Fiction
Epic allegory
Naomi Mitchison
Lanark Alasdair Gray (Canongate pp. 560, £7.95) It is well established, especially among northern Europeans, that there is a considerable area of Debateable Land which is neither Heaven, Hell nor Middle Earth. We are aware, too, that there are more ways in than out and it is a question of luck whether the escape routes can be found. But what is luck? Lanark, when he was Duncan Thaw on Middle Earth was an asthma sufferer, painfully shy with girls, constantly feeling put down by friends and teachers and often badly short of money. But when he is in Unthank, lying as it appears to do near Cumbernauld where, in Middle Earth terms, there is no room for it, he suffers from incipient dragon-hide and only just avoids becoming a total dragon. He does in fact escape. Or does he? Sometimes a glimpse of luck appears but mostly it slithers away, whether or not by his own fault. In the end the Debateable Land grips him.
This remarkable book begins in Unthank , a city of the Debateable Land. Duncan Thaw (but we know nothing about him as yet, nor does he remember anything of his own past) has named himself Lanark and in this Lanarkness all the places in this book seat themselves, except for a brief and lovely time in the Highlands, but that only in the Middle Earth section. Lanark discovers Unthank to be dark, dirty and filled with the sadness of unemployment and creeping delapidation; everybody is liable to hideous maladies of which dragon-hide is one. Here in a gloomy cafe gather the characters We shall meet later in various terms. But underneath Unthank is another version of the Debateable Land, reached through a terrifying but necessary fall, at the end of which is the Institute, the horrid Ozenfant, the disguised Monboddo and the good (but is he?) Dr Munro, as well as the unacceptable uses to which metamorphosed humans can be put.
Does Lanark get back to Middle Earth? I am afraid not. He tries but gets into an awkward time-fold where both he and Rima, the girl who keeps on re-appearing, lose themselves. It is worst for Rima, who after a few hours in the time-fold finds herself in a late stage of pregnancy.
How does this strike you? I found it compelling, a game of hide and seek where one never knows what will happen next. The narrative is direct and stylish, the description crisp. The real life of Duncan Thaw is in real Glasgow. This section seemed to me deeply moving and evocative in the same way that Joan Eardley's Glasgow paintings are. Both artists have the same compassion and involvement. The Thaw family, decent, literate upper working class, are solid in the real city with the great river, the steep dark streets and Closes, the fogs, the sudden astonishing snatches of beauty. The parents are endlessly kind to the brilliant boy with his increasingly painful attacks of asthma, only wishing he would sometimes show some common sense. You get to know the father and wish him well and hope that it will not hurt too much when the son is drowned — if drowned he is. Lanark's son by Rima in Unthank mirrors the relationship. This is a long book. Incidentally, it is beautifully produced, with good printing and a number of allegorical drawings by the author in a mode which is presently unfashionable. And it is remarkably inexpensive! However, being so 1°ng, it is packed with people and with arguments, some very relevant to today's ordinary life and political uncertainties. My criticism would be that it is rather too easy to lose oneself among all these pedple, Some of whom only come in for a page or two, in much the same way as one loses People in an elaborate dream. Some probably turn up again in different disguises, but wC can never be sure, and that can be wearying. As in Alice the protagonist meets his author, the conjuror, not to be confused with the oracle earlier on. This is near the end of the book and they have a lengthy 4rgtiMent. Is this a spot of structuralism? Or Possibly of author's egotism? Typically, 1 he oom in which this happens is described in etlear detail, even the kind of soup which ;,-anark drinks during the interview in which ne tries to give himself a better future. • Are you a little lost? Never we have had a great adventure, we ",,ave come out of it back to Middle Earth. d I think we shall find there are parts of !ills book which we may want to come back to again and again.
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