The Telegraph’s Attack on Alasdair Gray
Alexander Larman’s smear of Alasdair Gray in the Telegraph is a disgrace, little more than broadsheet shitposting and punching down on an artist who is no longer here to defend himself. Nominally reviewing Poor Things, Larman uses the opportunity to attack Gray for reasons that remain unclear. The title ‘Sex and Scottish nationalism: the ‘deranged and unstable’ life of Poor Things author Alasdair Gray‘ may give us some clues.
Gray’s crimes for Larman are many and varied. His tone is bitter: “He once said of himself, without undue modesty, “I am a well-known writer who cannot make a living from his writing”. And, despite being lauded on his death by his former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as “one of Scotland’s literary giants… one of the brightest intellectual and creative lights Scotland has known in modern times”, he spent his life being described as “the best novelist you’ve never read.”
Larman derides Gray for having Lanark rejected by the publishers Curtis Brown: “It would not make its way into print for nearly two decades, albeit in much revised form. During the intervening period, Gray, who once proudly described himself as “a deranged and rather unstable creature”, made a living as a freelance artist, painting murals and designs for everything from theatrical scenery to cafes. A couple of his artworks still survive today, in the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant and on Hillhead subway station in the city.”
I mean, Larman is giving away his ignorance of the object of his disdain (‘a couple of his artworks still survive today’). He goes on to suggest that Gray was essentially a scrounger:
“Gray was fortunate in that, although he was not yet a published author, he carried with him an innate sense of mystery leavened with nascent talent, which tended to excite the bounty of bureaucrats tasked with handing out grants. Accordingly, he was able to receive a hand-out from the Scottish Arts Council to continue with Lanark as a work-in-progress, as well as being writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow between 1977 and 1979.”
Larman’s bile is uncontained, he writes: “Had Lanark proved to be a flop, then he would have been swiftly forgotten, consigned to history with other authors who proved better at the business of self-publicising than actually writing novels.”
Where to begin? Lanark won an award but only in Scotland, therefore its not very good. Sturgeon only liked him because he’s a Nat.
Larman seems incapable of understanding what he’s read or what Gray does, at even the most basic level. He writes in “Something Leather in 1990, he all-but-acknowledged that he had run out of ideas, writing in the book’s epilogue that “having discovered how my talent worked it was almost certainly defunct. Imagination will not employ whom it cannot surprise.” Self-deprecation, post-modernism and humour have all apparently passed the Telegraph’s writer by.
There’s more than a whiff of disablism as Larman continues: “It was just as well for Lanthimos that he encountered the author in 2011, as Gray seriously injured himself in a fall in 2015 and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, although he continued to work until the end.”
His giveaway line is as disgraceful as the rest of the piece: “… who knows, if Nicola Sturgeon’s much-publicised antics did ever result in a custodial sentence, at least she’d have plenty of time to read her much-beloved Gray.”
Shocking. Wouldnt have known about this review if you hadnt written this. Some of the comments could have been written about many revered writers. Gray was self deprecating in such a disarming way and yet shone on his own terms. I hope the film will motivate people to go back to the book – especially those copies still with his outstanding artwork.
Yes, this Telegraph journalist is exposing his cultural moronism, for sure.
On the positive side, this is testimony to the lasting potency of Alasdair Gray’s work. Perhaps a worse fate would be if the British establishment were to seek to neuter him by reinventing him as a national treasure…
God forbid! We should resist his assimilation. Like MacDiarmid, his importance lies precisely in his being an outlier.
(Didn’t Nicola laud him as a national treasure once he was safely dead?)
I found the article sympathetic. Alasdair was eccentric, he didn’t enjoy any commercial success as an artist and writer but did enjoy considerable critical success, he struggled financially. He was, as Alexander acknowledges, a magnificent citizen of Glasgow. In fact, Alex has nothing bad to say in his article about the man or his legacy.
There are parts of the article I disagree with strongly, the cheap shot about Nicola Sturgeon at the end is, well, cheap, and the fact that the piece appears in the Telegraph set off some warning bells. However, it is not a ‘smear of Alasdair Gray’. I agree with you, it is largely sympathetic to him, his life and his work. I certainly don’t read it as ‘an exercise in shameful ignorance and cultural moronism’.
Did we read the same article?
Probably not. We’d have carried very different prejudices into the construction of its meaning.
I read the one you directed me to, Mike, and thanks for that. I hope everybody else commenting here also read it and not just your selective quotes from it. If we can’t accept that Alexander Larman, whoever he is, can write a long, informed (despite what you say) article expressing his views and opinions, about a writer for whom many of us have huge admiration and personal affection, unless it totally accords with our own views, then we are in big trouble. You also object to what you call his ‘shitposting and punching down on an artist who is no longer here to defend himself’. So are dead artists to be beyond criticism or re-evaluation because they are dead? How then are we to assess the quality of their work?As I said, I don’t agree with a lot of what Larman says or the tone in which he says it, but your reaction seems way over the top to me.
Fair enough, we read it very differently. I thought the tone was very poor.
“Alex”???
Were you, perhaps, at the same school as Mr Larman? More to the point, did you not read *any* of Mike Small’s critique?
Larman’s piece is four years too late to be an obituary. He is using the success of “Poor Things” as cover for yet more sniping at Nicola Sturgeon, and it’s neither good journalism nor literary criticism.
There was a time, long ago, when The Telegraph was a serious, respected newspaper whose reportage was always scrupulous with regard to facts, even if one disagreed with the conclusions drawn from them. Now it’s just another source of disinformation and proprietorial prejudices.
I don’t know. What school did he go to?
Yes, he did take a cheap shot at Nicola, dragging up Alasdair’s dissatisfaction with the SNP under her stewardship and his ‘defection’ back to Labour. But his piece nonetheless a pretty decent appreciation of Alasdair’s work and its place in literature’s ‘postmodern tradition’ (if there can be such a thing).
Like Alex, I hope that the celebrity of Yorgos’s film adaptation of Poor Things will lead to a new generation of readers coming to Alasdair’s work (which hope seems to be what occasioned the article). As Alex himself writes, ‘both novel and film can be enjoyed as the products of a rare and vivid imagination’.
How can it conceivably be a ‘pretty decent appreciation of Alasdair’s work’ when he doesn’t know anything about Gray’s legacy of body of work and doesn’t understand (for eg) the rhetorical / playful nature of the multiple voices that he uses in self-parody? Instead the reviewer takes these at face value. Its clumsy and stupid.
But this bald claim regarding Alex’s ignorance wasn’t the thrust of your original grouch about Alex’s piece. You claimed he was ‘punching down’ on Alasdair Gray and subjecting him to a bitter and bilious attack. Read the article! He does no such thing.
But he references both these things in his article.
But he completely misunderstands them
His legacy and his ‘postmodern’ playfulness, that is.
In what way(s) does he ‘completely misunderstand’ Alasdair’s legacy and postmodern playfulness? You didn’t go into that in your article.
I did, specifically:
“Larman seems incapable of understanding what he’s read or what Gray does, at even the most basic level. He writes in “Something Leather in 1990, he all-but-acknowledged that he had run out of ideas, writing in the book’s epilogue that “having discovered how my talent worked it was almost certainly defunct. Imagination will not employ whom it cannot surprise.” Self-deprecation, post-modernism and humour have all apparently passed the Telegraph’s writer by.”
Gray has a technique of inserting false quotes and statements into his work, by and about him. The writer is completely unaware of this.
“Gray has a technique of inserting false quotes and statements into his work, by and about him. The writer is completely unaware of this.”
Indeed he does; this is a classic postmodern strategy to subvert the authority of the author, to undermine the traditional dichotomies of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’, ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’, to resist the reader’s attempt to pin-down the ‘proper’ meaning of a text.
But are you denying Alex’s point that Poor Things represents an new departure in Gray’s work, following his exhaustion of the creative possibilities he played with in Lanark, 1982, Janine, and Something Leather? Are you denying that, by the early 1990s, Gray did in fact recognise that the imagination he deployed in his work hitherto had become defunct and subsequently took it in new directions? Are you claiming that Alex’s awareness of this ‘turn’ in Alasdair’s work represents an incapacity to understand Gray at even the most basic level (as if Alasdair could or even wanted to be ‘understood’)?
I rather prefer Burgess’s (subs, please check) description of Lanark – “It is time that Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it.”
These days the Telegraph is little more than the snob’s Express.
Agreed! But what does that have to do with Alex’s appreciation and promotion of Alasdair’s literary output?
I cannot recall ever reading such a distortion of a review. There is a a lot of talk of media bias on these pages but this is one of the most distorted and biased articles I have ever read on here. I do not say this is deliberate as we have read the same source – Larman’s article, and clearly read it very differently indeed but it is not for one minute a ‘smear’ for me (though it is not hagiographic or fawning and allows for critique – and why on earth not?), and to call it an ‘exercise in shameful ignorance and cultural moronism’ well, Bella would, in this instance, be better to look in the mirror for that.
But, temperatures run high and I can only assume it is the digs at Sturgeon and the SNP that irks so much, it has blinded Bella. But Gray did what he did late in life with regards to the SNP and it might be better to ask why than slagging someone who clearly appreciates Gray’s work and indeed, life.
To be clear it was not the digs at the SNP or Sturgeon that bothered me at all, that’s standard Telegraph fare, it was more the laziness and the ignorance and the snobbery.
The tone I got was snide,sneering,dismissive Metropolitan ignorance! ‘Alex’ knows naught of Glasgow or Riddrie Public Library!
But what has any of this got to do with the substance of his article, Hugh, which is basically an appreciation of the author on whose work the film is based and a hope that the film will bring a new generation of readers to that work?
“His undying adherence to the cause of Scottish nationalism”?
It’s worth pointing out to this gentleman that Alasdair Gray voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in the 2019 general election.
That seems both the noose to hang him by and not?
Alex mentions this in his article.
Wow – a review of a review.
The Telegraph for some time now appears to have decided that the way to treat Scotland and the Scots (and presumably wins us over to the union?) is to troll us. I use googlenews to find news on Scotland on a daily basis and so regularly see their headlines. If that is how they think they win friends up here then on you go Telegraph.
Snobby wanks write snobby, wanky stuff.
It can be a well-paid career for some, with generous hand-outs.
“…he was able to receive a hand-out from the Scottish Arts Council to continue with Lanark as a work-in-progress,..”
Why did Gray receive a “hand-out” and not a grant?
Not mentioned in the review , or Bella’s review of the review is that Gray, like a number of leading artists and polymaths in the Scottish arts scene(John Byrne) from the1960’s on wards, was from a staunch working class background. Insinuating that he was not successful as he had recourse to public funds is pure snobbery! He didn’t have an independent income,a family cottage or family support in the lean years like many British middle and upperclass artists, and this is precisely why taxpayers money is used to help give poorer folk a voice. Scotland has been blessed by artists from such backgrounds, and their work in difficult circumstances should be cherished. Larman’s Winchester and Oxford commentary of Gray is just what you would expect!
‘Insinuating that he was not successful as he had recourse to public funds…’
Where does the article insinuate this? It claims (quite rightly) that Alasdair’s work was not a commercial success, but enjoyed great critical success. Alasdair did receive hand-outs from the then Scottish Arts Council because, shamefully, this is how Scotland as a society rewards its artists (when it rewards them at all).
Exactly,Stan! Winchester Man neither knows of, or cares about, West Central Scotland…
But he does evidently care about (and champions) Alasdair Gray and his writing. Read the article that Mike links us to.
You’re now behaving like Alex! Of course I read it, after being alerted by Mike’s piece- I wouldn’t expect a fan-boy piece from the guy,of whose eclectic output I’d remained blissfully ignorant hitherto, but the core point remains- You detect proper praise, advocacy if not adulation, I get sniffy Metro-sneer in the particular selection of what he notes and rates mentioning of the life,career&politics- as I’ve said on other platforms- “Quot homines tot sententiae’ !
Quot homines tot sententiae, indeed; as I said to Mike, we each carry a different set of prejudices into our respective readings; none of us is ‘right’.
Could Alex be the contributor to the recent Private Eye piece on Poor Things under the by-line ‘Q-brick’? This is another sneer-piece, this time targeting the diector+ Emma Stone, not Gray. It’s the tone conveyed that’s the issue- knowing, detached-Olympian, cynical, almost accusatory…
Could be, will look into it, thanks Hugh
@Shughie
Granted, articles that are ‘sneering’, ‘knowing, detached-Olympian, cynical, almost accusatory’ aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But Mike’s sneering and accusatory piece didn’t attack Alex over the tone of his article; he attacked him rather for his ‘punching down’ on Alasdair Gray and subjecting him to a bitter and bilious attack, in which he -Alex – exhibits ‘shameful ignorance’ and ‘cultural moronism’, while ‘exposing his complete ignorance of the subject he’s writing on’.
But, of course, this is a gross misjudgement; Alex doesn’t attack Alasdair at all. Indeed, Alex concludes his article by praising Alasdair’s novel as the product of ‘a rare and vivid imagination’ and expressing the hope that the success of the film will finally bring Alasdair ‘to the attention of an entirely new readership’.
Again, Xander makes a fair point here. The commercial success of Poor Things (the movie) would have given Alasdair a financial security he lacked during his lifetime. As it was, he made only a precarious living in the gig economy, with the occasional hand-out from public and private corporations in the form of a grant or award.
Curtis Brown is a literary agency, not a publisher. His agent at Curtis Brown would have been trying to find a publisher for Lanark. It was the publishers who were resistant to publishing the book at first. Eventually Cannongate took the book and turned it into a huge success.