Să dai unei cărți de consum cinci stele, când Lanark are cinci garantate (dar ar putea avea și zece) ar fi o dovadă de stupizenie și de insuficient bagaj literar. Lanark is an autobiography, a surreal depiction of hell, a literary and metafictional reflection, and a discourse on political systems. And his constant frustration that women he directed his affection toward didn’t supply it as he desired. According to the tailpiece present in Canondale’s The Canons edition: “How Lanark Grew” Lanark is both largely autobiographical—a fact made more interesting by the book’s fantastical nature—and was written over the course of thirty years.

It's difficult to sympathize with him as he has few redeeming qualities, yet the story has an undeniable pathos.He built an impressive trove of literary treasures (novels, plays, essays, short stories), engaged in martial arts to keep himself fit. In my travels, as I walked through many regions and countries, it was my chance to happen into that famous continent of Universe. I can’t say much about it, but I will mention two things: It’s much more playful than the rest of the novel, and it contains an annotated list of plagiarisms present in Lanark, which is just… an incredible idea. It’s a novel that knows its forebearers and honors them accordingly, while expanding in unique ways and incorporating its author’s socialist leanings.

We know, for example, how everyone can be sorted into the “softs” and “dragonhides” of Lanark – mirror afflictions of the inhabitants of Unthank, who are either so open they become mulch or so hardened that they burn up in armoured shells. The city of the Glasgow is the best and only real character beside Gray himself in this book - and in all honesty it is the only reason why I kept reading. I found it helpful to reacquaint myself with a character like this, especially after reading and brooding over too much dark, cynical literature.How can they reproduce the movement and the noises of the battle of Borodino, the white whale ramming the ship, the fallen angels on the flaming lake? Açıkcası, postmodern yapıdaki kitapları seviyorsanız ve yeterince sabrınız varsa bittiğinde karşılığını veren kitaplardan.

Gray added an appendix to the 2001 edition of the novel, in which he included a brief biography and elaborated on some of the influences on and inspirations for the novel. The worlds created in this novel are extremely vivid, and you really feel the emotions of Thaw and Lanark as the book progresses. I've barely even heard of this Alasdair Gray, and now, the same night I finish Lanark, some other yahoo in Pittsburgh is reading some entirely other book by the same author. O yüzden yazar kendi kişisel tarihinin tanıklıklarını, yeni dünyanın dönüşümünü, yalnızlaşmayı ve yabancılaşmayı; tercih ettiği sürreal bir yöntemle aktarmayı seçmiş.it's important, however, to say that you don't have to be scottish to read and enjoy it, just read and enjoy it! Hatta bu geçiş o kadar keskin ki, ikinci bölüme geçtiğiniz ilk sayfalarda, bir an için post apokaliptik bir dünyaya geçtiğinizi sanıyorsunuz.