Lanark

Question 1

Basic summary

Answer 1

Modern vision of hell set in disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw

Question 2

What message did you get?

Answer 2

Conveys a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind’s inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying

Question 3

What does the epilogue do?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Quote taken from waiting for godot (book 3)

Answer 4

Vladimir: Suppose we repented.
Estragon: repented what?
Vladimir: …oh (he reflects) we wouldn’t have to go into the details…

Question 5

Sludden quote

Answer 5

‘Perhaps I’ve surprised you by putting work and love in the same category, but both are ways of mastering other people’

Question 6

Sludden quote on art

Answer 6

‘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.’

Question 7

When was Lanark published?

Answer 7

1981

Question 8

Doctor Lanark on life for women

Answer 8

‘Life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy’

Question 9

Lanark on understanding ourselves

Answer 9

‘We can’t understand ourselves, how can we understand others?’

Question 10

War

Answer 10

‘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’

Question 11

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.

Answer 11

• science fiction
• mystical trips
• Bildungsroman
• biography
• political criticism

Question 12

Sludden on words

Answer 12

‘If a writer doesn’t enjoy words for their own sake how can the reader enjoy them?’

Question 13

Gray’s visions

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Sludden on metaphor

Answer 14

‘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’

Question 15

Most alternative reading?

Answer 15

Glasgow is the hell and Unthank the reality

Question 16

Striking feature - chapter

Answer 16

Gray devotes a chapter to cataloging Gray’s theft from long-dead writers. This shows his wit but slows the momentum of the narrative.

Question 17

The oracle on numbers

Answer 17

‘Everything was untrustworthy when compared with numbers… compared with his phone number our closest friend is shifty and treacherous’

Question 18

Thaw on why we like tragedies

Answer 18

‘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.’

Question 19

Chapter 21 first of book 2

Answer 19

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’

Question 20

Nastler (gray’s alter ego) confronting thaw

Answer 20

‘How’s that for an ending?’ ‘Bloody rotten’ said Lanark.

Question 21

Wasteland ‘key’

Answer 21

‘We think of the key, each in his prison / Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison’