Of Me and Others. Alasdair Gray
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OF ME AND OTHERS
Born in 1934, Alasdair Gray graduated in design and mural painting from the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, he authored, designed and illustrated seven novels, several books of short stories, a collection of his stage, radio and TV plays and a book of his visual art, A Life in Pictures. In November 2019, he received a Lifetime Achievement award by the Saltire Society. He died in December 2019, aged eighty-five.
OF ME
AND OTHERS
by Alasdair Gray
for Morag, Mora, Andrew,Bert, Katriona, Tracy, Maff,Jim, Libby and Alexandrain ScotlandEngland and the U.S.A.
CANONGATE BOOKS
EDINBURGH 2019
biblio notice
This revised edition published in
Great Britain, the USA and
Canada in 2019 by Canongate
Books Ltd, 14 High Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West
and in Canada by Publishers Group Canada
canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Alasdair Gray 2014, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of
Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 520 2
eISBN 978 1 78689 521 9
an epigraph
Everyone over middle age
regrets some loss that ageing brings.
My principal regret is this:
I’ve never tackled handy things.
Before King Louis lost his head
his hobby was repairing locks.
Byron, despite a crippled foot,
wrote epics yet could swim and box.
Sir Thomas Browne, Bill Carlos Bill,
were medical practitioners.
The Reverend Sydney Smith had skill
to doctor his parishioners.
One soldier wrote great words for tunes.1
One housewife writes tremendous books.2
One postman publishes cartoons.3
One mural painter welds and cooks.4
One sweeper of streets can etch and paint.5
One banker played the bagpipes well.6
One fisherman became a saint who
holds the keys of Heaven and Hell.7
Ruskin swept stairs and weeded plots.
D. H. Lawrence scrubbed the floors.
Count Tolstoy emptied chamber pots.
Why do I flinch from household chores?
Frosts’s farming was not infamous.
Melville and Conrad sailed the sea.
James Kelman drove an omnibus.
No honest toil excuses me.
1. Hamish Henderson
2. Agnes Owens
3. Stuart Murray
4. Nichol Wheatley
5. Alan Richardson
6. Former manager of the Glasgow Byres Road Clydesdale Bank
7. Peter
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1993 Childhood Writing and MR MEIKLE
1952 Two Whitehill School Magazine Essays
1957 EPIC PAINTING: Art School Thesis
1960 WORLD OF 4 TO 7: Teaching College Thesis
1964 APOLOGY FOR MY RECENT DEATH
1973 Of Bill Skinner, Small Thistle
1974 A Retrospective Catalogue – Introduction
1975 Of Gable-End Murals – A Letter
1975 NEW LANARK CRAFT COMMUNITY
1977 WRITERS GROUPS and A Resident’s Report