I'm afraid to say I'm with Rob on this, Sally.
2008/8/26 Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>:
> From: "Sally Evans" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>> I cant work this out - why are we talking about Alasdair under the heading
>> of George Mackay Brown?
>
> Because there are really very few first-rate 20thC Scottish novelists,
> and George Mackay Brown and Alasdair are among them.
>
>> Alasdair has written (and illustrated) many books, not many of which have
>> been widely distributed,
>
> GUGH!!!!
>
> Penguin covers, and Canongate, and Chapman Magazine covers.
>
> If that's "not widely illustrated", how would you term Thomas Gray's "decent
> obscurity"?
>
>> but he will be best remembered for his murals, the main one still in
>> progress on the ceilings and walls of the church building at Byres Road
>> Glasgow.
>> Sally Evans
>
> I'm sorry Sally, and this may be me (and I also dislike Blake's visual
> work) but I find it difficult to imagine anyone paying serious attention to
> either the early murals or Alasdair's later illustrations, if it weren't for
> Lanark.
>
> Is it significant that the visual artist Duncan Thaw tops himself in
> _Lanark_?
>
> Robin
>
> (In this area, think of Duncan Jones. And possibly D.H.Lawrence. Visual
> artists [though least so in the case of Jones] whose visual art failed to
> reach the standard of their verbal art.
>
> Blake, I suppose, is contentious in this area.
>
> R)
>
> [OK, I confess a special interest here -- I spent seven years living in the
> second story of a Denniston tennement that overlooked the playground of
> Whitehill Senior Secondary, the school that Alasdair Gray / Duncan Thaw got
> belted by the taws for failing to learn Latin.
>
> R2.]
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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