![]() ![]() However, Lanark had something of the whiff of legend about it, even then: it was reputed to be a vast novel, decades in the writing, still to see the light of day. Doubtless we drank in the same pub - The Pewter Pot in North Woodside Road - from time to time, but I don't remember ever meeting him properly. Alasdair Gray was someone known to me by sight (we had mutual friends) and by reputation as a painter and muralist. In the early 70s, when I was studying for my MA at the University of Glasgow, there was occasional talk of Lanark among my circle of friends. I had heard of Lanark long before I had the opportunity to read it. Clearly Lanark had already been designated an "important" novel by the TLS (even now it would be virtually unheard of to grant a full page to a first novel) and it had been decided to give it due prominence. I still have the diligent notes I made on that first reading - they run to three and a half closely written pages. Indeed, as a tyro novelist myself, I was flattered to be asked to review it at such length. ![]() ![]() However, I can detect no trace of bitterness or chippiness in my analysis of Gray's novel. My novel had been reviewed in the TLS on January 30 that year, somewhat patronisingly ("engaging", "amusing"), by DAN Jones, in a review that was one-third the length of my review of Lanark. Looking back now, it seems even more interesting that I came to review Lanark - Gray's first novel - a month after my own first novel, A Good Man in Africa, had been published. ![]()
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