Ten Tales Tall and True

by Alasdair Gray

A lecturer cornered in an embarrassing menage a trois, a Glaswegian Cinderella and an extremely talkative dentist all feature in this brilliant and original collection of tall tales from Alasdair Gray, author of "Lanark", "Poor Things" and "The Book of Prefaces". Bringing together social realism, sexual comedy, science fiction and satire, "Ten Tales Tall and True" proves that truth is indeed much stranger than fiction.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Scotland, British Literature, Literary Fiction, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Alasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.

He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.

His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced it. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Chris Kelso and Iain Banks. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979, and professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities from 2001 to 2003.

Gray was a civic nationalist and a republican, and wrote supporting socialism and Scottish independence. He popularised the epigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" (taken from a poem by Canadian poet Dennis Leigh) which was engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004. He lived almost all his life in Glasgow, married twice, and had one son. On his death The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Telling his tall tales Alasdair Gray is always sarcastic… Often derisively, at times bitterly and seldom sweetly.
Houses and Small Labour Parties is a sad story of the postwar building boom and social hierarchy. Homeward Bound is about complicated relationships of genders…

“When I left you I told myself, You are destroying this man. You have taught him all he knows and now that you leave him his confidence will vanish also. In fact you are castrating him! But I had to do it. You were sweet but… oh so deadly dull. No imagination. And so I had to leave.”

Loss of the Golden Silence is a collision of intellect and mediocrity. You is a tale of an obnoxious and snotty lover…

And all the time he is kind, polite, funny, telling stories about people whose faces are seen, names and voices are heard on the news… He seems to stand outside the dark tank of an aquarium full of weird cruel filthy comic fish, shining a light onto each in turn, explaining with humour but also with a touch of regret how greedy and wasteful they are. He never explains how he knows them so well, never talks about himself, but always about them, the others.

A New World is a perplexing science fiction piece. Are You a Lesbian? is a religious fable of misogyny. In Time Travel the protagonist proves the possibility of travelling in time just contemplating a pellet of used chewing gum. Near the Driver tells about the dubious pleasures of the railway trips in the near future. And The Trendelenburg Position informs how educative may be a visit to a dentist…

Hats… At the start of this century everybody wore them: toppers for upper-class and professional men, bowlers for the middling people, cloth caps for the workers. Bare headed folk were almost thought as shocking as nudists because their place in the social scale was not immediately obvious. I suspect that hats became unfashionable because we passed through a liberty, equality and fraternity phase – or imagined we were in one.

You must never forget that your head is more than just a hat rack…

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

connor told me i should read something i was sure to enjoy on my birthday, just pure pleasure. i thought that was what i was doing with alasdair gray. and it's not that i didn't enjoy it, this is just not my favorite of his books. so this review-space is just to say - go read lanark. (which i haven't reviewed, but just allow me to say is the best) typically a scottish fabulist, some of these stories were more real (boo) than i expected. the first one, in particular, was like reading an alan sillitoe story (which is good, just wasn't what i was prepared for as my birthday escapist fiction.) but lanark, o lanark. i know i can't do it justice until i reread it (i've read it twice but many years ago) i would just like a little trust here, after all we have been through together. seriously, lanark.

come to my blog!

[ліда лісова · Rating 5 out of 5]

моя душа святкує. отак: туц-туц-туц 🦑

одне оповідання навіть переклала)
https://drukarnia.com.ua/articles/vi-...

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been a while since I’ve read any of Gray’s work. He had a unique narrative voice and illustrated all his books with his distinctive drawings. It is an understatement to say that he had a lateral-thinking imagination, to which his 1981 masterpiece, Lanark, stands testament. That book is, to date, one of the strangest I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a fair few.

This book of short stories is more accessible, though all have Gray’s hallmark weirdness. Nevertheless, the stories are easy to follow; Gray was a good writer and could spin a yarn out of the smallest of details, such as a piece of chewing gum stuck between the toes of an old man or the idle chatter of a dentist. Like many good storytellers, he was extremely observant and you get a sense of someone who has salted away good moments to use in stories at a later date. His writing is also steeped in Scottish culture.

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to enter Gray’s off-balance world for the first time.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consistency isn’t Alasdair’s strong point. He compulsively drops clangers following masterworks: regard the patchy Unlikely Stories, Mostly following Lanark and the dreadful A History Maker following the triumphant Poor Things. No, I tell a lie: this was released after Poor Things, but please don’t contradict me, I’m tired and my mother told me about a horrible murder earlier, so I’m not in the mood for your smartness.

Ahem. Well, this is a rather slight collection, the stories twee or semi-polemical or simple, with short forays into wonky experiment, as in the logic-mashing ‘You’ (where the second-person present is deployed by the reader rather than author) or the cute ‘Fictional Exits’ (where art is the only escape from life’s disasters).

All in all, it’s not a work of staggering talent or originality but Gray had already written his masterpiece, so everything after that was gravy. The best piece in here is the straight autobiography ‘Mr Meikle.’ And please, Goodreads, stop telling me my reading list is growing and asking me to share on Facebook, or so help me God I will cut you into meaty chunks and serve you with pickled duck farts.

[Jan Kjellin · Rating 3 out of 5]

2'nd read, 2022: These are all wonderful in their own ways. Most seem to fall under the category of social satire (Fictional Exits) or obesrvations on contemporary society (Houses & Small Labour Parties) while some are a bit more introspective (Time Travel). Few come to a satisfactory conclusion - perhaps by design - which might be why I seem to didn't like it as much the first time (see below) as I do this time.

Life, Gray seems to say, often ends abruptly. Or at least rarely when it's convenient. And these stories - or tales - end in similar ways. They don't really come to conclusions (ok, some of them do), they just end.

But I kind of like it that way. It's nice.

* * *

1'st read, 2017: Although I regard him as one of my favorite authors, Alasdair Gray doesn't always deliver to me what I expect - or hope for. That's good, since it puts us on some sort of even ground. His job isn't to serve me whatever I feel like reading (which would in essence mean "Lanark") as well as my job isn't to always like or understand what the hell he's doing.

Some of these stories pass me by without me getting the point (or if it's him not getting his point across), while others fit perfectly within my current state of mind. None stands out as a favorite, and I'm not sure I'll return to this book anytime soon. On the other hand, it's a surprisingly and refreshingly political (overtly polictical, that is) collection of short stories that I probably could - each and every one - recommend to various friends.

"Houses and small labour parties" instantly got me thinking of William, for example, while "Internal Memorandum" would suit Daniel just fine. And so on.

That is a strength.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Ten Tales Tall and True’ consists of twelve tales (thirteen if you count the epilogue), some of which are too tall to be true and some too grounded in the weird reality of things to be tall. But I guess that’s just the way Alasdair Gray rolls.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't dislike these stories, but I did not really warm to them. I was delighted to find it in the my local library because the book and author had been lavishly praised but once I began reading my delight rapidly disappeared. I may be alone in not enjoying this book, I don't have the courage to award it less then three stars but for me that is either a mediocre rating or a cop out rating saying I didn't like a book but it is to well written for low score. It may be a matter of taste. Although I have lived in the UK since leaving my school in Ireland back in the late 1970s I am not English (no matter how much many might claim that I have gone native) and there is a type of English whimsy* which I find grows old very quickly. People seem to love his writing. For me reading is like fingernails on a blackboard.

*As of April 2023 let me add an update - when rereading my review I realised I had committed the most awful solecism in referring to 'English' whimsy when reviewing a work by a most emphatically Scottish writer. I leave it uncorrected as a testament to my own carelessness and I hope this apology is accepted. My shelving fortunately did not repeat the error.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these stories were cracking. Alasdair Gray doesn't muck about - he just tells it like it is (or as he sees it). It's what he's always done but I still found it refreshing to read. Plus, some genuine hilarity! Homeward Bound was my favourite. Funny feminism featuring that old chestnut: 'But when you have knocked such a man down [a smart manipulator], and don't want to go away and be lonely, what can you do but help set him up again, like a skittle?'

(actually, upon thinking about that a bit more I think that the ending there is a bit pessimistic about the capacity of men to be feminists. What I liked about it was not that it expected men to need to be knocked down again - I don't like that. What I liked was the appreciation that the destruction of misogynistic thoughts needs paradoxically do be done with some care for the holder of the thoughts)

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, that was pants, wasn't it? The blurb on the back says that while writing these stories, Gray was also working on 'The Anthology of Prefaces', a book he finally published nine years after this one. I wonder if the introduction thing was clouding his judgement, because not one of these stories has a satisfactory ending.

In short: duh.

[Katrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Staying true to form, Gray's collection of short stories swings wildly from brilliant to completely forgettable with nothing in-between. Worth the administration price for "Time Travel" and the utterly brutal,"You".

[Tama · Rating 4 out of 5]

14.10.2020 Not particularly impressed. I would’ve liked to have seen the motorcycle kids story go on. The biggest thing that makes this book worth reading is the end. The little shedding into Gray’s life, that was awesome, and of course the Meikle stuff brought me to a similar point as ‘Lanark.’

11.5.2026 The impression of the pen, the shine of the ink, his handwriting. Oh to be born in ‘70, named Ken, to meet Alasdair 15 JAN 1994, to have a book signed by him!

“A man stood upon a railway bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord.
That's the style for me.”

Houses and Small Labour Parties
Bloated military body half-buried in mud—ideally fit to burst.
Soldier costumes.
Or I suppose this could be an anywhere story. The corpse could be adapted to any kind of corpse of any species if you wanted logic for NZ ‘26—some kind of roadkill.
The anecdote, the war, the lifestyles are relevant. A timeless story otherwise.
The story of the young man and the dream (motorcycle), and the old man and his death (retirement).

Homeward Bound.
Pg. “legs astride,” of Vlasta. This has the style of a bad erotic fantasy. Bringing this key word “astride” in that we know as so significant from ‘Janine,’ enforces that. I think the childish style limits the quality but it has its own distinct feeling. A lecturer and a manic pixie milf and a barely legal student.
The melodrama revels itself. The cheated 18 y/o.starts smashing things. A.G. even has them framed in one shoot shortest to tallest by age. Italicisation on “my mother.” It’s making me hysterical.

7.1.2023
It seems only natural that each city should have an Alasdair Gray. Only that he is a miracle artist. Not once in a city, but one in a billion. The conditions of a human life are ruinously infinite. To beat the odds of being born with enough imagination, to see character in all things, and perception for narrative. To be as singular as A.G. Where one child might prosper in one such area, another’s vision dies off before they reach anything significant.

In this laborious world.

Even though Glasgow is a key part to Alasdair’s writings he is one of the artists with individual fascinations. Seeing the world through a nondescript encyclopaedia, and universal fables, mixed with the social dramedy of local family and friends. Minds built on the intangible, or things as widespread as flora and fauna. Urban and pastoral. These contrasts of nature and society. Social structures that, boiled down, exist everywhere.

Another reason it’d be hard to find such a storyteller, one cultured by a locale, is that, now, many of us grow up surrounded by the rest of the world.

Film imports might’ve given the vision of America in Glasgow through Alasdair’s youth. This century has all sorts of media imports, and the internet—images of other places, mottled stimulus for the imagination, and a dream to see it all, become worldly. Maybe the world would’ve had more Alasdair Grays if I hadn’t been able to find this Canongate book in a Wellington, New Zealand suburb. If storytelling had always been regional.

Up until recently all I knew intimately was New Zealand life, aside from in stories, movies and books (mostly imported from the EU and US). At the time I found ‘Lanark’ in a random thrift shop I was looking for a whimsical fantasy with a grander perspective than ‘Harry Potter.’ The Glasgow Alasdair presented was sooty, British, political, comforting; dramatic in all these ways. Staying in London, midsummer, with a week’s accommodation booked and hostel’s prices rising, an overnight bus was the cheapest option. I hesitated because the only expectations on Glasgow came from a short stack of books. It was the best travel decision I made for 6 months in that continent. I went on to spend almost a third of those six in Scotland.

To pursue him in Glasgow as it is now is not as familiar. I craved to see mid 20th century Glasgow life. Certainly sections and the grander old architecture with its adornments, inspirations for drawings, and a way to see the human form, in stone; cartoonish; mature or cherub-like. Alasdair’s remaining murals are great. A piece of his world.

Touristry wasn’t on the minds of working class Britain post-WWII. Interested in a better job, but not too far from home. In the mid-late 2000s I was swept up in children’s fiction and the movies. Though Christchurch was as wonderful a background as any (lack of old architecture hindered it).

Alasdair references writing philosophies he exemplifies. Robert Graves’ ‘Devil’s Advice to Storytellers’ and ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O'Brien. Experimental writing—the act of embodying Glasgow, and himself in fiction. Experimentation that isn’t a science. It isn’t the attempt to write a novel omitting words with the letter “i.” To experiment like that for the sake of it isn’t a misdeed, but look at chemists who blow their fingers off with unidentified gunpowder. A second hand science report doesn’t imbue one with the same passion as one’s life story, adapted to fiction, does.

New Zealand has always felt wrong in literature. Poetry about local spots jilts me. Fiction set in nearby suburbs. It’s too close, and used incidentally. They don’t divine any romance from these places. Alasdair sees the romance in Glasgow and its people. With a little thought I’m sure I could nail what makes Wellington magic. But the rest of the world looks cinematic from here. Housing crisis and greedy supermarkets aren’t my idea of fun subject matter. But these issues have their characters of deluded whimsy, even the politicians who perpetuate these issues.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that I never know quite what to expect with an Alasdair Gray shirt story. Will it be a measured portrait of ordinary people doing ordinary things or will it spiral off into broad satire or surreal science fiction?
This is a fine collection and I especially enjoyed his homage to his English teacher at the end.

[Noel Holston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gray is revered in his native Scotland, as well he should be. He's a truly quirky, un-categorizable writer. In this collection of stories, he's just as convincing writing about day laborers or imagining future scenarios. He also illustrated his own books with drawings as original and deft as his prose.

[Bram Peeters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit mixed, all good writing, some really good writing. Will read more, apparently this is not his best collection of short stories and obviously there's Lanark. Will have to wait for gloomy holidays though, even when some of these stories suggest there's enough to smile...

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t enjoy. Most stories seemed pointless.

[Dawn Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of the polymath Gray's works: some strange, some sweet, some sting a little. His unique voice is apparent in each of the tales, at times self-depricating in others self-assured, sarcastic and acerbic yet down-to-earth. The text is lifted further by his strangely beautiful illustrations. The final tale brought a tear to my eye and reminded me just how much I, we, miss him (and Archie too) "teachers everyone".

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent collection of short stories from the best living Scottish writer. The only reason I don't give this collection a maximum rating of 5 stars is because it's not quite as good as Gray's first collection, *Unlikely Stories, Mostly* which contains my favourite short story of all time 'Five Letters from an Eastern Empire' as well as several other amazing pieces that perfectly blend poignant realism with cerebral fantasy.

Alasdair Gray writes a kind of fiction that might be called Magic Realism, except that it's more muscular than the prose usually associated with writers of that type. It's also cleaner and more dour. He uses fantasy to make points about reality and uses reality to make points about fantasy, the fantasy worlds that exist in all our heads. In this regard he bears some resemblance to M. John Harrison. But his bleakness is less intense than Harrison's and his politics are less ambiguous.

My favourite story in this collection is 'Near the Driver' which is a kind of science fiction fantasy that bears many similarities to Friedrich Dürrenmatt's short story 'The Tunnel' but is also original in its own right. There are many other enjoyable, heart-rendering and delightful (and also disturbing) tales in this collection -- despite the title there are more than 10 stories. Apart from 'Near the Driver' I was enthralled by 'Houses and Small Labour Parties' and 'YOU'. Gray always manages to convey good ideas in clean fine prose. His dialogue is also very good, though not exactly realistic, not exactly stylised.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alasdair Gray is a one-off! Four stars rather than five for this 1993 compilation of some of his most esoteric work in the short-story field. A proud & forceful Scot, Gray has a unique style,all of his own making,including in his texts, vivid & bold monochromatic illustrations of his own creation;they really do give his published work a feel of a true artist at ease with his own vision of the contemporary world.Clearly,Gray's main visceral alleigance is to an old-fashioned political doctrine,left of centre,taken in with his mother's whisky-tainted milk,& permeated by a barely veiled hostility to the English neighbours,which makes his work an uncomfortable read for a London-bred sassenach like me! But at least he hasn't got his big-fingered Jock hand out..."A pound for a cup of tea...guvvy?" like so many of his down-on-their-luck compatriots in the post-war years, happily sponging-off their despised old enemies.Gray has chips on his slouchy Scottish shoulders about everything, as modern-day Scots have chips with everything (Rab C.Nesbitt!),& like their Mars Bars battered!! And after reading Gray on-and-off for 30 years now,I feel battered by his amazing literary & artistic imagination.A master craftsman at work here,offering the perspicacious reader a whole new perspective on what constitutes a book! "Shite tha' y'ar!"

[Scott Golden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Points: A strong and reliable narrative voice, and interesting approaches (in terms of setting and situation) to the subjects and characters that he examines.
Bad Points: An all-too British tendency to draw conclusions based on class distinctions; also, some didactic ranting wherein Gray uses one of the characters as his mouthpiece.
Overall, though, there are more pluses than minuses, and the surety of his writing style tends to cover for the occasional weaknesses in the storylines.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first, and hopefully not the last, Alasdair Gray I read. There are some utterly fantastic stories in the collection ("YOU", "Time Travel", and "Houses and Small Labour Parties") and I don't think any of the rest could be considered clunkers.

Gray has a very clear vision and creates an intentional aura within his stories which have at least one foot firmly in the territory of the unreal. And don't miss Gray's illustrations which just make the book that much better.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is pretty boring, makes no sense

[Iain Watson]

Ten Tales Tall & True: Social Realism, Sexual Comedy, Science Fiction, and Satire by Alasdair Gray (1994)

[Jaslo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple excellent stories-- full of quirkiness, tight scenes, fun dialogue, intriguing characters. Gray makes sure you can really SEE and HEAR his people.-- (some duds. I skipped the duds.)

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, well-constructed short stories; not much more to say...