Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s BiographyAlasdair Gray, author of the modern classics Lanark, Poor Things and 1982, Janine, is without doubt Scotland’s greatest living novelist. Since trying (unsuccessfully) to buy him a drink in 1998, Rodge Glass, first tutee and then secretary to the author, takes on the role of biographer, charting Gray’s life from unpublished and unrecognised son of a box-maker to septuagenarian "little grey deity" (as Will Self has called him). A Jewish Mancunian Boswell to Gray’s Johnson, Glass seamlessly weaves a chronological narrative of his subject’s life into his own diary of meeting, getting to know and working with the artist, writer and campaigner, to create a vibrant and wonderfully textured portrait of a literary great. |
Contents
PREFACES | 1 |
Old Family Old Friends Old Papers | 30 |
Art | 71 |
MARRIAGE FATHERHOOD FAKE DEMISE | 85 |
Women Mostly III | 111 |
A LIFE IN PRINTERS INK | 160 |
Attention | 196 |
Health | 241 |
RECENT STATES | 256 |
Current States | 283 |
NOT DEAD YET A HAPPY ENDING OF SORTS | 298 |
ENDNOTES AND CRITIC FUEL | 316 |
Acknowledgements | 332 |
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Common terms and phrases
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