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Mr Alfred M.A.
Mr Alfred, a mere MA (ord.) and author of an unpublished volume of poetry, is an unloved alcoholic and middle-aged schoolmaster at a comprehensive school in Glasgow. Socially inadequate, he has a glimpse of happiness in his innocent but obsessive love for Rose, one of his pupils. This `affair' is maliciously reported by a mother with a grudge and Mr Alfred is transferred to an even rougher school. Defeated in the true life of the imagination that was the theme of his rejected poems, he builds up his own resistance movement to the intrusive authority of the real world. Against a nightmarish background of gang warfare and public desecration, the novel reaches a frightening climax.
217 pages, Hardcover
First published January 27, 1972
About the author
George Friel
10 books4 followersGeorge Friel (1910 - 1975) was a Scottish writer. He was born in Glasgow as the fourth of seven children, and was educated at St. Mungo's Academy and the University of Glasgow. After a period of service in the army, he spent the rest of his life working as a teacher in Glasgow.
Friel's fourth novel, Mr. Alfred M.A., made it to the "100 Best Scottish Books of all Time" list.
Friel's fourth novel, Mr. Alfred M.A., made it to the "100 Best Scottish Books of all Time" list.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 6, 2021
First published by Calder in 1971, George Friel’s last novel is a triumphant raspberry from an old man at the end of his tether, a blackly comic critique of the moral decline of the nation set in a Glasgow overrun by knife-wielding droogs terrorising the teachers of run-down comprehensives in bleak suburban outcrops. The world of gang violence was nothing new in 1970s Glasgow, having reached a stabby apex in the 1950s with the infamous razor gangs, however, here Friel laments the nihilism, racism, and contempt of the yoof as they rampage around kicking over old ladies and clobbering teachers around the head. Friel’s style is a strange mixture of sparsely narrated episodes sprinkled with dialect and arcane/medical descriptive words (‘kyphosis’ appears in the first paragraph), used presumably to illustrate the chasm Mr. Alfred has fallen into where learning and learnedness mean nothing in a world of violence, rage, and despair. Concluding with an hilarious imaginary dialogue with a graffiti artist who views himself as an innovative poet for popularising ‘YA BASS’ on the walls of Glasgow, Mr. Alfred M.A. is an underread and surreal snapshot of a city swallowing a generation whole.
September 27, 2024
What starts as a charming tale of an old curmudgeonly teacher soon swerves into a whole other, and wholly unexpected, direction. What Dante did for Hell, Friel does for Glasgow. It’s glorious; dark as pitch, droll as fuck, anti-sentimental, and spoken in a dialogue that is a textually spot-on recreation of a certain strain of Glaswegian.
That so few seem to have ever read Friel is a drag. My abiding love for the capital city of British Isles music (Ireland really confused the foreigner’s understanding of a common name for what used to be the UK; clarifying: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland) has gained much depth from reading this. The lion’s share of Glasgow Greats would’ve been in some form of primary or secondary school when this came out, and their songs are the inevitable consequence of a time and place now better situated for me by this reading.
Or, as the kids are saying, YY ORANGE JUICE FANNIES YA BASS!!!
The cool kids get it. Don’t YOU want to, hmm?
That so few seem to have ever read Friel is a drag. My abiding love for the capital city of British Isles music (Ireland really confused the foreigner’s understanding of a common name for what used to be the UK; clarifying: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland) has gained much depth from reading this. The lion’s share of Glasgow Greats would’ve been in some form of primary or secondary school when this came out, and their songs are the inevitable consequence of a time and place now better situated for me by this reading.
Or, as the kids are saying, YY ORANGE JUICE FANNIES YA BASS!!!
The cool kids get it. Don’t YOU want to, hmm?
November 12, 2018
This is one of the 100 best Scottish Books.
Mr Alfred is an ageing teacher of English unable to make connections with the pupils at the school where he teaches – a comprehensive in a rough area. Never married, his sense of failure is compounded by the lack of success his poetry collection found. His only solace is to habituate the local and not so local pubs. Not even ladies of the night hold any attraction for him. Strangely – the practice was not followed in the schools I attended as a pupil at much the same time as this book is set - the classes in Mr Alfred’s school are segregated by sex; until halfway through the book he has never taught girls.
Alfred is particularly irritated by the habitual misbehaviour, in and out of school, of Gerald Provan, a child whose mother indulges and cossets him, perhaps as a counterbalance for the absence of his father – though it was not uncommon for mothers of that generation to favour sons unduly. Gerald’s younger sister, Senga, is under no illusions as to Gerald’s unpleasantness as she has to bear its brunt at home. Mr Alfred’s mistake in striking Gerald in class becomes the source of the abiding resentment of and animosity towards Alfred of both son and mother.
A particular example of Scottish perceptions lies in the incidental exchange, “‘How is she qualified to improve anybody?’ Mr Alfred asked.
“I told you,’ said Mr Dale. ‘She’s English,’” which speaks volumes.
We also have, “Scotch reserve looked askance on kissing even between kin.”
An odd interpolation comes with the passages concerning the doomed relationship between relatively well-to-do Graeme Roy and the working class Martha Weipers, whose respective parents disapprove of the liaison. Both go on to University but while Martha does well Graeme fails his first year exams. Neither was taught by Mr Alfred but Martha’s sister, Rose, is in his first girls’ class and he forms too close an attachment to her, sending her to buy his lunch, rewarding her with pocket money, inviting her to his classroom at lunchtime. While he is aware such relationships can overstep the boundaries of decent behaviour he shies away from the thought – or act - of exploiting theirs in any sexual way. It is nevertheless highly unprofessional and it provides the two Provans with the perfect excuse to accuse him. He is forced out to another, rougher, school - a Primary – and his descent accelerates.
Much of the latter part of the book sees Mr Alfred wandering the streets at night pondering the writing on the wall, a host of graffiti asserting different gang allegiances, each name followed by the words YA BASS. This sense of societal breakdown had been presaged by Gerald Provan’s encouragement of after-school fights in the Weavers Lane, the casual psychological cruelty he and his cohorts visit on Granny Lyons, their baiting of and petty theft from Italian shopkeeper Mr Ianello, and is accentuated when Mr Alfred witnesses encounters between gangs in broad daylight. Alfred even takes up chalk himself to reproduce that original writing on the wall, MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN, in a cri-de-coeur against Philistinism. This protest is only too redolent of Alfred’s estrangement from the world he inhabits, an estrangement mirrored in the text by Friel’s use of uncommon words - kyphosis, pandiculating, messan, raniform, poplitic, ophidian, invulting, claudication, lycorexia, perlustration, battology, nuchal, diplopia, prosthodontia, pyknophrasia, and indeed by the untranslated quote above. Alfred’s subsequent arrest leads to a psychologist pronouncing him to be suffering from a whole list of phobias.
While the book is rooted in Scottishness – or at least in the experiences of the Glasgow conurbation – Alfred’s feeling of dissatisfaction with the world as it turned out has a more universal resonance.
Mr Alfred is an ageing teacher of English unable to make connections with the pupils at the school where he teaches – a comprehensive in a rough area. Never married, his sense of failure is compounded by the lack of success his poetry collection found. His only solace is to habituate the local and not so local pubs. Not even ladies of the night hold any attraction for him. Strangely – the practice was not followed in the schools I attended as a pupil at much the same time as this book is set - the classes in Mr Alfred’s school are segregated by sex; until halfway through the book he has never taught girls.
Alfred is particularly irritated by the habitual misbehaviour, in and out of school, of Gerald Provan, a child whose mother indulges and cossets him, perhaps as a counterbalance for the absence of his father – though it was not uncommon for mothers of that generation to favour sons unduly. Gerald’s younger sister, Senga, is under no illusions as to Gerald’s unpleasantness as she has to bear its brunt at home. Mr Alfred’s mistake in striking Gerald in class becomes the source of the abiding resentment of and animosity towards Alfred of both son and mother.
A particular example of Scottish perceptions lies in the incidental exchange, “‘How is she qualified to improve anybody?’ Mr Alfred asked.
“I told you,’ said Mr Dale. ‘She’s English,’” which speaks volumes.
We also have, “Scotch reserve looked askance on kissing even between kin.”
An odd interpolation comes with the passages concerning the doomed relationship between relatively well-to-do Graeme Roy and the working class Martha Weipers, whose respective parents disapprove of the liaison. Both go on to University but while Martha does well Graeme fails his first year exams. Neither was taught by Mr Alfred but Martha’s sister, Rose, is in his first girls’ class and he forms too close an attachment to her, sending her to buy his lunch, rewarding her with pocket money, inviting her to his classroom at lunchtime. While he is aware such relationships can overstep the boundaries of decent behaviour he shies away from the thought – or act - of exploiting theirs in any sexual way. It is nevertheless highly unprofessional and it provides the two Provans with the perfect excuse to accuse him. He is forced out to another, rougher, school - a Primary – and his descent accelerates.
Much of the latter part of the book sees Mr Alfred wandering the streets at night pondering the writing on the wall, a host of graffiti asserting different gang allegiances, each name followed by the words YA BASS. This sense of societal breakdown had been presaged by Gerald Provan’s encouragement of after-school fights in the Weavers Lane, the casual psychological cruelty he and his cohorts visit on Granny Lyons, their baiting of and petty theft from Italian shopkeeper Mr Ianello, and is accentuated when Mr Alfred witnesses encounters between gangs in broad daylight. Alfred even takes up chalk himself to reproduce that original writing on the wall, MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN, in a cri-de-coeur against Philistinism. This protest is only too redolent of Alfred’s estrangement from the world he inhabits, an estrangement mirrored in the text by Friel’s use of uncommon words - kyphosis, pandiculating, messan, raniform, poplitic, ophidian, invulting, claudication, lycorexia, perlustration, battology, nuchal, diplopia, prosthodontia, pyknophrasia, and indeed by the untranslated quote above. Alfred’s subsequent arrest leads to a psychologist pronouncing him to be suffering from a whole list of phobias.
While the book is rooted in Scottishness – or at least in the experiences of the Glasgow conurbation – Alfred’s feeling of dissatisfaction with the world as it turned out has a more universal resonance.
April 8, 2022
This has been on the bookshelf for a long time, but I was rather put off reading it because it seemed deeply grim even by Scottish fiction standards: a washed out middle aged school teacher develops an unhealthy crush on a young teenage girl, he sees his life spiral out of control until the story reaches its "frightening climax". Well it is grim although told with such a wonderful deadpan dark humour that the grimness is, at times, dispelled. An advert for teaching and for Glasgow, it is not.
The introduction notes the homage to Joyce and Yeats, and you can see their influence, particularly in the over-the-top inventive word play (readers will need a dictionary close at hand). For those who really don't mind dark Scottish fiction without a hint of redemption, this is as good as it gets.
The introduction notes the homage to Joyce and Yeats, and you can see their influence, particularly in the over-the-top inventive word play (readers will need a dictionary close at hand). For those who really don't mind dark Scottish fiction without a hint of redemption, this is as good as it gets.
February 11, 2016
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13850056
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13850056
October 21, 2017
Heartrbreaking tale of a teacher in love with a pupil..
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews