Lanark: A Life in Four Books

by Alasdair Gray

Readers develop unique histories with the books they read. It may not be immediately apparent at the time of reading, but the person you were when you read the book, the place you were where you read the book, your state of mind while you read it, your personal situation (happy, frustrated, depressed, bored) and so on – all these factors, and others, make the simple experience of reading a book a far more complex and multi-layered affair than might be thought. Moreover, the reading of a memorable book somehow insinuates itself into the tangled skein of personal history that is the reader’s autobiography: the book leaves a mark on that page of your life – leaves a trace – one way or another.

A clock had been fixed there once and been removed, I felt sure, because people would not have borne such waiting had they been able to measure it.

How would you describe yourself?” “I can’t.” Ozenfant laughed. “Of course you can’t! I asked foolishly. The lemon cannot taste bitterness, it only drinks the rain.

“But you are no Athenian, no Florentine, you are a modern man! In modern civilizations those who work in the sunlight are a despised and dwindling minority. Even farmers are moving indoors. As for lovemaking and friendship, humanity has always preferred to enjoy these at night. If you wanted the moon I could sympathize, but Apollo is quite discredited.”

He stared, astonished, and cried, “We love each other! What could understanding add to that? We can’t understand ourselves, how can we understand others? Only maps and mathematics exist to be understood and we’re solider than those, I hope.”

Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself and the recipe is separation.”

“Examinations!” cried Thaw. “It’s all examinations! Must everything we do satisfy someone else before it’s worthwhile? Is everything we do because we enjoy it selfish and useless? Primary school, secondary school, university, they’ve got the first twenty-four years of our lives numbered off for us and to get into the year above we’ve to pass an exam. Everything is done to please the examiner, never for fun. The one pleasure they allow is anticipation: ‘Things will be better after the exam.’ It’s a lie. Things are never better after the exam. You’d think love was something different. Oh, no. It has to be studied, practised, learnt, and you can get it wrong.”

“Mind you, many wiser folk than me have believed there’s a new life afterwards. If there is, it won’t be worse than this one.”

A story can always end happily by stopping at a cheerful moment. Of course in nature the only end is death, but death hardly ever happens when people are at their best. That is why we like tragedies. They show men ending energetically with their wits about them and deserving to do it.

The world sometimes seems a chessboard where the pieces move themselves. I’m never sure what square to go to. Yet it can’t be a difficult game, most folk play it instinctively.”

My mother told her she wasn’t fit to sleep with a pig. Which forced me into the unenviable position of declaring she was fit to sleep with a pig,”

“Yah, I’m sick of ordinary people’s ability to eat muck and survive. Animals are nobler. A fierce animal will die fighting against insults to its nature, and a meek one will starve to death under them. Only human beings have the hideous versatility to adapt to lovelessness and live and live and live while being exploited and abused by their own kind.

“Ah!” said McAlpin cheerfully, setting down his glass. “Shall I tell you about God? I’m unusually lucid tonight.”

“There’s nothing wrong with darkness. I’ve met several dreadful things in my life, and every one was in sunshine or a well-lit room.”

“As the creature couldn’t stay rich by selling necessary things to the folk who made them it sold destructive things to the council. Then the war started and the destructive things were used to wreck the necessary things. The creature profited by replacing both.”

“Politics depend on noise. All parties subscribe to that opinion, if to no other.”