Sex and Scottish nationalism: the 'crazy and unstable' life of Poor Affairs author Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray, pictured in 2003. Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

In his typically exuberant, slightly chaotic speech, which he said when his film Bad Things won Best Musical or Comedy at this year's Golden Globes, its director Yorgos Lanthimos twice recognizing Bruce Springsteen and the «wonderful actors» he worked with as «my hero.» including, of course, the film's star Emma. Stone, whom he called «the best.»

It's surprising that a film as eccentric, not to mention sexually explicit, as Poor Little Things could win at the Globes, where the more commercial Barbie was expected to be recognized. But still, filmmakers should take heart from the realization that a film revolving around the sexual and social odyssey of a young woman brought back to life by a mad scientist can triumph over the social and political odyssey of a young woman.

However, there was one curious omission in Lanthimos's speech, which could be explained either by excitement or inattention. Bad Things is adapted from the award-winning 1992 novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, which received widespread acclaim upon publication and won the author a Whitbread Novel Award as well as the Guardian Fiction Prize. In a recent interview with Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin, Afflictions screenwriter Tony McNamara explained how Lanthimos, after moving to the UK in 2011, tracked down Gray in his native Glasgow to secure his approval for the film adaptation.

After taking the surprised director on a walking tour of his favorite spots in the city, the author gave him his blessing, saying he enjoyed Lanthimos' 2009 absurdist comedy Dogtooth, which McNamara called «incredibly generous of him … Yorgos was very happy.

Gray died on December 29, 2019, so he never lived to see the film adaptation of his most accessible novel, although he almost certainly saw McNamara and Lanthimos' previous collaboration, the award-winning historical dark comedy The Favourite, released in the UK earlier that year. . Had he seen «Poor Little Things» receive the kind of adulation with which it was greeted, it's likely that he — a famously eccentric and ethereal character — would finally have been grateful for the recognition and accompanying financial security that a film adaptation would have brought him.

He once said about himself without undue modesty: “I am a famous writer who cannot make a living from his creativity.” And despite being eulogized by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon after his death as «one of Scotland's literary giants… one of the brightest intellectual and creative luminaries Scotland has known in modern times», throughout his life he was described as «the best novelist.» you have never read.”

Bad Things was rated by Sturgeon as «my personal favorite of his incredible work», although Lanthimos' full-screen adaptation, which received an 18 for «strong sex, nudity and very strong language», is definitely intended for adults only. One might imagine that this would have suited the author quite well, given his refusal to pander to commercial mores. He first came to prominence in 1981 with his debut novel Lanark, which he began writing as a student in the 1950s and was rejected by the literary agency Curtis Brown, supposedly out of a sense of hoax: a postmodern odyssey through modern and historical Glasgow, its mixture Lawrence Sterne, the underground Scottish novelist Alexander Trocchi, and Nineteen Eighty-Four was so at odds with the prevailing literary sensibilities of the era that it seemed as if it had been written by an alien.

It was not published for almost two decades, although in a significantly revised form. In the intervening period, Gray, who once proudly described himself as «a deranged and rather unstable creature,» has made a living as a freelance artist, painting murals and creating designs for everything from theater sets to cafes. Several of his works still survive, in the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant and at Hillhead tube station in the city.

Gray was fortunate in that, although he was not yet a published author, he carried with him an innate sense of mystery, mixed with a nascent talent, which tended to excite the generosity of the bureaucrats tasked with handing out grants. Accordingly, he was able to obtain assistance from the Scottish Arts Council to continue working with Lanark as a work in progress, as well as working as a writer at the University of Glasgow between 1977 and 1979.

If Lanark had failed, he would have been quickly forgotten, consigned to history along with other authors who were better at self-promotion than at writing novels. However, upon its eventual publication in 1981, it was greeted by none other than Anthony Burgess, who declared: “The time has come for Scotland to produce a devastating work of fiction in a modern language. This is it.» He also called Gray «the most important Scottish writer since Sir Walter Scott». In the story of the artist Duncan Thaw and his life in Glasgow in the fifties, he mixed clearly autobiographical elements with fantastical and surreal elements as the character of Lanark has to deal with the authorities expressed by the bodies of the Council and the Institute. Unusually, but effectively, there were even illustrations by the author.

Although it was not shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, it won the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year award, reinforcing Gray's love and affection for the devotion his home country had invested in him over the years. Sturgeon's praise for him after his death can be seen in the context of his undying commitment to the cause of Scottish nationalism. Long before the SNP became the dominant force in his country's politics, he wrote the 1992 pamphlet Why Scots Should Rule Scotland and was no fan of the English people in Scotland, calling them «settlers» or «colonists», although he always maintained that not to be anti-English, perhaps, for the sake of the committees for awarding grants and prizes of this country.

However, Sturgeon's warm praise of him misses one significant fact that might embarrass her; shortly before his death, he voted for the Labor Party, saying that he was «very pleased» with Jeremy Corbyn and that «if I were to write a pamphlet now, as I was thinking, it would be extremely critical of the Scottish National Party.» /p>

Of course, during the ten-year gap between the publication of Lanark and Poor Man, Gray risked losing his relevance. After a long development of his debut novel, his second book, Janine (1984), appeared relatively quickly in three years in 1982, and Gray subsequently considered it his best achievement. If Orwell and Enlightenment writers were touchstones for Lanark, then in 1982 Janine's heavy use of pornography as a structural and thematic device might be seen as a credit to Joyce or Genet for generosity, or simply as a reflection of the author's tortured psyche. more critical. Opinions regarding the publication were divided.

William Boyd (whose own novel The New Confessions can be seen as a more palatable version of Gray's influence) called it «transparent and classically elegant» in style, while the poet and clergyman Peter Levy cursed it as «radioactive nonsense». With typical paperback eccentricity, Gray posted positive and negative reviews side by side in an appendix so readers could form their own opinions.

Despite this thoughtfulness, he was not a commercial success, and none of his subsequent novels were published during this decade. By the time he published his rather intense study of office sexual fetishism, Something Leathered, in 1990, he had all but admitted that he had run out of ideas, writing in the book's epilogue that «having discovered how my talent worked, he almost certainly stopped your existence. Imagination will not employ anyone whom it cannot surprise.”

That's why his triumphant return two years later with his most enjoyable novel, Bad Things, should be celebrated even more. McNamara may have made a few changes to the structure of his adaptation—and, presumably due to Gray's posthumous wrath, changed its original setting from Victorian Glasgow to London—but its quixotic, often sordid heart remains the same, meaning both novels are a films can be enjoyed as the fruit of a rare and vivid imagination.

Emma Stone in the film “Worry Things” Photo: Searchlight Pictures

After the success of Poor Little Things, Gray continued to publish novels and short stories that received critical acclaim, although they were not commercially successful. In 2000 he was forced to apply to the Scottish Artists' Charitable Trust for financial assistance, and his public interviews and statements became increasingly combative. He snarled that «Lanark won the publishers, not me, the design award» and enjoyed playing the angry old author with the young journalists, although this could be explained as much by shyness as by hostility.

When writer and art curator Natasha Hoare asked him: “Both Something of the Skin and 1982 and Janine are full of sadomasochistic fantasies; You've previously stated that you can't re-read the latest one, even though it's one of your best books. What was it like to present this deeply personal vision to the public?” he simply replied: “It’s a pleasure.”

It was good for Lanthimos that he met the author in 2011, as Gray was seriously injured in a fall in 2015 and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, although he continued to work until the end. The last thing he did, which is quite appropriate, was to publish translations of the first two parts of the Divine Comedy, «Hell» and «Purgatory», «arranged and translated into English in prose verse», and shortly before his death he was awarded the first awards from the Salt Society. Scottish Lifetime Achievement Award.

It would probably mean more to him than any number of Golden Globe awards; Of course, cinema played a smaller role in his life and career than literature, art and theater. Yet while the Poor Littles adaptation is heavily in the running for Oscar nominations and perhaps even awards, the man who once described himself as «a fat, balding, bespectacled old walker from Glasgow… who largely lived by writing and designing books, much of them fiction,” will finally attract the attention of a whole new readership.

And who knows, if Nicola Sturgeon's well-publicized antics ever land her in jail, at least she'll have plenty of time to read her much-loved Gray.

» Poor Things» in cinemas from January 12