ALASDAIR GRAY: A SECRETARY'S BIOGRAPHY
Rodge Glass
Bloomsbury, £25THERE are two very distinct forms of literary biography: the quest and the reminiscence. Writers like Boswell, Lockhart and Eckermann knew their subjects int
imately and provide gossipy, private detail alongside the arc of a life. AJA Symons, Jonathan Coe and Ian Hamilton are at the other extreme, crafting accounts of a life where the search for the subject is part of the story. The problem with Rodge Glass's biography of Alasdair Gray is that it tries to be both.
Glass was tutored by Gray on the Glasgow Creative Writing Course and went on to become his secretary. He gives us the skeleton of Gray's life from Riddrie childhood through art school, the publication of the seminal Lanark and his apotheosis as "national treasure", while counterpointing it with anecdotes about the "fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian": Gray falling over in the street, writing his Christmas cards and scrabbling together books to stave off penury.
Anyone who has been to a reading by Gray will recognise the mannerisms and protective eccentricity; anyone who has read Gray's novels will recognise the upbringing, sexual dysfunction and socialist principles.
The "standard" account of Gray's life is not exhaustive; but Glass had learned from Gray that airing one's failings in public is a clever prophylactic against criticism. It's not supposed to tell you everything, so it's churlish to expect a full chronology. That said, I was surprised that Gray's career as an itinerant art tutor (which would eventually feed into 1982, Janine) or his public debate with Angus Calder prior to devolution in the pages of the Scotsman (a striking intervention in public life) were omitted.
Glass says he did not want to write a "dry, academic biography", but a little more time in the library would have helped. Bemused by a vitriolic review by Joe Ambrose, Glass asks: "But did a Joe Ambrose exist? I cannot find one." Forget the library – Google will immediately reveal that the arts agitator Joe Ambrose indeed exists.
Certain aspects are soft-pedalled: Gray's drinking, the constant recycling of material, the surreptitious misinformation (such as Gray claiming that Lanark was shortlisted for the Booker). Worse, it plays into the "foundation myth" version of Lanark: that Glasgow was novelistically uninteresting pre-Gray. This ignores the work of McIlvanney, Spence, Friel, Hind and Freddie Anderson. Back to the library, Glass, as he would say.
Perhaps the most telling line in the whole book comes during an account of a reading in 2006: "Why is it that even when being corrected in public, I don't mind because I am so pleased and surprised to be referred to as a friend?" The book is, in essence, a love story; charting the change from wide-eyed acolyte to more than acquaintance. And for a love story, Glass requires there to be a happy ending.
That happy ending is Old Men In Love, Gray's last novel, published last year. If we believe the biographer, it is a triumph ("his best work in a long time" with "rare negative reviews"). Oh really? "Not much fun to read" – Sunday Times; "sophomoric at times, so-whattish at others" – Independent on Sunday; "one thing he is not is a novelist" – Financial Times; "irksome… laboured… no great shakes as a copy-editor" – Sunday Herald.
I should at this point confess that this is the first book I have ever reviewed in which I appear. I mention this, as the Gray-biography and Glass-bildungsroman has a very curious attitude towards footnotes. The pages are peppered with notes to explain to the reader, and one assumes posterity, who Alan Bissett, Rachel Seiffert, Alison Miller and Zoë Strachan are (on the Glasgow Creative Writing Course, for one thing); with extra notes to enshrine James Kelman and Tom Leonard as tutors. Edwin Morgan, AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Janice Galloway and Stuart Kelly are all mysteriously un-footnoted, so I suppose I should thank Glass for believing in my immortal celebrity.
But let's not forget that Gray taught Glass to write. What has he learned? It's neither crisply translucent nor fantastically experimental, just workman-like, with the occasional self-regarding flourish. I simply don't believe he ever called Gray "sir": it's a pompous little affectation; ironically sycophantic and sincerely cringe-making. The lesson learned is that self-promotion is acceptable, as long as you think you are an artist.
The full article contains 744 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
