Lanark: a life in 4 books (75 page)

THOMAS, DYLAN

Chap. 29, para 5. Contains small Implag and Difplag from the prose poem “The Map of Love.” Chap. 42, para. 5. Lanark’s words when urinating are a distorted Implag of the poem “Said the Old Ramrod.”

TOTUOLA, AMOS

Books 3 and 4. These owe much to
The Palm Wine Drinkard
, another story whose hero’s quest brings him among dead or supernatural beings living in the same plane as the earthly. (
See also
kafka.)

TURNER, BILL PRICE

Chap. 46, para. 1. “The sliding architecture of the waves” is from
Rudiment of an Eye
.

URE, JOAN

Chap. 48, para. 8. The batman’s wife is singing her own version of the song in the review
Something may come of it:
“Nothing to sing about/getting along/ very pedestrianly./People in aeroplanes/singing their song/ continue to fly over me./Something they’ve got that I’ve not?/ Something I’ve got that they’ve not?/Nothing to sing about./ Nothing to sing about.”

VONNEGUT, KURT

Chap. 43, Monboddo’s speech. The description of the earth as a “moist blue-green ball” is from the novel
Breakfast of Champions
.

WADDEL, REVEREND P. HATELY

Chap. 37, para. 4. The overheard prayer is from Rev. Waddel’s lowland Scottish translation of Psalm 23.

WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE

The institute described in Books 3 and 4 is a combination of any large hospital and any large university with the London Underground and the BBC Television Centre, but the overall scheme is stolen from 21st-century London in
The Sleeper Awakes
and from the Selenite sublunar kingdom in
The First Men on the Moon
. In the light of this fact, the “conjuror’s” remark about H. G. Wells in the Epilogue seems a squid-like discharge of vile ink for the purpose of obscuring the critical vision. See footnote 5.

WOLFE, TOM

Chap. 41, para. 6. The hysterical games-slang in this section is an Implag from the introduction to an anthology,
The New Journalism
.

XENOPHON

Chaps. 45, 46, 47, 48, 49. The mock-military excursion throughout these is an extended Difplag of the
Anabasis
.

YOUNGHUSBAND, COL. STUKELY

Chap 49, para. 49. “Down the crater of Vesuvius in a tramcar” is a remark attributed to General Douglas Haig in
Quips from the Trenches
.

ZOROASTER

Chap. 50, paras 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31 are all spicy bits culled from Sybilene Greek apocrypha edited by Hermip-pus and translated by Friedrich Nietzsche, but the flowery glade of Sibma thick with vines and Eleale to the as-phaltic pool; the sun, wind and flashing foam; the triumph of Galatea and her wedding with Grant; the collapse of the Coc-qigrues; the laughing surrender of God; the bloom of the bright grey thistle; the building of Nephelococugia; the larks, lutes, cellos, violets and vials of genial wrath; the free waterbuses on the Clyde; the happiness and good work of Andrew; the return of Coulter, coming of McAlpin and resurrection of Aiken Drummond; the Apotheosis and Coronation of the Virgin AmyAnnieMoraTracy Katrina Veronica Margaret Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Inge Marian Beth Liz Betty Daniele Angel TinaJanetKate; the final descent to healthy commonplace and finding a silk smooth you inside that husk are Blockplags, Im-plags, Difplags of
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
translated into dear images and sublime distances by william Blake and William Turner for the benefit of all makers of useful and lovely things.

1
. To have an objection anticipated is no reason for failing to raise it.

2
. Each of the four authors mentioned above began a large work
in medias
res
, but none of them numbered their divisions out of logical sequence.

3
. In 1973, as a result of sponsorship by the poet Edwin Morgan, the author received a grant of £300 from the Scottish Arts Council for the purpose of helping him write his book, but it was never assumed that he would use the money to seek out exotic local colour.

4
. This is a false antithesis. Printed paper has an atomic structure like anything else. “Words” would have been a better term than “print,” being less definably concrete.

5
. “
Von hinten anzusehen—Die Racker sind doch
gar zu appetitlich
” is little more than a line. Louis MacNeice omits it from his translation as inessential because it reduces the devil’s dignity. The author’s amazing virulence against Goethe is perhaps a smokescreen to distract attention from what he owes him.
See
GOETHE and WELLS in the Index of Plagiarisms.

6
. The index proves that
Lanark
is erected upon an infantile foundation of Victorian nursery tales, though the final shape derives from English language fiction printed between the 40’s and 60’s of the present century. The hero’s biography after death occurs in Wyndham-Lewis’s trilogy
The Human Age
, Flann O’Brien’s
The
Third Policeman
and Golding’s
Pincher Martin
. Modern afterworlds are always infernos, never paradisos, presumably because the modern secular imagination is more capable of debasement than exaltation. In almost every chapter of the book there is a dialogue between the hero (Thaw or Lanark) and a social superior (parent, more experienced friend or prospective employer) about morality, society or art. This is mainly a device to let a self-educated Scot (to whom “the dominie” is the highest form of social life) tell the world what he thinks of it; but the glum flavour of these episodes recalls three books by disappointed socialists which appeared after the second world war and centred upon what I will call dialogue under threat:
Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler,
1984
by George Orwell, and
Barbary Shore
by Norman Mailer. Having said this, one is compelled to ask why the “conjuror” introduces an apology for his work with a tedious and brief history of world literature, as though summarizing a great tradition which culminates in himself! Of the eleven great epics mentioned, only one has influenced Lanark. Monboddo’s speech in the last part of Lanark is a dreary parody of the Archangel Michael’s history lecture in the last book of Paradise Lost and fails for the same reason. A property is not always valuable because it is stolen from a rich man. And for this single device thieved (without acknowledgement) from Milton we find a confrontation of fictional character by fictional author from Flann O’Brien; a hero, ignorant of his past, in a subfuse modern Hell, also from Flann O’Brien; and, from T. S. Eliot, Nabokov and Flann O’Brien, a parade of irrelevant erudition through grotesquely inflated footnotes.

7
. This remark is too ludicrous to require comment here.

8
. But the fact remains that the plots of the Thaw and Lanark sections are independent of each other and cemented by typographical contrivances rather than formal necessity. A possible explanation is that the author thinks a heavy book will make a bigger splash than two light ones.

9
. In this context to butter up means to flatter. The expression is based upon the pathetic fallacy that because bread tastes sweeter when it is buttered, bread enjoys being buttered.

10
. The president in question was Felix Fauré, who died in 1909 upon the conservatory sofa, not office sofa, of the Elysée Palace.

11
. The township of Wumbijee is in southern Queensland, not new South Wales, and even at the present moment in time (1976) is too small to support a local dentist. In 1909 it did not exist. The laughing gas incident is therefore probably apocryphal but, even if true, gives a facetious slant to a serious statement of principle. It will leave the readers (whom the author pretends to cherish) uncertain of what to think about his work as a whole.

12
. Had Lanark’s cultural equipment been wider, he would have seen that this conclusion owed more to
Moby Dick
than to science fiction, and more to Lawrence’s essay on
Moby Dick
than to either.

13
. As this “Epilogue” has performed the office of an introduction to the work as a whole (the so-called “Prologue” being no prologue at all, but a separate short story), it is saddening to find the “conjuror” omitting the courtesies appropriate to such an addendum. Mrs. Florence Allan typed and retyped his manuscripts, and often waited many months without payment and without complaining. Professor Andrew Sykes gave him free access to copying equipment and secretarial help. He received from James Kelman critical advice which enabled him to make smoother prose of the crucial first chapter. Charles Wild, Peter Chiene, Jim Hutcheson, Stephanie Wolf Murray engaged in extensive lexical activity to ensure that the resulting volume had a surface Consistency. And what of the compositors employed by Kingsport Press of Kingsport, Tennessee, to typeset this bloody book? Yet these are only a few out of thousands whose help has not been acknowledged and whose names have not been mentioned.

CHAPTER 41.

Climax

He looked down, startled, at Libby, who lay curled with her legs under her in the angle between wall and carpet looking unconscious. She was a gracefully plump, dark-haired girl. Her skirt was shorter and blouse silkier than he remembered, and her sulky slumbering face looked far more childish than the clothes. She opened her eyes saying “What?” and sat up and glanced at her wristwatch. Without blame she said, “You’ve been hours in there. Hours and hours. We’ve missed the opera.”

She held out a hand and he helped her up. She said, “Did he feed you?”

“He did. Now I would like to speak to Wilkins.”

“Wilkins?”

“Or Monboddo. On second thought, I would prefer to see Monboddo. Is that possible?”

She stared at him and said, “Do you never relax? Don’t you ever enjoy yourself?”

“I did not come here to relax.”

“Sorry I asked.”

She walked down the corridor. He followed, saying, “Listen, if I’m being rude I apologize, but I’m very worried just now. And anyway, I’ve always been bad at enjoying myself.”

“Poor old you.”

“I’m not complaining,” said Lanark defensively. “Some very nice things have happened to me, even so.”

“When, for instance?”

Lanark remembered when Sandy was born. He knew he must have been happy then or he wouldn’t have rung the cathedral bell, but he couldn’t remember what happiness felt like. His past suddenly seemed a very large, very dreary place. He said tiredly, “Not long ago.”

In the hall beside the lift doors she halted, faced him and said firmly, “I don’t know where Monboddo and Wilkins are just now. I expect they’ll drop in later when the party starts, so I’ll give you some advice. Play it gelid. I see you’ve got it bad, Dad, but the hard sell is no go on day one when everybody’s casing each other. The real hot lobbyists start cashing their therms halfway through countdown on day two. And there’s something else I’d like to tell you. The Provan executive pays my salary whether I stay with you or not. If you want me to vanish say ‘vanish’ and I’ll vanish. Or else come for a quiet drink with me and talk about
anything
but this general bloody awful assembly. Even their language gives me the poxy nungs.”

Lanark stared at her, seeing how attractive she was. The sight was a great pain. He knew that if she let him kiss her petulant mouth he would feel no warmth or excitement. He looked inside himself and found only a hungry ungenerous cold, a pained emptiness which could neither give nor take. He thought, ‘I am mostly a dead man. How did this happen?’ He muttered, “Please don’t vanish.”

She took his arm and led him toward the gallery saying slyly, “I bet I know one thing you enjoy.”

“What?”

“Bet you enjoy being famous.”

“I’m not.”

“Modest, eh?”

“No, but I’m not famous either.”

“Think I’d have waited all these hours outside Nastler’s door if you’d been an ordinary delegate?”

Lanark was too confused to answer. He pointed to a silent crowd of black-suited security men on each side of the glass door and said, “What are they doing here?”

“They’re staying outside to make the party less spooky.”

Though nearly empty the gallery throbbed with light rhythmical music. In the night sky outside the window the pink-tipped petals of several great chrysanthemums were spreading out from golden centres among the stars and dipping down toward the floodlit stadium where tiny figures thronged the terraces and crowded upon dance floors, one at each end of the central field. The chrysanthemums faded and a scarlet spark shot through them, drawing a long tail of white and green dazzling feathers. The floor along the window was furnished with piles of huge coloured cushions. The floor above that had a twelve-man orchestra at one end, though at present the only player was a clarinettist blowing a humorous little tune and a drummer softly stroking the cymbals with wire brushes. The floor above that had four well-laden buffets along it, and the top floor had many empty little chairs and tables, and a bar at each end, and four girls sitting on stools by one of the bars. Libby led Lanark over to them and said, “Martha, Solveig, Joy and the other Joy, this is you-know-who from Unthank.”