Lanark Flashcards
Basic summary
Modern vision of hell set in disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw
What message did you get?
Conveys a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind’s inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying
What does the epilogue do?
We must always bear in Mind that this is a savage satire precisely regarding the notion of literary influences entertained by critics and a hilarious parody at their (our, that is) expense
Quote taken from waiting for godot (book 3)
Vladimir: Suppose we repented.
Estragon: repented what?
Vladimir: …oh (he reflects) we wouldn’t have to go into the details…
Sludden quote
‘Perhaps I’ve surprised you by putting work and love in the same category, but both are ways of mastering other people’
Sludden quote on art
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to take up Art. Art is the only work open to people who can’t get along with others and want to be special.’
When was Lanark published?
1981
Doctor Lanark on life for women
‘Life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy’
Lanark on understanding ourselves
‘We can’t understand ourselves, how can we understand others?’
War
‘War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure’
all inclusive book drinks from the darkest twisted worlds of Kafka to show the odyssey of an individual whose only wish, whose only aim, is to move and be moved.
- science fiction
- mystical trips
- Bildungsroman
- biography
- political criticism
Sludden on words
‘If a writer doesn’t enjoy words for their own sake how can the reader enjoy them?’
Gray’s visions
As apocalyptic as they are political, and when the fantastical becomes entwined with themes of social iniquity, the critic who attempts to pull them apart risks being devoured himself
Sludden on metaphor
‘Metaphor is one of thought’s most essential tools. It illuminates what would otherwise be totally obscure. But the illumination is sometimes so bright that it dazzled instead of revealing’
Most alternative reading?
Glasgow is the hell and Unthank the reality
Striking feature - chapter
Gray devotes a chapter to cataloging Gray’s theft from long-dead writers. This shows his wit but slows the momentum of the narrative.
The oracle on numbers
‘Everything was untrustworthy when compared with numbers… compared with his phone number our closest friend is shifty and treacherous’
Thaw on why we like tragedies
‘Death Hardly ever happens when people are at their best. That is why we like tragedies. They show men ending energetically with their wits about them and deserving to do it.’
Chapter 21 first of book 2
thaw invents a maggot called the Fleahouse - ‘The body of the last Fleahouse Fontaine’s the flesh of everything that had ever lived. It was content’
Nastler (gray’s alter ego) confronting thaw
‘How’s that for an ending?’ ‘Bloody rotten’ said Lanark.
Wasteland ‘key’
‘We think of the key, each in his prison / Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison’
