Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics)

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Later: Rarely do I give up on a book if I've already already managed to read its first 490 pages and have only around 60 pages left because after trudging through so many pages it feels pointless not to make a final effort and spend half an hour actually finishing the thing.

And also the monthly discharge of these from the Moon, its waning, through the vault of heaven as they are merged with the infinite light beyond. This book begins with a mundane but unsettling arrival which opens up into an increasingly fantastic tale of discovery and desire. Kitapla ilgili farklı farklı başlıklarda, hepimizin farklı yorumlamış olduğunu hayretle fark edeceğimiz çok şey konuşmak mümkün. Since 1981, when Alasdair Gray's first novel ( Lanark: A Life in Four Books ) was published by Canongate, he has published twenty books, most of them novels and short stories.

Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow.

But the dystopic sections are valuable for other reasons: for their depiction of vast, illogical space, of an incomprehensible and deeply criminal military-industrial complex that will stop at nothing to realize a profit. Gray displayed his politics with disarming plainness – he believed in Scottish independence and socialism; I was a milksop unionist and social democrat. This human warmth is an element lacking from the framing dystopia, because that setting, and all its whacky goings on, distract from the humanity, as it's meant to do.

An absolute tour de force and although the style is difficult to read in some of the later chapters I would highly recommend it! But despite my occassional feelings of irritation, in actual fact some of my favourite moments in the book were some of the most contrived, like the section where Lanark meets the author, Alastair Gray himself, who explains exactly what future is about to be written for him. There were big chunks of Thaw's narrative that I found very entertaining, such as his schooling and his time at the Glasgow School of Art. All in all, Lanark is for all of you that prefer your fiction to contain heavy doses of both self-referential, weird as hell fantasy, and depressingly bleak modernist realism, all of which is coated with vaguely Marxist under and overtones, as well as fascinating social and philosophical commentary on free will, art, and what constitutes a satisfying life.

This then moves back to the fantastic with strong commentary of the authors fears for the world and society which still resonate some 50-60 years after it was written. This note, well the entire section, appears to reconcile the disparate narratives which occupy the novel. You think you’ve found the truth when you’ve replaced the cheerful view by the opposite, but true profundity blends all possible views, bright as well as dark. Böylesi denemelere sanatın her alanında, yapılardan ve geleneklerden sıkılmış bir insan olarak olumlu yaklaşıyorum.But a key to both might be found in what I think is its philosophical, and therefore essentially literary, context. Lanark is a self-aware novel in which the main character switches back and forth between an allegorical post-apocalyptic world and the grim landscape of industrial Scotland. Kitabın atmosferi bazı okurlar tarafından çok kara ve simsiyah bulunması ve bu karamsarlık tonlarının okuru sıkabileceği eleştirisi yapılsa da açıkcası bu fikre hiç sahip olmadan kitabı okuduğumu belirtmeliyim.