![]() ![]() Like all of Gray’s work, it was witty and subversive and had a deadly political accuracy, but there was something lacking: after the epic proportions of Lanark, and 1982, Janine’s harrowing psychological thoroughness, it seemed functional, perfunctory. From now on he would write only frivolous things like plays or poems, and ponderous things like A History Of The Preface or a treatise on The Provision Merchant As Agent Of Evil In Scottish Literature From Galt To Gunn.’Ī book published at around this time, The Fall Of Kelvin Walker, had the appearance of a new novel but was in fact adapted from a television play broadcast by the BBC as long ago as 1968. ![]() There was a handful of stories he had intended to build into another collection, but found he could not, as he had no more ideas for prose fictions. ‘A director of a London publishing house,’ he wrote (in the third person), ‘asked him if he had enough stories to make another collection. ![]() ![]() That process began in 1985, with the postscript to Lean Tales, the short story collection he shared with Agnes Owens and James Kelman. All of which does not necessarily make it his best, but certainly means that we have a nice surprise on our hands when you consider that Gray has spent much of the last few years publicly and gloomily announcing the death of his fictional imagination. This is Alasdair Gray’s funniest novel, his most high-spirited, and his least uneven. ![]()
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