Factbites
 Where results make sense
About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   PR   |   Contact us  

Topic: Alasdair Gray


Related Topics

In the News (Sun 27 May 12)

  
  Alasdair Gray - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alasdair Gray (born December 28, 1934) is a Scottish writer and artist.
Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations.
The family lived on a council estate, and Gray received his education from a combination of state education, public libraries and public service broadcasting: "the kind of education British governments now consider useless, especially for British working class children", as he later commented.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Alasdair_Gray   (667 words)

  
 CONTEXT: Janice Galloway Reading Alasdair Gray
Gray's writing, however, is informed by a democratic urge that does not sell women short: he knows our version of the story is different, possibly even opposed, yet of equal force.
But also, with Gray, there is a feeling of Woman as somehow inescapable, a sometimes paranoid, sometimes warm perception of her suffusing or permeating the narrative and its menfolk even in her absence.
Gray's writing not only knows that women experience, feel, and often think differently, it seems to be filled with a regret for that fact, and in this way, Woman--the female principal--exists in Gray's writing the way she exists in no other current male writer's work.
www.centerforbookculture.org /context/no7/galloway.html   (1351 words)

  
 Edinburgh Book Festival 2001 - Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray is a shy almost apologetic speaker.
Gray is a socialist - "not so much old labour as ancient labour" - and a supporter of Scottish independence.
His writing is wonderfully erudite; Gray knows his literature and loves it (his latest highly acclaimed book is an encyclopaedia of prefaces from english literature through the ages).
www.edinburghguide.com /festival/2001/book/report_alasdairgray.shtml   (434 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray - Stephen Bernstein
Alasdair Gray burst onto the literary scene in 1981 with the publication of Lanark, and has been firmly ensconced there since.
The "Gray Chronology" at the beginning of the book begins in the year 1969 (Gray was born in 1934) and centers on his prose publications.
A more rounded introduction to Gray -- at least a cursory survey of his background and education, and a fuller examination of his life (especially as an artist and scriptwriter and playwright) -- would have been welcome.
www.complete-review.com /reviews/graya/sbagray.htm   (702 words)

  
 Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray was born in the Riddrie, Glasgow, in 1934.
In 1948, Gray was the editor of the school magazine at Whitehill primary school in Glasgow, to which he also contributed pictures and stories.
Thirty years later Gray has returned to the University and is presently one third of the chair of creative writing, alongside James Kelman and Tom Leonard.
special.lib.gla.ac.uk /exhibns/month/may2002.html   (1341 words)

  
 Aladair Gray
A graduate of Glasgow School of Art, Alasdair Gray's books are beautifully illustrated; on the cover of The Book of Prefaces he has drawn the portraits of authors included in the book.
When I met Alasdair and Morag in the Chip I was already suitably impressed by his personality and creativity; I had often admired the mural in the Chip and had been enjoying watching the progress of his new work.
Alasdair is a listener and an observor - he suggested that I try to get in touch with a young man, Allen Richardson, who is an artist also earning a crust as a road sweeper, he told me about plans in the pipeline for an Arts Centre in Partick.
www.glasgowwestend.co.uk /people/alasdairgray.php   (1375 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray's Biography -- Lanark 1982: an unofficial Alasdair Gray website
Alasdair James Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow, on 28 December 1934.
Alasdair's sister, Mora Jean, was born in 1937.
Gray's art school years, and much of his childhood, can be worked out from the Thaw sections of Lanark, which are largely autobiographical.
www.lanark1982.co.uk /bio.html   (1761 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray at the Complete Review
"Gray is as at ease with his seriousness as he is with the profound silliness of his chosen erotic kink.
Gray entertains, but he is also both a political and a social writer.
Alasdair Gray: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography (A-), ed.
www.complete-review.com /authors/graya.htm   (778 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray pleads for help to find his forgotten artworks - [Sunday Herald]
Gray was born in Glasgow in 1934 and still lives in the city, He became a jack of several artistic trades because “[I was] unable to make a living by one.
Interest in Alasdair Gray’s art is likely to intensify with the announcement on Friday that his lifelong assistant Rodge Glass is working on a biography of him, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2008.
Gray will arrange for the works to be photographed for the book at no inconvenience to the owner, and if used, the owner’s help will be acknowledged.
www.sundayherald.com /49528   (899 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray describes himself as a 'self-employed verbal and pictorial artist'.
Gray is a socially committed writer who (in Scotland at least) is also well known for non-fictional documents such as Why Scots should rule Scotland, published in 1992.
Gray’s scientist is called Godwin Bysshe Baxter, an allusion to both Shelley’s father and her husband.
www.contemporarywriters.com /authors/?p=auth43&state=index=g   (1153 words)

  
 History's Mandate: Alasdair Gray and the Art of Independence
Gray is more than alert, in fact, he is apologetic, defensive, and paranoid, like most proponents of independence who live and work in an anglocentric culture.
Gray's concentrated style allows him to allude parenthetically to Elizabeth Windsor as 'Elizabeth I of Britain', in what is both an incredible piece of historical condensation and a brilliant piece of polemic.
Gray's intervention into the debate on Scotland's future is in keeping with a recent tradition of Scottish writing on the national question by authors who are chiefly male.
www2.arts.gla.ac.uk /SESLL/STELLA/COMET/glasgrev/issue3/maley.htm   (4841 words)

  
 The Observer | Magazine | Alasdair Gray: money matters
Alasdair Gray has lived most of his life in poverty.
Somehow, Gray survived, with help from Cape and later Bloomsbury (which Liz Calder had gone on to co-found), and by painting murals for local pubs and restaurants in exchange for meals and drink.
Gray is himself almost stereotypical of the working-class artist made good who will refuse to forget his roots.
observer.guardian.co.uk /magazine/story/0,11913,1075265,00.html   (2042 words)

  
 The Ends of Our Tethers -- 13 Sorry Stories -- Alasdair Gray
While I imagine Gray is having some fun here, one can gather from this description that the author probably does not see himself as either a hotshot young writer or a distinguished man of Scottish letters.
(Gray is in fact one of the best Scottish writers of the past twenty-five years and his novels, Lanark: A Life in Four Books, 1982, Janine, and Poor Things are considered contemporary classics.) Likewise, many of the characters in Gray’s stories are at the end of their tethers.
Gray’s characters are passive in their quiet desperation, but they never lose their humor, humanity, or ability to examine themselves.
www.frontlist.com /detail/1841955477   (521 words)

  
 will-self.com » Blog Archive » Alisdair Gray: An Introduction
Either Gray, Plate and I carried the hotelier to bed, or Gray, the hotelier and I carried Plate to bed, or there was some further variation of this, or, just possibly, we all dossed down together on the floor of the bar.
In Scotland, where the fruits of the Enlightenment are still to be found rotting on the concrete floors of deracinated orchards, Gray represents quite as much of a phenomenon as he does to those of us south of the border.
However, to the Scottish, Gray is at least imaginable, whereas to the English he is barely conceivable.
www.willself.org.uk /alasdairgray/gray.php   (1139 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray
Writing was not Alasdair Gray's only - or even his original - muse.
He is also a talented artist and having trained at the School of Art in his native Glasgow, he spent over twenty five years using his painting skills (particularly in working with large-scale murals) to earn his keep.
The 1980s and '90s were a very prolific period for Gray in terms of both his fiction and non-fiction output.
www.visitscotland.com /AlasdairGray   (173 words)

  
 Amazon.co.uk: Lanark: Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics): Books: Alasdair Gray,Janice Galloway   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
Somehow Gray manages to take on just about every important philosophical theme without ever losing sight of the fact that it is the characters, with all their human frailties, that ultimately engage us.
Given that Gray famously intended the component books of "Lanark" to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another, there's a case for saying that this edition is really the first to reflect the shape Gray wanted the book to have.
With any Alasdair Gray book, the visuals are as much a part of the package as the words, and both deserve the best possible presentation so this edition of "Lanark" has a fair claim to being essential for anyone interested in Gray's writing.
www.amazon.co.uk /Lanark-Four-Books-Canongate-Classics/dp/1841951838   (1001 words)

  
 Undiscovered Scotland: Bookshop: Alasdair Gray   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
Alasdair Gray's first novel Lanark (first published in 1981) immediately established him as one of the most important Scottish voices of his generation and this astounding work as one of the key British novels of the last century.
Alasdair Gray: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography: Phil Moores (Editor), Will Self (Introduction) (November 2001).
From "Lanark" to "The Book of Prefaces", Alasdair Gray, more than any other writer still working, can be claimed as the modern successor to William Blake.
www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk /usbookshop/usbs-alasdairgray.html   (648 words)

  
 Propaedeutic Prefaces | Robert Coates reviews Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray’s The Book of Prefaces is a book of such ilk which, however, presents three distinct advantages: 1) it is slightly cheaper; 2) it is (at least in the parts which he himself wrote) really quite enjoyable; and 3) you might end up reading bits which otherwise you wouldn’t have even dreamt of before.
Gray’s own distinctive graphics and a Gloss which is conveniently written in red so we can say we know pretty much everything worth knowing about the author in question after a few short (read) lines.
Gray introduces each of the sections of his collection first by a rather splendid display of his own Gothic Blakesque illustrations.
www.justbookreviews.net /Alasdair_Gray.html   (1218 words)

  
 Alasdair Gray   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
Like all of Alasdair Gray's work, Lanark is conceived out of a vision of creative, egalitarian self-regeneration for Scotland.
Alasdair Gray was born and brought up in Glasgow, where he still lives.
Alasdair Gray worked for ten years on The Book of Prefaces, published in 2000 - a tour de force of wit and erudition.
www.nls.uk /writestuff/heads/wee-gray.html   (195 words)

  
 Gray's anatomy - [Sunday Herald]
Alasdair Gray was born on December 28, 1934, which makes him very nearly “three score years and 10,” as he calls it.
Gray’s one main fear was that, “since his mother and me would both be regarded by many people as being strange and eccentric, I thought our son would turn out even more eccentric.
Gray tells tales of how his father used to spank him, generally under his mother’s orders, and that his most common disobediences were refusals to eat “white soft foods”.
www.sundayherald.com /46649   (4251 words)

  
 The Herald   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
Since Alasdair Gray last wrote a novel, Mavis Belfrage in 1996, he has released collections of short stories and non-fiction.
Rodge Glass, who is working on Gray's biography, believes it is a "major Gray work in progress" on the scale of Poor Things, which won Gray the Whitbread Book of the Year.
Gray is also working on A Life in Pictures, a book containing much of his art along with his commentary on it.
www.theherald.co.uk /news/61557.html   (584 words)

  
 Inside the Box // Exploring the Arts of Alasdair Gray
It is intended as a resource of information for students, readers, and all those interested in the many arts of Alasdair Gray.
Gray, who describes himself as “a self-employed verbal and pictorial artist”, is the author of eight novels and numerous collections of short-stories and poems.
It has since seen Gray canonised on both sides of the Atlantic as a key figure in postmodern art.
web.mac.com /iandphillip/gray/index.html   (186 words)

  
 Dalkey Archive Press: An Interview with Alasdair Gray
ALASDAIR GRAY: I meant to write an exciting story about the world I was in, of which Glasgow was the biggest and nearest part.
MA: That approach to institutional dogma and criteria, whether academic or nonacademic, seems to have been a part of your work as far back as the short story "The Wise Mouse," written when you were in secondary school.
MA: Many of Unthank's inhabitants suffer from the despair not only of the gray skies of its bleak setting but from diseases that are as horrific in name as in substance, diseases like Dragonhide.
www.centerforbookculture.org /interviews/interview_gray.html   (4225 words)

  
 village voice > books > Lanark by Alasdair Gray by Joy Press
Gray careens recklessly through his narratives, birthing characters only to befuddle them, snapping off bits of literary genres so he can have his wicked, silly way with them.
In between, Gray creates a puzzle by interlocking two life stories: that of Lanark, an amnesiac living in the town of Unthank, and Duncan Thaw, a boy raised in bleak post-war Glasgow.
The city, Gray writes, "was a gloomy huge labyrinth he would take years to find a way through." A budding artist and dreamer, Thaw scavenges for happiness, fixating on radiant local girls.
www.villagevoice.com /issues/0248/press.php   (1270 words)

  
 Powell's Books - The Ends of Our Tethers: Thirteen Sorry Stories by Alasdair Gray
Beautifully produced and illustrated throughout with Gray's distinctive drawings, The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray — accessible, experimental, mischievous, wide-ranging, beautifully written, and wise.
"Gray, the Scottish author of the novels Lanark and the Whitbread-winning Poor Things, among others, returns to the form he first visited in Unlikely Stories, Mostly with a collection filled with wry and mordant humor.
In these 13 stories, Gray dances across many of the discontents of modern life, but lingers at the divides of gender and age.
www.powells.com /biblio?isbn=1841955477   (576 words)

  
 The Ends of Our Tethers by Alasdair Gray « Book Review « ReadySteadyBook - a literary site
After a seven year break, Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray, much feted for the magnificent Lanark, returned to fiction with this compact collection of darkly experimental tales, subtitled Thirteen Sorry Stories.
Gray is a very socially aware writer; his stories raise questions and challenge expectations.
Dotted with Gray’s grinning gargoyles, The Ends of Our Tethers is, for the most part, an all-too-short collection of compelling prose.
www.readysteadybook.com /BookReview.aspx?isbn=1841955337   (516 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)

Factbites
  About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   Press   |   Contact us  
Copyright © 2005-2007 www.factbites.com Usage implies agreement with terms.