Customer Reviews (1)

Slight, but amusing pilgrim's progress.
I had read so much about Alasdair Gray - about his narrative ambition, his linguistic invention, his surreal fantasy, his dark humour, his political anger, his status as a pioneering modern Scottish writer etc. - that it was surprising to find in 'The Fall of Kelvin Walker' a short, amusing, but unmistakably fogeyish, Kingsley Amis-like, harmless comedy.

The story features a young provincial Scot who, inspired by furtive readings of Nietszche, runs away from home and his sternly religious father to London, determined by sheer will to power to begin a career at the top.'Fall' contrives to be a satire of the media (especiallythe BBC and the popular press) and its cosying up to the political classes; a new kind of old-boy-network based on influence and wealth rather than class; the conservatism of establishment liberalism.But this satire is utterly toothless - the targets are not real-life figures and bear little relation to any; by omitting all detail that would convince us of the plausibiolity of these milieux and, therefore, the force of satire on them, the world Kelvin strides is so fantastical and whimsical, no target in it is worth the hitting.

This sense of the blithely unreal is increased by the historical setting: subtitled 'A Fable of the 60s', there is very little sense of period, unless you count the relative value of money, or the ease with which an unknown, uneducated, regional young man rises in the Establishment.

'Fall' is no satire, then: its movement as a romantic comedy soon fizzles out into a concern with religious intolerance.That the book remains at all enjoyable is due to the crisp and rapid lightness of the deadpan prose; the Amis-like narrative momentum through comic set-pieces (Kelvin's interview with the BBC is particularly funny); and the cast of characters who, if not particularly real, are engaging enough to keep you interested. ... Read more

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This is a collection of five letters taken from unlikely stories. ... Read more

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For completionists only
This mini volume consists of the story by the same name from Unlikely Stories, Mostly.It is a brilliant story that is obsessed with the structures of our society (be they buildings, governments, or traditions) and full of interesting characters working their way through a good plot.It also, however, is available in Unlikely Stories, Mostly.This latter book is in my opinion Gray's finest, and I'd strongly recommend you spend your money on it instead.Only collectors and zealous completionists need consider owning this book. ... Read more

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This book will bring together for the first time poems from Alasdair Gray's published volumes, along with new and previously unpublished poetry. The book is designed and illustrated by the author. ... Read more

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Written for the 1992 General Election, this book: examined the poor state of present-day Scotland; gave a history of the Scottish people and their relations with the rulers of England; and argued that Scotland should have a strong government elected by its own people. It is five years later and Scotland still does not have that and its state has worsened. The original chapters have been revised and largely rewritten. New chapters dealing with Scottish education, land-owning and law, and the Labour Party bring the arguments to date. Intending to persuade people who feel their vote does not much influence how their country is managed, the book emphasizes that Scottish independence does matter. Alasdair Gray is the author of "Lanark" and "Unlikely Stories Mostly". ... Read more

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This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Lanark: a Life in Four Books, 1982, Janine, Poor Things, Something Leather, a History Maker, the Fall of Kelvin Walker: a Fable of the Sixties, Old Men in Love. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, was the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, and is still his best known. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian fantasy depictions of his home city of Glasgow. Its publication in 1981 prompted Anthony Burgess to call Gray "the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott". The book has since won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and David Niven awards, and has become a cult classic. In 2006, The Guardian heralded Lanark as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction." Lanark comprises four books, arranged in the order Three, One, Two, Four (there is also a Prologue before Book One, and an Epilogue four chapters before the end of the book). In the Epilogue, the author explains this by saying that "I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another", and that the epilogue itself is "too important" to go at the end (p. 483). In Book Three, a young man awakes alone in a train carriage. He has no memory of his past and picks his name from a strangely familiar photograph on the wall. He soon arrives in Unthank, a strange Glasgow-like fantasy city in which there is no daylight and whose disappearing residents suffer from strange symbolic diseases. Lanark begins to associate with a group of twenty-somethings to whom he cannot fully relate and whose mores he cannot understand, and soon begins to suffer from Dragonhide, a disease which turns his skin into scales as an external manifestation of his emotional repression. La...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=597618 ... Read more

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Chapters: Graeme Garden, Alasdair Gray, John Glashan, Isaac Cruikshank, Archibald Thorburn, John Grant, Cecile Walton, Jessie M. King, David Law, Erskine Nicol, Anne Anderson, Agnes Miller Parker, William Mclaren. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 52. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: David Graeme Garden (born 18 February 1943) is a Scottish author, actor, comedian, artist and television presenter, who first became known as a member of The Goodies. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Garden was educated at Repton School, and studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he joined the prestigious Cambridge University Footlights Club (of which he became President in 1964), and performed with the 1964 Footlights revue, Stuff What Dreams Are Made Of at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Garden qualified in medicine at King's College London, but has never practised. Asked how he justified making jokes rather than saving lives, he answered, "I don't think I would have done it as well. It's an interesting question whether you've contributed more to the vast store of human enjoyment by doing comedy or by being a doctor, but the answer for me is that I don't think I would have been as successful or as happy being a doctor." Garden and Bill Oddie co-wrote many episodes of the television comedy series Doctor in the House, including most of the first season episodes of the series and all of the second season episodes. Later, Garden also wrote for Surgical Spirit (1994). Graeme Garden has also presented three series of the BBC's health magazine Bodymatters. Garden was co-writer and performer in the classic BBC radio comedy show, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (ISIRTA) (19651970, and 1973). Garden was studying medicine during the early seasons of I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, and this commitment m...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=50452 ... Read more

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Term paper due tomorrow? Need to bone up for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary figure?

Turn to "Dictionary of Literary Biography" for the finest literature reference material. Brought to you by the Gale Group--the world's leading source of reference information--this e-doc contains a biographical essay written by a noted literary expert as well as extensive primary and secondary bibliographies. ... Read more

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Word count: 5731. ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Iain Banks, Ken Macleod, Steven Moffat, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alasdair Gray, Charles Stross, F. Gwynplaine Macintyre, Duncan Lunan, Richard Gordon, David Lindsay, Emma Maree Urquhart, David I. Masson, Angus Macvicar, Dan Morgan, Donald Malcolm, Matthew Fitt, Michael Cobley, Alan W. Lear, Michael Scott Rohan, J. T. Mcintosh, Chris Boyce, Hal Duncan, Gary Gibson. Excerpt:Alan William Lear (October 1953 December 26 2008) was a Scottish writer of science fiction and horror , whose credits included the 1984 BBC Radio 4 play Why Not Take All of Me? Lear wrote four plays for the Audio Visuals series of amateur-produced Doctor Who stories in the 1980s entitled Enclave Irrelative (which featured Michael Wisher as "Maul"), Minuet in Hell (again featuring Wisher, this time as Lord Sandwich ), Cloud Of Fear and Planet Of Lies (developed from an original scenario by Jim Mortimore ). The latter saw the destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords by the Daleks many years before the 2005 revival of Doctor Who did something similar. He was also the writer behind Audio Visuals' first foray into video production with the little seen drama Scarecrow City , starring Nicholas Briggs as Arthur Mowbray and Liz Knight as Penny dealing with unusual behaviour in the city of Pastonmouth. After being struck down with glandular fever in 1976, Lear suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome for the remainder of his life, which severely affected his opportunities to advance his writing. When asked in 2001 to contribute a new version of Minuet in Hell for Big Finish Productions ' range of audio dramas featuring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor , Lear extensively rewrote the play but due to the demands of the recording schedule producer Gary Russell completed the final episodes of the script and took a co-writer's c... ... Read more

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Alasdair Gray’s writing, and in particular his great novel Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), is often read as a paradigm of postmodern practice. This study challenges that view by presenting an analysis that is at once more conventional and more strongly radical. By reading Gray in his cultural and intellectual context, and by placing him within the tradition of a Scottish history of ideas that has been largely neglected in contemporary critical writing, Gavin Miller re-opens contact between this highly individualistic artist and those Scottish and European philosophers and psychologists who helped shape his literary vision of personal and national identity. Scottish social anthropology and psychiatry (including the work of W. Robertson Smith, J.G. Frazer and R.D. Laing) can be seen as formative influences on Gray’s anti-essentialist vision of Scotland as a mosaic of communities, and of our social need for recognition, acknowledgement and the common life. Contents:AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter One: Lanark, The White Goddess, and “spiritual communion”Chapter Two: The divided self – Alasdair Gray and R.D. LaingChapter Three: Reading and timeConclusion: How “post-” is Gray?Bibliography, Index ... Read more

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Chapters: Clive Barker, John Cleland, Alasdair Gray, Molly Parkin, Yolanda Celbridge, James Havoc, Wendy Swanscombe, Thom Wolf, Peter Birch, Cat Scarlett, Wendy Wootton. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 48. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Clive Barker (born 5 October 1952) is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer. He has since written many novels and other works, and his fiction has been adapted into motion pictures, notably the Hellraiser series. Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. Barker lives in Los Angeles, California. In 2003, Clive Barker received The Davidson/Valentini Award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. This award is presented "to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for any of those communities". While Barker is critical of organized religion, he has stated that he is a believer in both God and the afterlife, and that the Bible influences his work. Clive Barker had said, "I want to be remembered as an imaginer, someone who used his imagination as a way to journey beyond the limits of self, beyond the limits of flesh and blood, beyond the limits of even perhaps life itself, in order to discover some sense of order in what appears to be ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=7573 ... Read more