Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

  turn to the wire monkey

  For sustenance merely

  Then go back and embrace

  the cloth monkey

  Who affords nothing.

  When frightened the youngster

  will bury its head in

  the soft

  Warm protruding bosom of the

  cloth.

  The wire monkey stands

  against the blast.

  Everyone prefers cloth monkeys.

  HUME, DAVID

  Chap. 16, para. 9. Blockplag from treatise: An Enquiry Concerning Human Under standing.

  IBSEN, HENRIK

  Books 3 and 4. These owe much to the verse drama Peer Gynt, which presents an interplay between a petit-bourgeois universe and supernatural regions which parody and criticise it. (See also kafka.)

  IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF SCOTLAND, 1871

  Chap. 25, para. 1. This is not the simple Blockplag it seems. It unites extracts from the Monkland Canal entry and the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway entry which preceeds that.

  JOYCE, JAMES

  Chap. 22, para. 5. This monologue by a would-be artist to a tolerant student friend is a crude Difplag of similar monologues in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

  JUNG, CARL

  Nearly every chapter of the book is a Difplag of the mythic “Night Journey of the Hero” described in that charming but practically useless treatise Psychology and Alchemy. This is most obvious in the purification by swallowing at the end of chapter 6. (See also disney, god and freud.) But the hero, Lanark, gains an unJungian political dimension by being swallowed by Hobbes’s Leviathan. (See hobbes.)

  KAFKA, FRANZ

  Chap. 39, last paragraph. The silhouette in the window is from the last paragraph of The Trial.

  KELMAN, JIM

  Chap 47. God’s conduct and apology for it is an extended Difplag of the short story Acid:

  In this factory in the north of England acid was essential. It was contained in large vats.

  Gangways were laid above them. Before these gangways were made completely safe a young man fell into a vat feet first. His screams of agony were heard all over the department. Except for one old fellow the large body of men was so horrified that for a time not one of them could move. In an instant this old fellow who was also the young man s father had clambered up and along the gangway carrying a big pole. Sorry Hughie, he said. And then ducked the young man below the surface. Obviously the old fellow had had to do this because only the head and shoulders … in fact, that which had been seen above the acid was all that remained of the young man.

  KINGSLEY, REVEREND CHARLES

  Most of Lanark is an extended Difplag of The Water Babies, a Victorian children’s novel thought unreadable nowadays except in abridged versions. The Water Babies is a dual book. The first half is a semi-realistic, highly sentimental account of an encounter between a young chimney sweep from an industrial slum and an upper-class girl who makes him aware of his inadequacies. Emotionally shattered, in a semi-delirious condition, he climbs a moorland, descends a cliff and drowns himself, in a chapter which recalls the conclusion of Book 2. He is then reborn with no memory of the past in a vaguely Darwinian purgatory with Buddhist undertones. At one point the hero, having stolen sweets, grows suspicious, sulky and prickly all over like a seaurchin! The connection with dragon-hide is obvious. He is morally redeemed by another encounter with the upper-class girl, who has died of a bad cold, and then sets out on a pilgrimage through a grotesque region filled with the social villainies of Victorian Britain. (See also MacDONALD.)

  KOESTLER, ARTHUR

  See footnote 6.

  LAWRENCE, D. H.

  See footnote 12.

  LEONARD, TOM

  Chap. 50, para. 3. “In a wee while, dearie” is an Implag of the poem “The Voyeur.”

  Chap. 49. General Alexander’s requiem for Rima is a Blockplag of the poem “Placenta.”

  LOCHHEAD, LIZ

  Chap. 48, para. 25. The android’s discovery by the Goddess is a Difplag of The Hickie.

  I mouth

  sorry in the mirror when I see

  the mark I must have

  made just now

  loving you.

  Easy to say it’s alright

  adultery

  like blasphemy is for

  believers but

  even in our

  situation simple etiquette

  says

  love should leave us

  both unmarked.

  You are on loan to me

  like a library book

  and we both know it.

  Fine if you love both of us

  but neither of us

  must too much show it.

  In my misted mirror

  you trace two toothprints

  on the skin of your

  shoulder and sure

  you’re almost quick enough

  to smile out bright and

  clear for me

  as if it was O.K.

  Friends again, together in

  this bathroom

  we finish washing love away.

  McCABE, BRIAN

  Chap. 48, para. 2. The Martian headmaster is from the short story Feathered Choristers.

  MacCAIG, NORMAN

  Chap. 48, para. 22. The cursive adder is from the poem Movements.

  MacDIARMID, HUGH

  Chap. 47, para. 22. Major Alexander’s remark that “Inadequate maps are better than no maps; at least they show that the land exists” is stolen from The Kind of Poetry I Want.

  MacDONALD, REVEREND GEORGE

  Chap. 17, The Key, is a Difplag of the Victorian children’s story The Golden Key. The journey of Lanark and Rima across the misty plain of Chap. 33 also comes from this story, as does the death and rebirth of the hero halfway through (see also KINGSLEY) and the device of casually ageing people with spectacular rapidity in a short space of print.

  MacDOUGALL, CARL

  Chap. 41, para. 1. Poxy nungs is the favourite expletive of the oakumteaser in the colloquial verse drama A View from the Rooftops.

  McGRATH, TOM

  Chap. 48, para. 22. The android’s circuitous seduction of God is from the play, The Android Circuit.

  MacNEACAIL, AONGHAS

  See Nicolson, Angus.

  MANN, THOMAS

  Chap. 34, para. 5. “Screeching, shrieking, yowling, growling, grinding, whining, yammering, stammering, trilling, chirping” etc. contains Implag of the devil’s account of Hellnoise in the novel. Doktor Faustus, translated by ?. ?. Lowe-Porter.

  MAILER, NORMAN

  See footnote 6.

  MARX, KARL

  Chap. 36, paras. 3 and 4. Grant’s long harangue is a Difplag of the pernicious theory of history as class warfare embodied in Das Kapital.

  MELVILLE, HERMAN

  See footnote 12.

  MILTON, JOHN

  See footnote 6.

  MONBODDO, LORD

  Chap. 32, para. 3. The reference to James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, demonstrates the weakness of the fabulous and allegorical part of Lanark. The “institute” seems to represent that official body of learning which began with the ancient priesthoods and Athenian academies, was monopolized by the Catholic Church and later dispersed among universities and research foundations. But if the “council” represents government, then the most striking union of “council” and “institute” occurred in 1662 when Charles II chartered the Royal Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. James Burnett of Monboddo belonged to an Edinburgh Corresponding Society which advanced the cause of science quite unofficially until granted a royal charter in 1782. He was a court of session judge, a friend of King George and an erudite metaphysician with a faith in satyrs and mermaids, but has only been saved from oblivion by the animadversions against his theory of human descent from the ape in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. By plagiarizing and annexing his name to a dynasty of scientific Caesars the author can only be motivated by Scottish chauvini
sm or a penchant for resounding nomenclature. A more fitting embodiment of government, science, trade and religion would have been Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork and father of modern chemistry. He was founder of the Royal Society, and his strong religious principles also led him to procure a charter for the East India Company, which he expected to propagate Christianity in the Orient.

  NicGUMARAID, CATRIONA

  Like all lowland Scottish litera-teurs, the “conjuror” lacks all understanding of his native Gaelic culture. The character and surroundings of the Rev. McPhedron in Chap. 13, the least convincing chapter in the book, seem to be an effort to supply that lack. As a touchstone of his failure I print these verses by a real Gael. See also MacNeacail, Aonghas.

  Nan robh agam sgian ghearrainn as an ubhal an grodadh donn a th’ann a leòn’s a shàraich mise.

  Ach mo chreach-s’ mar thà chan eil mo sgian-sa biorach ’s cha dheoghail mi ás nas mò an loibht’ a sgapas annad.

  NICOLSON, ANGUS

  See Black Angus.

  O’BRIEN, FLANN

  See footnote 6.

  ORWELL, GEORGE

  Chap. 38. The poster slogans and the social stability centre are Difplags of the Ingsoc posters and Ministry of Love in 1984.

  PENG, LI

  Books 3 and 4. These owe much to Monkey, the Chinese comic classic eclectic novel, first Englished by Arthur Waley, which shows the interplay between an earthly pilgrimage and heavenly and hellish supernatural worlds which parody it. (See also KAFKA.)

  PLATH, SYLVIA

  Chap. 10, para. 10. “I will rise with my flaming hair and eat men like air” is an Implag of the last couplet of “Lady Lazarus,” with “flaming” substituted for “red.”

  POE, EDGAR ALLAN

  Chap. 8, para. 7. The “large and lofty apartment” is an Implag from the story The Fall of the House of Usher. Chap. 38, para. 16. The three long first sentences are Implag from The Domain of Arnheim. The substitution of “pearly” pebbles for “alabaster” pebbles comes from Poe’s other description of water with a pebbly bottom in Eleonora.

  POPE, ALEXANDER

  Chap. 41, para. 6. Timon Kodac’s statement “Order is heaven’s first law” is from the poetic Essay on Man.

  PRINCE, REV. HENRY JAMES

  Chap. 43, Monboddo’s speech. “Stand with me on the sun” is from Letters addressed by H. J. Prince to his Christian Brethren at St. David’s College, Lampeter.

  PROPPER, DAN

  Chap. 28, para. 7. McAlpin’s statement of Propper’s law is a distorted Implag from The Fable of the Final Hour: “In the 34th minute of the final hour the Law of Inverse Enclosure was rediscovered and a matchbox was declared the prison of the universe, with two fleas placed inside as warders.”

  QUINTILIANUS MARCUS FABRICIUS

  Chap. 45, para. 5. Grant’s “form of self-expression second only to the sneeze” is an Implag from Book 11 of the Institutio Oratoria translated by John Bulwer in his Chironomia.

  REICH, WILHELM

  Book 3. The dragonhide which infects the first six chapters is a Difplag of the muscular constriction Reich calls “armouring.”

  REID, TINA

  Chap. 48, para. 15. The android’s method of cleaning the bed is a Difplag of Jill the Gripper from Licking the Bed Clean.

  SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL

  Chap. 18, para. 6. Chap. 21, para. 12. These are Difplags of the negative epiphanies experienced by the hero of Nausea.

  SAUNDERS, DONALD GOODBRAND

  Chap. 46. The peace-force led by Sergeant Alexander is blocked by God in a land whose shapes and colours come from Ascent:

  The white shape is Loch Fionn,

  Intimate with corners.

  From here, the foothills

  of Suilven,

  The white shape is Loch Fionn.

  The green shape is Glencanisp,

  Detailed with rocks,

  From here, the shoulder

  of Suilven,

  The green shape is Glencanisp.

  The blue shape is the seas.

  The blue shape is the skies.

  From here, the summit

  of Suilven,

  My net returns glittering.

  SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM

  Books 1 and 2 owe much to the play Hamlet in which heavy paternalism forces a weak-minded youth into dread of existence, hallucinations and crime.

  SITWELL, EDITH

  Chap. 41, para. 12. “Speaking purely as a private person,” and much of the religious sentiment, are Im-and Difplag from the section of Facade which starts “Don’t go bathing in the Jordan, Gordon.”

  SMITH, W. C.

  Chap. 28. Blockplag from hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” with distorted final line.

  SPENCE, ALAN

  Chap. 45, para. 9. The fine colours are taken from the anthology Its Colours They Are Fine.

  THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

  Chap. 11, para. 5. The bag and listed contents are a Plag, Block- and Dif-, from the Fairy Blackstick’s bag in The Rose and the Ring.

  THOMAS, DYLAN

  Chap. 29, para 5. Contains small Implag and Difplag from the prose poem “The Map of Love.” Chap. 42, para. 5. Lanark’s words when urinating are a distorted Implag of the poem “Said the Old Ramrod.”

  TOTUOLA, AMOS

  Books 3 and 4. These owe much to The Palm Wine Drinkard, another story whose hero’s quest brings him among dead or supernatural beings living in the same plane as the earthly. (See also kafka.)

  TURNER, BILL PRICE

  Chap. 46, para. 1. “The sliding architecture of the waves” is from Rudiment of an Eye.

  URE, JOAN

  Chap. 48, para. 8. The batman’s wife is singing her own version of the song in the review Something may come of it: “Nothing to sing about/getting along/ very pedestrianly./People in aeroplanes/singing their song/ continue to fly over me./Something they’ve got that I’ve not?/ Something I’ve got that they’ve not?/Nothing to sing about./ Nothing to sing about.”

  VONNEGUT, KURT

  Chap. 43, Monboddo’s speech. The description of the earth as a “moist blue-green ball” is from the novel Breakfast of Champions.

  WADDEL, REVEREND P. HATELY

  Chap. 37, para. 4. The overheard prayer is from Rev. Waddel’s lowland Scottish translation of Psalm 23.

  WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE

  The institute described in Books 3 and 4 is a combination of any large hospital and any large university with the London Underground and the BBC Television Centre, but the overall scheme is stolen from 21st-century London in The Sleeper Awakes and from the Selenite sublunar kingdom in The First Men on the Moon. In the light of this fact, the “conjuror’s” remark about H. G. Wells in the Epilogue seems a squid-like discharge of vile ink for the purpose of obscuring the critical vision. See footnote 5.

  WOLFE, TOM

  Chap. 41, para. 6. The hysterical games-slang in this section is an Implag from the introduction to an anthology, The New Journalism.

  XENOPHON

  Chaps. 45, 46, 47, 48, 49. The mock-military excursion throughout these is an extended Difplag of the Anabasis.

  YOUNGHUSBAND, COL. STUKELY

  Chap 49, para. 49. “Down the crater of Vesuvius in a tramcar” is a remark attributed to General Douglas Haig in Quips from the Trenches.

  ZOROASTER

  Chap. 50, paras 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31 are all spicy bits culled from Sybilene Greek apocrypha edited by Hermip-pus and translated by Friedrich Nietzsche, but the flowery glade of Sibma thick with vines and Eleale to the as-phaltic pool; the sun, wind and flashing foam; the triumph of Galatea and her wedding with Grant; the collapse of the Coc-qigrues; the laughing surrender of God; the bloom of the bright grey thistle; the building of Nephelococugia; the larks, lutes, cellos, violets and vials of genial wrath; the free waterbuses on the Clyde; the happiness and good work of Andrew; the return of Coulter, coming of McAlpin and resurrection of Aiken Drummond; the Apotheosis and Coronatio
n of the Virgin AmyAnnieMoraTracy Katrina Veronica Margaret Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Marian Beth Liz Betty Daniele Angel TinaJanetKate; the final descent to healthy commonplace and finding a silk smooth you inside that husk are Blockplags, Im-plags, Difplags of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell translated into dear images and sublime distances by william Blake and William Turner for the benefit of all makers of useful and lovely things.

  1. To have an objection anticipated is no reason for failing to raise it.

  2. Each of the four authors mentioned above began a large work in medias res, but none of them numbered their divisions out of logical sequence.

  3. In 1973, as a result of sponsorship by the poet Edwin Morgan, the author received a grant of £300 from the Scottish Arts Council for the purpose of helping him write his book, but it was never assumed that he would use the money to seek out exotic local colour.

  4. This is a false antithesis. Printed paper has an atomic structure like anything else. “Words” would have been a better term than “print,” being less definably concrete.

  5. “Von hinten anzusehen—Die Racker sind doch gar zu appetitlich” is little more than a line. Louis MacNeice omits it from his translation as inessential because it reduces the devil’s dignity. The author’s amazing virulence against Goethe is perhaps a smokescreen to distract attention from what he owes him. See GOETHE and WELLS in the Index of Plagiarisms.

  6. The index proves that Lanark is erected upon an infantile foundation of Victorian nursery tales, though the final shape derives from English language fiction printed between the 40’s and 60’s of the present century. The hero’s biography after death occurs in Wyndham-Lewis’s trilogy The Human Age, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Golding’s Pincher Martin. Modern afterworlds are always infernos, never paradisos, presumably because the modern secular imagination is more capable of debasement than exaltation. In almost every chapter of the book there is a dialogue between the hero (Thaw or Lanark) and a social superior (parent, more experienced friend or prospective employer) about morality, society or art. This is mainly a device to let a self-educated Scot (to whom “the dominie” is the highest form of social life) tell the world what he thinks of it; but the glum flavour of these episodes recalls three books by disappointed socialists which appeared after the second world war and centred upon what I will call dialogue under threat: Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, 1984 by George Orwell, and Barbary Shore by Norman Mailer. Having said this, one is compelled to ask why the “conjuror” introduces an apology for his work with a tedious and brief history of world literature, as though summarizing a great tradition which culminates in himself! Of the eleven great epics mentioned, only one has influenced Lanark. Monboddo’s speech in the last part of Lanark is a dreary parody of the Archangel Michael’s history lecture in the last book of Paradise Lost and fails for the same reason. A property is not always valuable because it is stolen from a rich man. And for this single device thieved (without acknowledgement) from Milton we find a confrontation of fictional character by fictional author from Flann O’Brien; a hero, ignorant of his past, in a subfuse modern Hell, also from Flann O’Brien; and, from T. S. Eliot, Nabokov and Flann O’Brien, a parade of irrelevant erudition through grotesquely inflated footnotes.