull conferences...the turgid tedium that is 99% of academia...

I have been, since the mid 1980s, a pretty prolific writer; and there are some things I had completely forgotten I had written. An article for Living Marxism magazine!* Some-things in the NHS manager's journal (presumably done for money?). An amusing column about 'pinch-me words' for the British Journal of General Practice (provoking the wistful obervation that I used to be a pretty adept comic columnist). These were retained.    

Obviously, I need to press-on - and not be distracted. But then I find scraps of evidence of how I developed ideas which I consider to be quite good; and these sometimes hold me up for a minute.

...Such as a sheet of paper summarising the nature of mania, dated 1998, and which was absorbed into my Psychiatry and the Human Condition book. I stalled on this, examined the notes; and was quite impressed at the line of reasoning... but it still has to go into the bin. Or, from about the same time, one side of A4 notes which were for a pro-atheist lecture I gave as one side of a debate, at the invitation of the local Christian Union: describing how there was no longer any need for Christianity. Was that really me?

This is the kind of stuff which would presumably be marvellous evidence for the biographer of some worthy genius like Coleridge or Tolkien - but not for me - so into the 'recyling bag' it all goes.

But not without a shrug of regret.


*Note: Although I have been an atheist, socialist and many other bad things - I never have been a Marxist of any kind, whether Living or not. But before I began blogging, I used to publish journalism all over the place, with whoever asked for something. The Living Marxism group were a pleasant bunch; and they are still going - producing the online magazine Spiked - and I'm still not sure what their covert agenda really is. Although I am sure that they have one, and nowadays it isn't mine.

Kurt Vonnegut - epitome of a modern evil genius

In a dark year of my life, while a House Officer (or medical 'Intern' in the US nomenclature), I went fast and deep into the works of Kurt Vonnegut - and experienced their brilliance and their despair.

I was introduced by the Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray in the autumn of 1982, when I first met him in Glasgow - he either quoted from memory or read aloud something deeply amusing from Breakfast of Champions, and lent me a copy of Slaughterhouse Five. I rapidly went on to read everything by Vonnegut written up to the middle 1970s. It made my life A Lot worse.

(...After the mid 70s publication dates, I found the work unreadable - a kind a embarrassing, contrived self-parody. Interestingly, I believe this happened because Vonnegut so insightfully explained-himself, in the non-fiction collection Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons. Having explained himself, made his methods conscious and explicit in lectures and essays; he could no longer do them spontaneously and naturally - and it destroyed his genius. This is what Glenn Gould called the 'centipedal' problem in relation to piano technique - that when the centipede tried to explain how it was he could manage to coordinate so many legs, he then found he could no longer do it: this was why Gould refused to teach pupils.)

I think Vonnegut's best work is Cat's Cradle - which is written with extraordinary wit and deftness, and is packed with very clever ideas. But it is deeply subversive and despair-inducing, exactly because it gets so deeply and sympathetically into the religious impulse, the impulse to perceive and know life as meaningful and purposive... which it then alternately mocks and pities as false: a self-gratifying and socially-beneficial delusion.

This is the Vonnegut mood: surface wit, powerful depth charge jokes; empathic explanation and description - then the resigned shrug that the whole thing is a trick; either a trick we play on ourselves to keep ourselves going, or a trick played on us by rulers who are manipulating us for their own benefit.

Vonnegut is therefore an extreme example of the nineteen-sixties counter-cultural ideology that has since grown and taken-over as the dominant mainstream. He is both a hedonist (because nothing else matters) and a pathological altruist (especially in God Bless You, Mr Rosewater).

Vonnegut combines that paralysing pacifist pity with shallow, slavish and partisan Leftism, in the way so familiar from nearly all Western ruling elites. The pity makes them feel superior, their careerist hatred of the less-extremely-Left is what daily-motivates them. 

My point is that Vonnegut really was a genius - albeit a minor genius, but undoubtedly - and consequently the harm he did (especially via Slaughterhouse Five, in context of the Vietnam War protest movement) was massively amplified in a world where the social ethos so exactly matched his own.

Vonnegut and the late sixties-early seventies shared a dangerous resonant frequency -  much as he did with my own pervasive misery, self-righteousness and failure of courage.  

CS Lewis "the man" is best found in his letters

The collected letters of CS Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper, are in three volumes - and the first two volumes - which span from Lewis's childhood to 1949 are the best. After Lewis became famous; most of his correspondence was with people he did not know well (or at all); and these later letters are therefore mostly more public and generic in tone. 

In the early letters you will find more of Jack Lewis's humour than in any other of his writings - displayed in the letters to his brother Warnie (then away as a Captain in the army, sometimes abroad), his childhood friend Arthur Greaves, and to other friends from college days. 

Indeed, it is in these letters that I find the most vivid impression of Lewis as a man - far more so than in any of his published writings. I get a distinct flavour of that man who formed and sustained The Inklings, who was (legendarily) the life and soul of the company - as well as loyal and considerate. 

I find 'Lewis the letter writer' to be a very likeable persona; more likeable than Lewis the theologian, literary critic or adult novelist - and even-more likeable than the author of Narnia

I don't know whether others will tune-into Lewis's humour in the way that I do (humour is very much a matter of taste); but I find it to be an absolute delight. In the first place - there are many parts which are laugh-out-loud funny; which is very rare among published private letters (Kingsley Amis's correspondence with Philip Larkin is another example: these letters are very funny indeed, albeit in a characteristically dark and cruel way!). 

Yet Lewis's humour is also warm and affectionate, probably because of the affection between Lewis and his correspondent - it is a generous humour; shared in order to give enjoyment to the recipient - and tailored to each recipient. 

So Lewis's funny passages sent to Warnie are different from those for Arthur Greaves, and these again from Owen Barfield and so forth. Lewis is sharing running jokes and the 'kind of thing' that provides amusement in a particular friendship; the 'kind of thing' that particular friends talk-about. 

The quality of writing is superb - the letters are as well-written as the published prose (although not so well spelled!) - which is unsurprising given that Lewis (like Samuel Johnson) composed in his ind, not on paper - and usually published his (corrected) first drafts.

The famously great powers of quotation that Lewis displayed in conversation are also on view - and it is made clear that these were based mainly on the capacity to pastiche rather than on an exact memory. 

Lewis's 'quotes' are nearly all more-or-less inaccurate, at a word-by-word basis (as Walter Hooper's footnotes make clear), but always contain the flavour, distinctiveness and pertinence of that being quoted. 

This is the same 'method' as deployed by a Scottish novelist I used to know - Alasdair Gray. He would fluently improvise 'quotations' from favourite works that cropped-up in conversation; getting the spirit exactly right while - strictly speaking - using mostly his own words. For example - he did this when we discussed funny parts of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five; and again with Flann O'Brien's At Swin Two Birds - also done in an impression of the appropriate US or Irish accent. The business was both hilarious and virtuoso.

I know that however much I recommend Lewis's collected letters; very few people are likely to read them. 

Very few people read 'secondary literature' (biography, letters, criticism) of even their very favourite authors. 

But I believe that if you have not at least dipped-into CS Lewis's letters - there is also a 'selected letters' available, and the complete letters to Arthur Greaves are published separately as They Stand Together - then you don't really know him. 

And, strictly, as writing; the best letters are Lewis at his best; equaled (in various different ways) but never surpassed by anything else he wrote. 

I share in some Oscars for Poor Things (sort of...)

She's crying because I wasn't invited - presumably 

I noticed, rather belatedly, that "my" movie (which I haven't actually seen) seems to have scooped-up most of the 2024 Oscars that were left-over from Oppenheimer (which also I haven't seen). 

Since the movie was based-on the work by Alasdair Gray that I had most to do with the writing-of; clearly my contribution must have been decisive. 

I should add that nobody from the film's production team has yet been in contact to thank me for making them so much money and prestige. 

Ingrates...