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1982, Janine
1982, Janine is a liberal novel of the most satisfying kind. Set over the course of one night inside the head of Jock McLeish, an aging, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations, as he tipples in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel, it makes an unanswerable case that republicanism is a state of absolute spiritual bankruptcy. For McLeish, being a Republican is something he has to cure himself of, every bit as much as his alcoholism and his Sado-Masochistic fantasizing, if he is to become a human being again.
1982, Janine explores themes of male need and inadequacy through the lonely, darkly comic, alcohol-fueled fantasies of its protagonist. An unforgettably challenging book about power and powerlessness, men and women, masters and servants, small countries and big countries, Alasdair Gray's exploration of the politics of pornography has lost none of its power to shock.
1982, Janine explores themes of male need and inadequacy through the lonely, darkly comic, alcohol-fueled fantasies of its protagonist. An unforgettably challenging book about power and powerlessness, men and women, masters and servants, small countries and big countries, Alasdair Gray's exploration of the politics of pornography has lost none of its power to shock.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Alasdair Gray
88 books806 followersAlasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.
His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced it. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Chris Kelso and Iain Banks. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979, and professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities from 2001 to 2003.
Gray was a civic nationalist and a republican, and wrote supporting socialism and Scottish independence. He popularised the epigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" (taken from a poem by Canadian poet Dennis Leigh) which was engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004. He lived almost all his life in Glasgow, married twice, and had one son. On his death The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".
He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.
His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced it. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Chris Kelso and Iain Banks. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979, and professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities from 2001 to 2003.
Gray was a civic nationalist and a republican, and wrote supporting socialism and Scottish independence. He popularised the epigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" (taken from a poem by Canadian poet Dennis Leigh) which was engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004. He lived almost all his life in Glasgow, married twice, and had one son. On his death The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".
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May 4, 2021
When you’re down and out and there is no way to go any lower just establish a theater in your head and start performing pornographic plays on the stage of your mind… And if you’re quite talented then probably you’ll manage to come close to 1982, Janine but never close enough though.
Alasdair Gray is a very inventive and lavish raconteur so the novel is one of those books where behind the seemingly obscene façade the outcrops and goldmines of profound thinking about the human nature are cached.
When you’re despondent, frustrated and desperate only the rich imagination may save you.
Janine, barefoot, is slightly smaller than most women but in her shoes she is slightly taller than most men and can be read sexually from a great distance: slender waist, knees and wrists, plump hips and shoulders, big etcetera and dark, copious hair expensively disarranged. She is clever in a fragmentary way, bad at judging people but good at judging her effect on them. With make-up she can look like almost any female stereotype from the dumb adolescent to the cool aristocrat. Just now she looks like Jane Russell in a forties film, The Outlaw: eyes dark and accusing, lips heavy and sullen.
Alasdair Gray is a very inventive and lavish raconteur so the novel is one of those books where behind the seemingly obscene façade the outcrops and goldmines of profound thinking about the human nature are cached.
Modern technology cannot solve the world’s problems because in all societies technology is used to accumulate wealth, not spread it. The banking nations approve of revolts in the communist bloc, the communists want revolution in the capitalist bloc, but eastern communists grasp and increase their social privileges as much as our own Sunday-supplement-swallowing middle class…
When you’re despondent, frustrated and desperate only the rich imagination may save you.
December 29, 2019
Revived review to mark the passing of the great Alasdair Gray. He wrote & illustrated his own books and each was as great as the other. If a guy ever did it his way, it wasn't Frank Sinatra, it was Alasdair Gray. Lanark is one of the great novels of the last century. It nearly took me a century to read it, for some reason, but it was and still is very memorable. He was 85, he had a grand life.
*******
Original scurrilous ramblings posing as a review :
The internet keeps blasting adverts at me asking if I want bigger and thicker pens. They can sell me stuff to make all my pens much bigger and thicker and make them all stand up for longer. They're really behind the times even if they are the internet. I hardly use pens anymore, sad to say, so no, I don't need bigger thicker pens.
And neither did Alasdair Gray when he splurged forth this rude novel, the Scottish equivalent of Martin Amis' Money. In both books middle aged unattractive guys get to discuss the nether parts of much younger ladies and there is quite a bit about rifling through drawers full of lingerie. When you're a top literary novelist this stuff is not sleazy piggery, it's edgy and challenging. I hope that's clear.
I did think 1982 Janine was a medium sized pile of filthy fun when I read it some time ago. Whether the jokes have now worn thinner than the much-fingered garments in the girlfriends' dressing tables is a matter for a more recent reader.
In general though, Alasdair Gray is a hoot and will provide you with much eye-bulging entertainment. Lanark is the bigger thicker one, if that matters to you. That must have used up a fair few pens.
*******
Original scurrilous ramblings posing as a review :
The internet keeps blasting adverts at me asking if I want bigger and thicker pens. They can sell me stuff to make all my pens much bigger and thicker and make them all stand up for longer. They're really behind the times even if they are the internet. I hardly use pens anymore, sad to say, so no, I don't need bigger thicker pens.
And neither did Alasdair Gray when he splurged forth this rude novel, the Scottish equivalent of Martin Amis' Money. In both books middle aged unattractive guys get to discuss the nether parts of much younger ladies and there is quite a bit about rifling through drawers full of lingerie. When you're a top literary novelist this stuff is not sleazy piggery, it's edgy and challenging. I hope that's clear.
I did think 1982 Janine was a medium sized pile of filthy fun when I read it some time ago. Whether the jokes have now worn thinner than the much-fingered garments in the girlfriends' dressing tables is a matter for a more recent reader.
In general though, Alasdair Gray is a hoot and will provide you with much eye-bulging entertainment. Lanark is the bigger thicker one, if that matters to you. That must have used up a fair few pens.
December 28, 2012
Note: This is a review from March 18th 2007. Paul Bryant approved.
Anyone For Glum Scottish Fiction?
Following up the most important Scottish novel since Walter Scott published Waverley in 1814 must have been rather arduous for obsessive, self-taught polymath Alasdair Gray. Then again, arduous is more or less the status quo for the bruiser of contemporary Scottish fiction.
A few facts for those unfamiliar with Gray – born in Glasgow in 1934, the man is a walking encyclopaedia of literature who embroiders elements of pretty much every important writer who has ever put quill pen to paper over the last 700 years. His first novel, the sprawling 560 page epic Lanark: A Life In Four Books took half of his life to complete, and was a work of quite unbelievable obsession and meticulous attention to detail. To apply the term “postmodern” to this work would be just as offensive as kicking him square in the gonads or comparing him to JRR Tolkien. It was a ridiculously self-indulgent tome of intertextual, metatextual, hypertextual science fiction and autobiography that provided a quite staggering portal into his own (rather one-track) mind. Gray is an author who coats his novel in so many literary references it is arguable that one is unable to fathom exactly where the influences end and he begins. This may well be the case if he was not sickeningly prolific in his own right. Fortunately for your sake—he is. Gray takes his lifelong obsession with fiction and ingenuously spindles his own fascinating stories around their influence so that they enhance the work, rather than consume it.
1982, Janine was published in 1984, bizarrely enough, three years after Lanark was released to almost universal acclaim. Given the plaudits awarded to him thereafter (many critics hailing him the most important writer since DH Lawrence or James Joyce) the task of following such a masterwork does seem something of a dilemma. Whereas his previous book was a exceptional tale of human redemption and love in the face of a potentially Godless universe, told in his inimically dark and world-weary manner, this text carries less of the humanistic clout over from Lanark, offering instead a rather discombobulating character study of alcoholic fantasist Jock McLeish.
We are sent crashing into the warped mindset McLeish as he lies on his bed tippling alcohol into his system in some dingy hotel room in the lowlands of Scotland. We are then swiftly introduced to the many characters in his elaborate pornographic fantasies, of which he is principal scriptwriter, director and star. The titular Janine is his most important of his starlets, and he is joined in turn by Superb (charmingly short for Super B*tch) Helga and Big Momma. The novel plunges its reader immediately into a progression of sub-erotic fantasy sequences, in which there is very little intercourse but mere suggestion of either action or intention. Gray allows his protagonist to direct these sequences to meet his own selfish sexual needs and makes use of a restrained stream-of-consciousness style, repeating several words to convey either the effect of arousal or just the state of delirium from within this (hideous) mind we are ensconced in. His favourite turn of phrase would appear to be the mantra-like “astride, astride, astride.”
It is obvious from all the intricate psychological detail that McLeish has been fantasising since he was a schoolboy, and has shared a lengthier relationship with his imagined paramours than genuine women. This includes his wife, Helen, who is introduced to little fanfare later on as a rather dowdy doormat. Such a remiss attitude to the opposite sex would seem abhorrent, if there were not some obvious deep-seated reason behind all his indulgence and rampant sexism. As he explains on page 5: “My problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is. I want revenge on a woman who I know is not real. I know several real woman, and if they got near my lovely, punishable Janine they would shame me into rescuing her.”
What is also obvious, if not merely from this quote, is that Jock McLeish has turned out a self-obsessed, egocentric and unsympathetic chauvinist. This becomes rather clear within the first few pages, in fact, bursting as they are with candidly descriptive language about the act of sex itself. The fantasies provide a portal into his seedy little mindset and his habitual need to demean and use women merely as a repository for his own hate-filled catharses. We later discover that he has suffered terribly at the hands of his surrogate father and disciplinarian teacher Mad Hislop, and is transferring all his own inner torment directly onto women as a result of humiliation, beating and degradation endured as a schoolboy.
The S&M of his fantasies is therefore little more than a series of disturbing, alcohol-fuelled flashbacks of these beatings, and with each fantasy he is trapped further in this desperately sad spiral of self-denial and extreme psychological cauterisation, from which there seems no escape. 1982, Janine therefore opens itself up as a darkly fascinating character study of a seemingly irredeemable man, at times pathetic, at times excruciatingly human and at times an insightfully intelligent being unwilling to exorcise the demons of his past by acknowledging the redeeming potential of love from the opposite sex.
Not just content with creating this dark, controversial character study, Gray equips his anti-hero with a whole arsenal of political angst and nationalistic armament and uses McLeish as a conduit for his own views on the state of the nation circa 1982 (hence the first part of the title). Written at the beginning of the 1980s, the book is appropriately ominous and depicts Scotland as a nation savaged by unemployment, low self-esteem and general self-negation all around. The political hectoring of Gray has always been, in my opinion, the least appealing facet of his work, merely since I have less political interest on the whole, but it also seems very blatantly signposted amid the rest of the prose. He is also obsessed with Scottish identity, and conjures up an appropriately awkward novelette in the third half when the narrative transfers from Glasgow to Edinburgh around the time of the festival.
McLeish, a self-educated middle-class Scot devoid of formal qualifications (like Gray) who earlier proclaimed “Scotland is a poor little country, always has been, always will be” finds himself tossed into a repertory company of Oxbridge actors as a lighting technician. In this section, there is such a prickly obsession with accents, pretence, elitism and Scottish identity that it is very difficult to pay attention to the actual plot, which is about the staging of a play, McGrotty and Ludmilla. Gray later wrote a novel around this premise, published in 1990 to less acclaim. This section of the book is less compelling if merely because his secondary characters are less interesting or are identified only by their accent or social position in order to highlight the state of Scotland in relation to both middle-class England and its broader cultural significance/ influence. Gray is frustrated about the perception of Scotland as being fundamentally poor and badly educated, and as a Scottish person I can relate to the silliness or pretence of such pointless shame. It seems less relevant now, however, although it paints an unpleasant portrait of the past.
Despite all its richness and complexity, at times 1982, Janine does feel conspicuously plotless or somewhat meandering. Gray introduces some ludicrous typeface techniques to keep the novel experimental and audacious, the most striking of which includes constructing a Y-chromosome around some bilious, vaginal assemblage of upside-down, italicised fonts which read from left-to-right-to-left like some ejaculatory, feverish jabberwocky. This is used, presumably, to show the mindset of McLeish in a state of delirium tremens or indeed just at the point of climax. Or both. Despite his intentions here, this is incredibly ambitious and the sort of technique that makes Gray such an interesting writer and indeed visual artist. Primarily a mural painter, he treats each of his books like a work of art, and this one is no exception. Such a technique as this is a painterly one which is just as effective as the staggering outflow of poetic expression found in something like Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. Even if the story or protagonist fails to grab you, the remarkable tapestry of his prose is in itself breathtaking and he is at his zenith in 1982, Janine.
At its core, 1982, Janine is a deeply allegorical text which, although dated, should take the reader on a disarmingly pleasant jaunt through the pathways of a complex, tortured mind and teach him universal lessons about politics, the preciousness of life and the redemption we must seek in others. Despite being perhaps 50 pages overlong, Gray merely confirmed and strengthened his talent with this stark and powerful work which he cites as the favourite of all his completed novels. This is not, of course—the prize for this goes to the fabulous Poor Things from 1992.
The new 2003 Canongate Edition features an introduction from other contemporary giant Will Self, who names this as one of his all-time favourite books. A revelation which may or may not affect your decision to seek it out. Highly recommended for those unfamiliar with Gray and those who are. Or both.
Anyone For Glum Scottish Fiction?
Following up the most important Scottish novel since Walter Scott published Waverley in 1814 must have been rather arduous for obsessive, self-taught polymath Alasdair Gray. Then again, arduous is more or less the status quo for the bruiser of contemporary Scottish fiction.
A few facts for those unfamiliar with Gray – born in Glasgow in 1934, the man is a walking encyclopaedia of literature who embroiders elements of pretty much every important writer who has ever put quill pen to paper over the last 700 years. His first novel, the sprawling 560 page epic Lanark: A Life In Four Books took half of his life to complete, and was a work of quite unbelievable obsession and meticulous attention to detail. To apply the term “postmodern” to this work would be just as offensive as kicking him square in the gonads or comparing him to JRR Tolkien. It was a ridiculously self-indulgent tome of intertextual, metatextual, hypertextual science fiction and autobiography that provided a quite staggering portal into his own (rather one-track) mind. Gray is an author who coats his novel in so many literary references it is arguable that one is unable to fathom exactly where the influences end and he begins. This may well be the case if he was not sickeningly prolific in his own right. Fortunately for your sake—he is. Gray takes his lifelong obsession with fiction and ingenuously spindles his own fascinating stories around their influence so that they enhance the work, rather than consume it.
1982, Janine was published in 1984, bizarrely enough, three years after Lanark was released to almost universal acclaim. Given the plaudits awarded to him thereafter (many critics hailing him the most important writer since DH Lawrence or James Joyce) the task of following such a masterwork does seem something of a dilemma. Whereas his previous book was a exceptional tale of human redemption and love in the face of a potentially Godless universe, told in his inimically dark and world-weary manner, this text carries less of the humanistic clout over from Lanark, offering instead a rather discombobulating character study of alcoholic fantasist Jock McLeish.
We are sent crashing into the warped mindset McLeish as he lies on his bed tippling alcohol into his system in some dingy hotel room in the lowlands of Scotland. We are then swiftly introduced to the many characters in his elaborate pornographic fantasies, of which he is principal scriptwriter, director and star. The titular Janine is his most important of his starlets, and he is joined in turn by Superb (charmingly short for Super B*tch) Helga and Big Momma. The novel plunges its reader immediately into a progression of sub-erotic fantasy sequences, in which there is very little intercourse but mere suggestion of either action or intention. Gray allows his protagonist to direct these sequences to meet his own selfish sexual needs and makes use of a restrained stream-of-consciousness style, repeating several words to convey either the effect of arousal or just the state of delirium from within this (hideous) mind we are ensconced in. His favourite turn of phrase would appear to be the mantra-like “astride, astride, astride.”
It is obvious from all the intricate psychological detail that McLeish has been fantasising since he was a schoolboy, and has shared a lengthier relationship with his imagined paramours than genuine women. This includes his wife, Helen, who is introduced to little fanfare later on as a rather dowdy doormat. Such a remiss attitude to the opposite sex would seem abhorrent, if there were not some obvious deep-seated reason behind all his indulgence and rampant sexism. As he explains on page 5: “My problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is. I want revenge on a woman who I know is not real. I know several real woman, and if they got near my lovely, punishable Janine they would shame me into rescuing her.”
What is also obvious, if not merely from this quote, is that Jock McLeish has turned out a self-obsessed, egocentric and unsympathetic chauvinist. This becomes rather clear within the first few pages, in fact, bursting as they are with candidly descriptive language about the act of sex itself. The fantasies provide a portal into his seedy little mindset and his habitual need to demean and use women merely as a repository for his own hate-filled catharses. We later discover that he has suffered terribly at the hands of his surrogate father and disciplinarian teacher Mad Hislop, and is transferring all his own inner torment directly onto women as a result of humiliation, beating and degradation endured as a schoolboy.
The S&M of his fantasies is therefore little more than a series of disturbing, alcohol-fuelled flashbacks of these beatings, and with each fantasy he is trapped further in this desperately sad spiral of self-denial and extreme psychological cauterisation, from which there seems no escape. 1982, Janine therefore opens itself up as a darkly fascinating character study of a seemingly irredeemable man, at times pathetic, at times excruciatingly human and at times an insightfully intelligent being unwilling to exorcise the demons of his past by acknowledging the redeeming potential of love from the opposite sex.
Not just content with creating this dark, controversial character study, Gray equips his anti-hero with a whole arsenal of political angst and nationalistic armament and uses McLeish as a conduit for his own views on the state of the nation circa 1982 (hence the first part of the title). Written at the beginning of the 1980s, the book is appropriately ominous and depicts Scotland as a nation savaged by unemployment, low self-esteem and general self-negation all around. The political hectoring of Gray has always been, in my opinion, the least appealing facet of his work, merely since I have less political interest on the whole, but it also seems very blatantly signposted amid the rest of the prose. He is also obsessed with Scottish identity, and conjures up an appropriately awkward novelette in the third half when the narrative transfers from Glasgow to Edinburgh around the time of the festival.
McLeish, a self-educated middle-class Scot devoid of formal qualifications (like Gray) who earlier proclaimed “Scotland is a poor little country, always has been, always will be” finds himself tossed into a repertory company of Oxbridge actors as a lighting technician. In this section, there is such a prickly obsession with accents, pretence, elitism and Scottish identity that it is very difficult to pay attention to the actual plot, which is about the staging of a play, McGrotty and Ludmilla. Gray later wrote a novel around this premise, published in 1990 to less acclaim. This section of the book is less compelling if merely because his secondary characters are less interesting or are identified only by their accent or social position in order to highlight the state of Scotland in relation to both middle-class England and its broader cultural significance/ influence. Gray is frustrated about the perception of Scotland as being fundamentally poor and badly educated, and as a Scottish person I can relate to the silliness or pretence of such pointless shame. It seems less relevant now, however, although it paints an unpleasant portrait of the past.
Despite all its richness and complexity, at times 1982, Janine does feel conspicuously plotless or somewhat meandering. Gray introduces some ludicrous typeface techniques to keep the novel experimental and audacious, the most striking of which includes constructing a Y-chromosome around some bilious, vaginal assemblage of upside-down, italicised fonts which read from left-to-right-to-left like some ejaculatory, feverish jabberwocky. This is used, presumably, to show the mindset of McLeish in a state of delirium tremens or indeed just at the point of climax. Or both. Despite his intentions here, this is incredibly ambitious and the sort of technique that makes Gray such an interesting writer and indeed visual artist. Primarily a mural painter, he treats each of his books like a work of art, and this one is no exception. Such a technique as this is a painterly one which is just as effective as the staggering outflow of poetic expression found in something like Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. Even if the story or protagonist fails to grab you, the remarkable tapestry of his prose is in itself breathtaking and he is at his zenith in 1982, Janine.
At its core, 1982, Janine is a deeply allegorical text which, although dated, should take the reader on a disarmingly pleasant jaunt through the pathways of a complex, tortured mind and teach him universal lessons about politics, the preciousness of life and the redemption we must seek in others. Despite being perhaps 50 pages overlong, Gray merely confirmed and strengthened his talent with this stark and powerful work which he cites as the favourite of all his completed novels. This is not, of course—the prize for this goes to the fabulous Poor Things from 1992.
The new 2003 Canongate Edition features an introduction from other contemporary giant Will Self, who names this as one of his all-time favourite books. A revelation which may or may not affect your decision to seek it out. Highly recommended for those unfamiliar with Gray and those who are. Or both.
August 26, 2007
Some of my most meaningful reading experiences have been the completely unexpected ones--not the comfort of reading a book from a favorite writer, but the shock of discovering something completely new, the thrill of grabbing a book that, for example, has been sitting on the backseat of my car for four months and for some unknown reason is the thing I pick up as I'm heading into a restaurant I don't even like for a lonely Saturday lunch.
Four months ago, I'd stumbled upon an interview with Alasdair Gray and was intrigued by what he said and how he said it. (On writing: "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.") I grabbed one of the library's very few (although as the English librarian I think I will have to address this via the miracle of COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT) titles by Gray from the stacks, really just choosing 1982, Janine at random.
And then today, I spent the afternoon with a strange, intense book that somehow manages to be several books at once. It's a book about a man spending a night drinking alone in a hotel room; it's a book about power and sex and fantasy and powerlessness (so of course it's also about politics and money); it's experimental and mean and big-hearted, too.
It is a deeply weird book, in all the best possible ways.
In fact, what the hell, I'll just say it: I think it may be the Scottish Ulysses.
Four months ago, I'd stumbled upon an interview with Alasdair Gray and was intrigued by what he said and how he said it. (On writing: "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.") I grabbed one of the library's very few (although as the English librarian I think I will have to address this via the miracle of COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT) titles by Gray from the stacks, really just choosing 1982, Janine at random.
And then today, I spent the afternoon with a strange, intense book that somehow manages to be several books at once. It's a book about a man spending a night drinking alone in a hotel room; it's a book about power and sex and fantasy and powerlessness (so of course it's also about politics and money); it's experimental and mean and big-hearted, too.
It is a deeply weird book, in all the best possible ways.
In fact, what the hell, I'll just say it: I think it may be the Scottish Ulysses.
July 19, 2011
I don't know where to begin. So much has been said already about 1982 Janine. The book doesn't need my apologetics—odds are, it'll just make you sad, unhappy or angry anyway. You could do a lot worse than to just read Will Self's Introduction to this edition, before proceeding on to the thing itself. But I want to share my impressions, even so.
1982 Janine has always struck me as sui generis, despite the author's own protestations and list of antecedents in the Epilogue—one of those rare and amazing works of art that redefines and helps extend its own genre, just as (for example) La cité des enfants perdus ("The City of Lost Children") did for cinema (for me, at least). I get more out of it upon each rereading.
What happens in the book is simple enough. John "Jock" McLeish, a lonely, late-middle-aged ("almost fiforget that"), alcoholic security system installer in a hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drinks whisky and tries to masturbate as he has done on so many similar nights before. But for some reason (a reason that becomes clear later), this time the fantasies he calls to mind are interrupted by memories, and by the intrusive, uninvited ghosts of his own bleak future.
Despite its numerous sexually explicit passages, this is not a pornographic novel... if anything, it's anti-porn. Jock McLeish is still, in spite of his frequent and sustained efforts, far too intelligent to be able to sink unthinking into drunken imagining—his own fervid mind continually second-guesses his elaborate scene-setting, short-circuiting his release and diverting him into unwanted introspection. The phrase is "long, dark night of the soul," and McLeish experiences it in full measure.
Jock's frustration and longing, his regret—these are the most vivid things about 1982 Janine. Never mind the unbuttoned skirts, the trembling breasts... those are, we come to see, mostly window-dressing, essential for getting us into Jock's head, but not by any means the point of the book. According to Will Self's introduction, the point may be about Scotland herself, her role as a country exploited by the wealthier parts of the United Kingdom. I'm not entirely sure that's true, although there is plenty of commentary about Scottish and U.K. politics in 1982 Janine. Jock is a Tory, rebelling against his father's trade unionism, and it's possible to find out a lot about what Alasdair Gray himself thinks in the process of reading about Jock's opinions. As Gray himself notes in his "Epilogue for the Discerning Critic" (a feature of the original edition as well as this reprint), "Though John McLeish is an invention of mine I disagree with him."
You'll disagree with Jock as well, pretty much all the time. That's not what this book is about. It's not about supplying a sympathetic hero for you to displace yourself into. If there are parts of Jock to admire, they're few and far between, and mostly in his past. But 1982 Janine is, it truly is, a brilliant and sustained venture into the darkness of an ordinary man's extraordinary imaginings, and the world would be poorer without it.
1982 Janine has always struck me as sui generis, despite the author's own protestations and list of antecedents in the Epilogue—one of those rare and amazing works of art that redefines and helps extend its own genre, just as (for example) La cité des enfants perdus ("The City of Lost Children") did for cinema (for me, at least). I get more out of it upon each rereading.
What happens in the book is simple enough. John "Jock" McLeish, a lonely, late-middle-aged ("almost fiforget that"), alcoholic security system installer in a hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drinks whisky and tries to masturbate as he has done on so many similar nights before. But for some reason (a reason that becomes clear later), this time the fantasies he calls to mind are interrupted by memories, and by the intrusive, uninvited ghosts of his own bleak future.
Despite its numerous sexually explicit passages, this is not a pornographic novel... if anything, it's anti-porn. Jock McLeish is still, in spite of his frequent and sustained efforts, far too intelligent to be able to sink unthinking into drunken imagining—his own fervid mind continually second-guesses his elaborate scene-setting, short-circuiting his release and diverting him into unwanted introspection. The phrase is "long, dark night of the soul," and McLeish experiences it in full measure.
Jock's frustration and longing, his regret—these are the most vivid things about 1982 Janine. Never mind the unbuttoned skirts, the trembling breasts... those are, we come to see, mostly window-dressing, essential for getting us into Jock's head, but not by any means the point of the book. According to Will Self's introduction, the point may be about Scotland herself, her role as a country exploited by the wealthier parts of the United Kingdom. I'm not entirely sure that's true, although there is plenty of commentary about Scottish and U.K. politics in 1982 Janine. Jock is a Tory, rebelling against his father's trade unionism, and it's possible to find out a lot about what Alasdair Gray himself thinks in the process of reading about Jock's opinions. As Gray himself notes in his "Epilogue for the Discerning Critic" (a feature of the original edition as well as this reprint), "Though John McLeish is an invention of mine I disagree with him."
You'll disagree with Jock as well, pretty much all the time. That's not what this book is about. It's not about supplying a sympathetic hero for you to displace yourself into. If there are parts of Jock to admire, they're few and far between, and mostly in his past. But 1982 Janine is, it truly is, a brilliant and sustained venture into the darkness of an ordinary man's extraordinary imaginings, and the world would be poorer without it.
September 21, 2011
This book was recommended by Will Self: an author who ‘had me at hello’, so I embarked on my first Alasdair Gray. The book does exactly what it says on the tin: erotic fantasy intermixed with philosophical ruminations and nostalgic recollections. But is it shocking? For Pauline Reage devotees, hardly. For virgins and/or Mills and Boon fans: just about maybe. Anyway, the erotic fantasies seem almost as an afterthought in this novel, despite the considerable amount of time Gray spent on constructing the intricacies. Not least because, ironically, the protagonist, try as he might, can no longer summon the muses for enough inspiration to complete his own fantasy: too many years of mundane existence have diminished his ability to even dream. This in itself is a scary thought: everyone has to settle and compromise and re-assess and re-invent as life goes on, but the thought that our dreams also get put paid to when its time to pay the piper is unbearable. As to the rest of the ruminations: I can’t help feel that this novel would appeal better to a slightly more ‘seasoned’ audience. Best for when wrung through the midlife crisis grinder and spending more time in retrospective lament than focusing on future challenges. Helps if you’re an alcoholic and disillusioned with life. Full blown depression an added bonus. Anyone in the niche above would savour this sensitive, bittersweet tribute to the dichotomy of hopelessness/hopefulness.
Why is it anyway that books get age appropriate ratings which stop at 18? One has no trouble finding ‘something’ in the 9-12 age group, young teens or whatever. Why stop there? There should be 20s, 30s, etc age related reads with additional ‘mixed’ categories. There is no way Janine1982 would appeal to the majority of 20 year olds and no way it wouldn’t to a 50 year old.
Why is it anyway that books get age appropriate ratings which stop at 18? One has no trouble finding ‘something’ in the 9-12 age group, young teens or whatever. Why stop there? There should be 20s, 30s, etc age related reads with additional ‘mixed’ categories. There is no way Janine1982 would appeal to the majority of 20 year olds and no way it wouldn’t to a 50 year old.
Read
November 9, 2022The Relation between Risky Structure and Graphical Typesetting
Gray is an experimental novelist; this was his second novel. It takes risks with form, with the reader's sympathy, with coherence, and with the capacity to suspend disbelief. Gray was also a painter and printmaker, and he made the cover and drew his own self-portrait for the jacket. The book also has some pages of graphical typography, which he says are unconsciously borrowed from "Tristram Shandy."
A. The structure of the narrative
The protagonist, John McLeish, is a middle aged alcoholic and drug addict. He has had, by his own account, a disastrous life, and he's been especially miserable with women. He's full of "self-disgust" and embarrassment. (p. 106) He's in a hotel room, thinking (and by implication writing), drinking, and popping pills. The risks begin immediately, when it seems the book is going to be a series of pornographic fantasies, designed to distract him from thinking about his miserable cowardly behavior, his pitiful obsessions, and his ineffectual life. That's risky on two levels, for two reasons:
1. As an idea for a novel, it's risky because pornographic narratives are notoriously difficult to manage. Readers might be aroused, bored, offended, or numbed, in succession, repeatedly. That was the 1970s reception of de Sade; the repetition in his novels was said to be a psychoanalytic symptom or an emblem of the endlessness of narrative in general. Here, the novelist's idea of attractive women and how they dress is especially annoying. (Gray has McLeish dismiss de Sade in a brief couple of sentence, for an irrelevant reason. What can that be except classic repression?)
So early on I began worrying for Gray, wondering if he could sustain either the pornography or the abrupt transitions from fantasies to realist descriptions of middle-class Scottish life.
2. As representation of someone's imagination, it's risky because the character, McLeish, is using these fantasies for two purposes at once: they supposedly help him to stop thinking about his actual life, but they are also masturbation fantasies—but he doesn't want to wank, because that depresses him even more, and so he keeps wanting to end the very fantasies that are sustaining him. How long, I wondered, could McLeish, in the novel, continue in that mindset? It doesn't make things easier that the two worlds are so far apart. The fantasies are lurid, full of clichés, repetitive, sexist in the most obvious ways, and the stories of McLeish's real life have all those same qualities but are opposite in affect. The pornography is relentless, optimistic, and controlling; the memories are equally relentless, but pathetic and pessimistic.
So early on I began worrying for McLeish, wondering if he could sustain... etc., and those worries remained when the pages of the book ended.
B. Notes on layout and typography
Concerning the cover: Gray has several styles; the design on the cover is a nude man in a variation of Leonardo's homo ad circulum. It's done in the kind of mid-20th c. woodcut style that was itself a belated emulation of Beardsley and other fin-de-siecle illustrators. It gives of a stale perfume, as Ezra Pound once said of his own first collection of poetry, "A Lume Spento." (He called his early work, which had a similar serious preciousness, "stale cream-puffs.") The style does not fit the novel's content.
Concerning the graphic typography: almost exactly in the middle of the book, McLeish has a drug-induced breakdown, which is expressed partly in the narrative, and partly in the gradual introduction of all-caps words
DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG
and partly with words that run down the margins
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
and partly in italics, boldface, and marginal annotations, and finally in a couple of pages where the text funnels down to a point, and new texts come in at each side. It's a graphical crux, and in the middle there is also print that is set sideways and upside-down. (p. 184) Right at the crucial point, printed across one line, is a word that condenses the pornography with the pathetic life the narrator is actually leading:
SUFFUFFUFFUFFUFFUCKUCKUCKUCKATING
with "fuck" right in the middle.
This is all hand typeset (in 1982, if Gray had lived in California, he could have used the early microcomputers, but this book was done without that kind of assistance). Naturally it is necessary to avoid judging the book anachronistically: but it's still possible to ask if the graphical typesetting expresses what it is meant to. I find it the most convincing part of the book, partly because it is so fastidiously managed, even though it means to depict a moment of hysterical crisis and hallucination; and partly because Gray permits himself other voices, which can't be assigned to anyone in the book. This is the only time in the book that such a thing happens, and it is strange and liberating.
C. Returning to the reading.
After this, the book relents on its own structure, the one that worried me, and becomes more of a narrative about McLeish's actual life in Scotland. In the second half, there are fewer interruptions from the pornographic fantasies, and when they occur they are more managed. At one point, McLeish is having a fantasy about his principal imaginary object of desire, Janine, involving "two unfastened studs in her skirt"; he interrupts this with the words "and this is NOT the fantasy I intended," and then immediately resumes his thoughts about politics. The very next sentence is "One of the earliest aims of the United States space programme was to create a self-supporting human colony on the moon..." (p. 311). This is an atrophied, defanged version of the more hysterical, less effective, interruptions that fill the narrative up to the crisis.
In this way the book becomes less risky, and for me less interesting, after the crux. It ends with a moment of redemption that is suitably pathetic: McLeish remembers a minor moment of courage that he had back in school, facing up to a sadistic teacher. There could hardly be a less self-aggrandizing moment of triumph, and it's so tiny in relation to what he had done, and left undone, during his life, that it's clearly meant to function as the only possible believable redemption. For me, it's a patch that is required by the second half of the book. The more radical first half couldn't have used that moment, even if it had been available to McLeish or Gray. So my worries about Gray, and McLeish, sustaining their radical structures, seem to have been justified.
D. Envoi, on the politics
I wasn't taken by the politics in the book, and it's one of Gray's central preoccupations. A good treatment is in Stephen Bernstein's book "Alisdair Gray," which devotes a chapter to "1982, Janine," and the many links between the narrator's politics, his sense of class, place, and self, and his sexual fantasies.
Gray is an experimental novelist; this was his second novel. It takes risks with form, with the reader's sympathy, with coherence, and with the capacity to suspend disbelief. Gray was also a painter and printmaker, and he made the cover and drew his own self-portrait for the jacket. The book also has some pages of graphical typography, which he says are unconsciously borrowed from "Tristram Shandy."
A. The structure of the narrative
The protagonist, John McLeish, is a middle aged alcoholic and drug addict. He has had, by his own account, a disastrous life, and he's been especially miserable with women. He's full of "self-disgust" and embarrassment. (p. 106) He's in a hotel room, thinking (and by implication writing), drinking, and popping pills. The risks begin immediately, when it seems the book is going to be a series of pornographic fantasies, designed to distract him from thinking about his miserable cowardly behavior, his pitiful obsessions, and his ineffectual life. That's risky on two levels, for two reasons:
1. As an idea for a novel, it's risky because pornographic narratives are notoriously difficult to manage. Readers might be aroused, bored, offended, or numbed, in succession, repeatedly. That was the 1970s reception of de Sade; the repetition in his novels was said to be a psychoanalytic symptom or an emblem of the endlessness of narrative in general. Here, the novelist's idea of attractive women and how they dress is especially annoying. (Gray has McLeish dismiss de Sade in a brief couple of sentence, for an irrelevant reason. What can that be except classic repression?)
So early on I began worrying for Gray, wondering if he could sustain either the pornography or the abrupt transitions from fantasies to realist descriptions of middle-class Scottish life.
2. As representation of someone's imagination, it's risky because the character, McLeish, is using these fantasies for two purposes at once: they supposedly help him to stop thinking about his actual life, but they are also masturbation fantasies—but he doesn't want to wank, because that depresses him even more, and so he keeps wanting to end the very fantasies that are sustaining him. How long, I wondered, could McLeish, in the novel, continue in that mindset? It doesn't make things easier that the two worlds are so far apart. The fantasies are lurid, full of clichés, repetitive, sexist in the most obvious ways, and the stories of McLeish's real life have all those same qualities but are opposite in affect. The pornography is relentless, optimistic, and controlling; the memories are equally relentless, but pathetic and pessimistic.
So early on I began worrying for McLeish, wondering if he could sustain... etc., and those worries remained when the pages of the book ended.
B. Notes on layout and typography
Concerning the cover: Gray has several styles; the design on the cover is a nude man in a variation of Leonardo's homo ad circulum. It's done in the kind of mid-20th c. woodcut style that was itself a belated emulation of Beardsley and other fin-de-siecle illustrators. It gives of a stale perfume, as Ezra Pound once said of his own first collection of poetry, "A Lume Spento." (He called his early work, which had a similar serious preciousness, "stale cream-puffs.") The style does not fit the novel's content.
Concerning the graphic typography: almost exactly in the middle of the book, McLeish has a drug-induced breakdown, which is expressed partly in the narrative, and partly in the gradual introduction of all-caps words
DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG DUNG
and partly with words that run down the margins
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
and partly in italics, boldface, and marginal annotations, and finally in a couple of pages where the text funnels down to a point, and new texts come in at each side. It's a graphical crux, and in the middle there is also print that is set sideways and upside-down. (p. 184) Right at the crucial point, printed across one line, is a word that condenses the pornography with the pathetic life the narrator is actually leading:
SUFFUFFUFFUFFUFFUCKUCKUCKUCKATING
with "fuck" right in the middle.
This is all hand typeset (in 1982, if Gray had lived in California, he could have used the early microcomputers, but this book was done without that kind of assistance). Naturally it is necessary to avoid judging the book anachronistically: but it's still possible to ask if the graphical typesetting expresses what it is meant to. I find it the most convincing part of the book, partly because it is so fastidiously managed, even though it means to depict a moment of hysterical crisis and hallucination; and partly because Gray permits himself other voices, which can't be assigned to anyone in the book. This is the only time in the book that such a thing happens, and it is strange and liberating.
C. Returning to the reading.
After this, the book relents on its own structure, the one that worried me, and becomes more of a narrative about McLeish's actual life in Scotland. In the second half, there are fewer interruptions from the pornographic fantasies, and when they occur they are more managed. At one point, McLeish is having a fantasy about his principal imaginary object of desire, Janine, involving "two unfastened studs in her skirt"; he interrupts this with the words "and this is NOT the fantasy I intended," and then immediately resumes his thoughts about politics. The very next sentence is "One of the earliest aims of the United States space programme was to create a self-supporting human colony on the moon..." (p. 311). This is an atrophied, defanged version of the more hysterical, less effective, interruptions that fill the narrative up to the crisis.
In this way the book becomes less risky, and for me less interesting, after the crux. It ends with a moment of redemption that is suitably pathetic: McLeish remembers a minor moment of courage that he had back in school, facing up to a sadistic teacher. There could hardly be a less self-aggrandizing moment of triumph, and it's so tiny in relation to what he had done, and left undone, during his life, that it's clearly meant to function as the only possible believable redemption. For me, it's a patch that is required by the second half of the book. The more radical first half couldn't have used that moment, even if it had been available to McLeish or Gray. So my worries about Gray, and McLeish, sustaining their radical structures, seem to have been justified.
D. Envoi, on the politics
I wasn't taken by the politics in the book, and it's one of Gray's central preoccupations. A good treatment is in Stephen Bernstein's book "Alisdair Gray," which devotes a chapter to "1982, Janine," and the many links between the narrator's politics, his sense of class, place, and self, and his sexual fantasies.
October 6, 2023
I can't do better than post Gray's own tongue-in-cheek blurb for this book:
This already dated novel is set inside the head of an ageing, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations who is tippling in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel. Though full of depressing memories and propaganda for the Conservative Party it is mainly a sadomasochistic fetishist fantasy. Even the arrival of God in the later chapters fails to elevate the tone. Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books, "Lanark" and "Unlikely Stories, Mostly", is to be found here in concentrated form.
So, there you go. Enjoy!
This already dated novel is set inside the head of an ageing, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations who is tippling in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel. Though full of depressing memories and propaganda for the Conservative Party it is mainly a sadomasochistic fetishist fantasy. Even the arrival of God in the later chapters fails to elevate the tone. Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books, "Lanark" and "Unlikely Stories, Mostly", is to be found here in concentrated form.
So, there you go. Enjoy!
January 2, 2022
1982, Janine warrants no consensus. It’s almost impossible to make some sort of general – even to a superficial degree – comment about what it’s about and what it “means”. The reason for this is that this novel does not follow a plot – not even a train of thought for that would be too linear even on sharp turns. It cannot even be simplified to an exploration or analysis. It is an entanglement. The narrator has one name, one body, but his selves are distinct and individual. For all this, you will find yourself tossed between stories, between settings, between minds and realities… Alternate and otherwise.
Readers have front-row seats to the impressively elaborate, impressively perverse sadomasochistic fantasies of Jock McLeish. It is towards these fantasies Jock directs his creativity and intellect for they are left dissatisfyingly idle in his less-than-average life. In these fantasies, he derives pleasure from imagining the punishment his leading ladies undergo for their lusts and pride. However, there are no conclusions to these fantasies. Incessantly, they are interrupted with attempts at control. Incessantly, Jock recoils from the plot and directs our attention onto something else. Incessantly, Jock is interrupted by the memories he uses these fantasies to keep away from his conscience.
He says it himself: “My problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is.” For a while, the reader is also fooled.
In this war between fantasy and memory, there are no victors. The punishment (usually not done at his hand) his fantasy women (especially his star Janine) endure, substitutes the punishment he avoids enduring when confronting his past and its motivations of lust and pride which produces the overbearing guilt that consumes and torments him so intensely. Ultimately, it seems that it is (what Jock at least calls) God that intervenes with these fantasies and reminds him of what he’s done, what he can’t reverse, and what he can do now (move forward).
Mostly, this novel felt like 4 stars but upon finishing it and writing this review, I feel intensely, and sentimental, about Jock’s story: his pain, his loneliness, his inadequacies; his madness and his humanity… Ultimately, his character(s).
Jock is not a character to be liked, while he is also not one to be disliked. But in 1982, Janine none of that matters. All I wanted to do during my time with this novel (more than a month, wow) was understand Jock. All my reflection on his character, from his fantasies and past to his words – sometimes utterly nonsensical, at least initially seemingly so – went towards understanding him, or trying to understand him.
But can we understand a character that doesn’t understand himself?
“Real people are inexplicable. Since I cannot understand myself, how can I understand others? We are mysteries, every one of us. No wonder we turn from ordinary acts of life to religions, philosophies, stories, films, and fantasies. These can be completely understood because people have made them for people.”
“I wanted to keep fantasy and reality firmly separate because surely that is the foundation of all sanity?”
“There is now a black hole in my brain where light once shone, a hole which will get larger day by day until everything I know, everything I am has slid into it.”
Readers have front-row seats to the impressively elaborate, impressively perverse sadomasochistic fantasies of Jock McLeish. It is towards these fantasies Jock directs his creativity and intellect for they are left dissatisfyingly idle in his less-than-average life. In these fantasies, he derives pleasure from imagining the punishment his leading ladies undergo for their lusts and pride. However, there are no conclusions to these fantasies. Incessantly, they are interrupted with attempts at control. Incessantly, Jock recoils from the plot and directs our attention onto something else. Incessantly, Jock is interrupted by the memories he uses these fantasies to keep away from his conscience.
He says it himself: “My problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is.” For a while, the reader is also fooled.
In this war between fantasy and memory, there are no victors. The punishment (usually not done at his hand) his fantasy women (especially his star Janine) endure, substitutes the punishment he avoids enduring when confronting his past and its motivations of lust and pride which produces the overbearing guilt that consumes and torments him so intensely. Ultimately, it seems that it is (what Jock at least calls) God that intervenes with these fantasies and reminds him of what he’s done, what he can’t reverse, and what he can do now (move forward).
Mostly, this novel felt like 4 stars but upon finishing it and writing this review, I feel intensely, and sentimental, about Jock’s story: his pain, his loneliness, his inadequacies; his madness and his humanity… Ultimately, his character(s).
Jock is not a character to be liked, while he is also not one to be disliked. But in 1982, Janine none of that matters. All I wanted to do during my time with this novel (more than a month, wow) was understand Jock. All my reflection on his character, from his fantasies and past to his words – sometimes utterly nonsensical, at least initially seemingly so – went towards understanding him, or trying to understand him.
But can we understand a character that doesn’t understand himself?
“Real people are inexplicable. Since I cannot understand myself, how can I understand others? We are mysteries, every one of us. No wonder we turn from ordinary acts of life to religions, philosophies, stories, films, and fantasies. These can be completely understood because people have made them for people.”
“I wanted to keep fantasy and reality firmly separate because surely that is the foundation of all sanity?”
“There is now a black hole in my brain where light once shone, a hole which will get larger day by day until everything I know, everything I am has slid into it.”
June 11, 2024
In una nottata folle d'alcool Jock descrive, contestualizzandoli nel dettaglio, sogni erotici arzigogoloni, ma invece di farsi una sega ed eiaculare copiosamente sulle sue lenzuola ingiallite si sperde in sproloqui politici, ricorda gli anni di studio, le sue ex e i suoi fallimenti, si parla da solo e quando è bello lanciato parla anche con dio.
Intrigante la costruzione, adorabile l'insperata evoluzione del protagonista -speculare all'involuzione che l'ha portato da giovanotto piacente di belle speranze a stakanovista incapace di amare e di relazionarsi con chicchessia.
Ultracitazionista, con flussi Joyciani e pagine impaginate matte, questo romanzo dal ritmo travolgente, passa senza mai incepparsi dall'inizio erotico, alla malinconica disperazione condita da massicce dosi di humor nero e si risolve con un messaggio di speranza per te. Se Jock fegato spappolato, cazzetto precoce, scacciafiga, quasi cinquantenne, ha ancora la forza per crederci, tu puoi arrivare alle stelle, sciocco.
Intrigante la costruzione, adorabile l'insperata evoluzione del protagonista -speculare all'involuzione che l'ha portato da giovanotto piacente di belle speranze a stakanovista incapace di amare e di relazionarsi con chicchessia.
Ultracitazionista, con flussi Joyciani e pagine impaginate matte, questo romanzo dal ritmo travolgente, passa senza mai incepparsi dall'inizio erotico, alla malinconica disperazione condita da massicce dosi di humor nero e si risolve con un messaggio di speranza per te. Se Jock fegato spappolato, cazzetto precoce, scacciafiga, quasi cinquantenne, ha ancora la forza per crederci, tu puoi arrivare alle stelle, sciocco.
April 26, 2020
An astonishing work of art. Not everyone will enjoy or agree. There is little plot, it meanders through surreal dreams and stories that confuse, entertain and shock. A unique work from a unique writer.
August 1, 2022
I almost wrote this entire review in the Scottish dialect with the help of an online translator but I decided that would be annoying, so I dunno, count yer blessings that ye didnae hae tae read that!!! Choose life etc.
Just like with Alasdair Gray's previous/first book Lanark, which was about a book about working class Scottish boy feeling misery and regret and self-loathing that ended up being hopeful and sweet, so it is that this book about a working class Scottish adult feeling misery and regret and self-loathing is also ultimately deeply compassionate. The big pitch for the book in most of the reviews is that it's about PORN(!) but I think that is simply a dumb, very reductive reading. The main character Jock, whose internal monologue over the course of one long night we're reading for 330 pages, is narrating an elaborate erotic fantasy (less pornography than it is smutty pulp fiction) that gives him the only sense of power and control he has left in his life. He's hitting 50, he has a string of failed relationships and one failed marriage behind him, he abandoned his artistic passions from college to end up an alarm systems technician, and he can't stop fixating on the moments in his life in which he was impulsively cruel to others. In short, he feels like a human cockroach who isn't deserving of love and has been entirely deprived of it by the world around him. It's not a book about porn, it's a book about social/sexual/political powerlessness and crises of masculinity and alienation in the Modern Age!! And sometimes nipples! I loved this even more than Lanark because it felt hyperfocused on everything that made that book so special, which was the angst and loneliness and extremely Scottish kitchen-sink realism, and wasn't tied down by all the goofy fantasy novel interludes that Lanark had-- just good old-fashioned detailed descriptions of asses and depressing Scottish coming-of-age narratives. I've already written too much but I love it!!
Just like with Alasdair Gray's previous/first book Lanark, which was about a book about working class Scottish boy feeling misery and regret and self-loathing that ended up being hopeful and sweet, so it is that this book about a working class Scottish adult feeling misery and regret and self-loathing is also ultimately deeply compassionate. The big pitch for the book in most of the reviews is that it's about PORN(!) but I think that is simply a dumb, very reductive reading. The main character Jock, whose internal monologue over the course of one long night we're reading for 330 pages, is narrating an elaborate erotic fantasy (less pornography than it is smutty pulp fiction) that gives him the only sense of power and control he has left in his life. He's hitting 50, he has a string of failed relationships and one failed marriage behind him, he abandoned his artistic passions from college to end up an alarm systems technician, and he can't stop fixating on the moments in his life in which he was impulsively cruel to others. In short, he feels like a human cockroach who isn't deserving of love and has been entirely deprived of it by the world around him. It's not a book about porn, it's a book about social/sexual/political powerlessness and crises of masculinity and alienation in the Modern Age!! And sometimes nipples! I loved this even more than Lanark because it felt hyperfocused on everything that made that book so special, which was the angst and loneliness and extremely Scottish kitchen-sink realism, and wasn't tied down by all the goofy fantasy novel interludes that Lanark had-- just good old-fashioned detailed descriptions of asses and depressing Scottish coming-of-age narratives. I've already written too much but I love it!!
September 20, 2012
My thoughts on this book can be summarized by one word: Interesting. It was not what I would call a page turner, but the unique writing style and presentation, along with the subject matter, had me quite intrigued. The book centers around a single character - Jock McLeish, an aging alcoholic security alarm installer who attempts to spend the night in a motel creating in-depth pornographic fantasies. These scenes become quite graphic at certain points in the novel and I've since read that apparently Alasdair Gray was deliberately trying to shock even himself while writing them.
I was first recommended this book by a friend, and having never heard of it or even of Alasdair Gray, I decided to give it a shot. Knowing little more than the pornographic basis for the book, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. My first reaction was to wonder why a friend would recommend a book like this. While it is a great book, it seemed at first glance to be the type of book to enjoy in private and not in public. I wasn't entirely sure that this book wasn't going to end up as a more literary version of a hardcore romance novel, but I'm happy to say that this first impression ended up being far from true.
The first thing I will say about my real impressions of the book is that it is fantastically written. I had never heard of Alasdair Gray prior to reading this, but he has earned my respect, a thousand times over. I know of very few living authors I would say can even compete with his skill on an intellectual level and I can definitely see him becoming one of the greats.
The graphic scenes in this book do a wonderful job of building up the character of Jock McLeish and leading to the eventual conclusion. The progression his character makes throughout the course of the book fully justifies centering the novel on one primary character's experiences. Gray masterfully portrayed his character as one so full of potential yet slowly worn down to his lowest of low points; the peak being his breakdown in chapter 11. I have come across authors who have since used the style he utilized here (frantic text with multiple passages happening simultaneously on the same page) like Danielewski in House of Leaves, but I haven't seen anyone capture the feelings so perfectly with this format. It was quite masterfully done and definitely not overdone as I feel other's often do. The progression of slowly changing text into a sort of final form of chaos was probably the best part.
Definitely a good read. I will have to give this book another read or ten before I feel I can truly grasp what is happening inside the head of Jock McLeish, but even on the first read through, I could feel the progression of his character through tone alone. The best thing to come from reading this book for me was discovering yet another fantastic author. I will definitely be checking out his other books in the future.
Memorable Quotes
"I will work among the people I know; I will not squander myself in fantasies" (330)
Read more of my reviews at www.JimtheGrim.com !
I was first recommended this book by a friend, and having never heard of it or even of Alasdair Gray, I decided to give it a shot. Knowing little more than the pornographic basis for the book, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. My first reaction was to wonder why a friend would recommend a book like this. While it is a great book, it seemed at first glance to be the type of book to enjoy in private and not in public. I wasn't entirely sure that this book wasn't going to end up as a more literary version of a hardcore romance novel, but I'm happy to say that this first impression ended up being far from true.
The first thing I will say about my real impressions of the book is that it is fantastically written. I had never heard of Alasdair Gray prior to reading this, but he has earned my respect, a thousand times over. I know of very few living authors I would say can even compete with his skill on an intellectual level and I can definitely see him becoming one of the greats.
The graphic scenes in this book do a wonderful job of building up the character of Jock McLeish and leading to the eventual conclusion. The progression his character makes throughout the course of the book fully justifies centering the novel on one primary character's experiences. Gray masterfully portrayed his character as one so full of potential yet slowly worn down to his lowest of low points; the peak being his breakdown in chapter 11. I have come across authors who have since used the style he utilized here (frantic text with multiple passages happening simultaneously on the same page) like Danielewski in House of Leaves, but I haven't seen anyone capture the feelings so perfectly with this format. It was quite masterfully done and definitely not overdone as I feel other's often do. The progression of slowly changing text into a sort of final form of chaos was probably the best part.
Definitely a good read. I will have to give this book another read or ten before I feel I can truly grasp what is happening inside the head of Jock McLeish, but even on the first read through, I could feel the progression of his character through tone alone. The best thing to come from reading this book for me was discovering yet another fantastic author. I will definitely be checking out his other books in the future.
Memorable Quotes
"I will work among the people I know; I will not squander myself in fantasies" (330)
Read more of my reviews at www.JimtheGrim.com !
December 20, 2023
Middle-aged alcoholic Jock MacLeish is a lonely failure, drinking himself to oblivion in an anonymous Scottish hotel. The reader is plunged into the delirium of his interior monologue, an alcoholic stupor of pornographic, masturbatory fantasies. But as the book progresses, MacLeish’s elaborate sadomasochistic fantasies are interrupted by fragmented memories of childhood, his relationships with women, his-ex wife, his parents, and the sexual fantasies are seen as an alcohol-numbed strategy to suppress painful memories and lost ideals.
In a tour-de-force of typographically adventurous page layouts, MacLeish experiences a manic dark night of the soul, (reminiscent of the Circe episode in Ulysses) as the babble of competing voices in his mind reaches a cacophonous climax. As the suppressed memories surface, they push the novel into its beautiful second half, as it switches style, to the realist mode I loved so much in Lanark. For all Gray’s literary experimental sensibilities, he is a masterful and natural storyteller. We see MacLeish growing up, his painful relationship with his distant mother, his life at technical college, his first love, and from a position of personal strength, when the young man has a great future in front of him, of how he loses it all.
Gray expands the novel by fusing the intimately personal with the political. There is anger at the political state of Britain in 1982, at landowners and power, the military industrial complex in Scotland, capitalism and political alienation all colour MacLeish’s defeated world view. Pornography, politics, power and the personal, I’m in awe of Alasdair Gray’s wild, unruly literary imagination.
This first edition hardback is a beautiful object in itself, I love Gray’s attention to detail in the book production, with embossed artwork and insightful quote on the cover boards. Truly a Renaissance man.
Kulchur Kat
In a tour-de-force of typographically adventurous page layouts, MacLeish experiences a manic dark night of the soul, (reminiscent of the Circe episode in Ulysses) as the babble of competing voices in his mind reaches a cacophonous climax. As the suppressed memories surface, they push the novel into its beautiful second half, as it switches style, to the realist mode I loved so much in Lanark. For all Gray’s literary experimental sensibilities, he is a masterful and natural storyteller. We see MacLeish growing up, his painful relationship with his distant mother, his life at technical college, his first love, and from a position of personal strength, when the young man has a great future in front of him, of how he loses it all.
Gray expands the novel by fusing the intimately personal with the political. There is anger at the political state of Britain in 1982, at landowners and power, the military industrial complex in Scotland, capitalism and political alienation all colour MacLeish’s defeated world view. Pornography, politics, power and the personal, I’m in awe of Alasdair Gray’s wild, unruly literary imagination.
This first edition hardback is a beautiful object in itself, I love Gray’s attention to detail in the book production, with embossed artwork and insightful quote on the cover boards. Truly a Renaissance man.
Kulchur Kat
May 16, 2015
A terrific read but terribly depressing. Although it ends on an upnote, you've almost gone too far down to really believe the character could go back up again. Not having read too many (read: any) Scottish novelists, it was very interesting to think about a country that feels itself under the thumb of England. I enjoyed the political discussions, too--it's both strange and sad to see Marxism juxtaposed with Capitalism as a viable alternative; 30 years later, this kind of talk could only happen in Academia. At it's heart, though, despite the political and pornographic trappings, it's really a love story, and a very tragic one at that. Recommended but not for the faint of heart.
April 30, 2019
Gray's novel is another one of those works that had I read it, say, around 1994 I would've found it "a throbbing tour de force" or whatever stupid thing our younger selves would've said. Having found succor in my own great Scot debauching pollywasher, Irvine Welsh, who might very well be Gray's spiritual descendant, I found whatever Gray was trying to do a little forced and a little, well, kind of cheesy. You know something is amiss when even the porn sections are making you yawn, so, I'll have to call this one a little dated and trying a little too hard, maybe not for the time, but certainly for now.
March 27, 2020
His urges stymied by a lifetime of regret, our boozed-up Scottish Tory antihero Jock McLeish wiles away the night in thrall to lesbian S&M fantasies and memories of what might have been. Alasdair Gray wrote without compromise and 1982, Janine is a dark night of the national soul.
March 21, 2024
"Those who forget their own history are condemned to repeat it - as farce."
A deeply deeply despairing AND hopeful book. You know you've got the chops when you can spin four hundred pages around nothing more than a washed-up fellow trapped for one night in the bottle and the mirror house of his fantasies and still keep it lively to the last word.
Some Jock McLeishisms:
Most men are poor weak losers. Many women are not.
I am sure he felt in his bones that sexuality was wicked. Which is why I feel in my bones that wickedness is sexy.
Men who gossip spitefully about women are not the arrogant bastards they want to seem. They are humble people trying to show their importance, like servants boasting about their aristocratic connections by describing intimate details of aristocratic life.
God, I wish I could weep. I am free but miserable because freedom is useless to a coward.
Radiance belongs to everybody.
Only socialists refuse to learn from their opponents.
Much tighter and shorter than LANARK, Gray still brings the same chaotic energy and collapse of walls, though this time, the fun house aspect isn't an UnGlasgow, but Leish's own memories carouseling with a stable of imaginary women he's laid over them. I know, it sounds like The Worst, but Gray's prose and ability to unsexify sex makes this a lot of gloomy fun to read.
A deeply deeply despairing AND hopeful book. You know you've got the chops when you can spin four hundred pages around nothing more than a washed-up fellow trapped for one night in the bottle and the mirror house of his fantasies and still keep it lively to the last word.
Some Jock McLeishisms:
Most men are poor weak losers. Many women are not.
I am sure he felt in his bones that sexuality was wicked. Which is why I feel in my bones that wickedness is sexy.
Men who gossip spitefully about women are not the arrogant bastards they want to seem. They are humble people trying to show their importance, like servants boasting about their aristocratic connections by describing intimate details of aristocratic life.
God, I wish I could weep. I am free but miserable because freedom is useless to a coward.
Radiance belongs to everybody.
Only socialists refuse to learn from their opponents.
Much tighter and shorter than LANARK, Gray still brings the same chaotic energy and collapse of walls, though this time, the fun house aspect isn't an UnGlasgow, but Leish's own memories carouseling with a stable of imaginary women he's laid over them. I know, it sounds like The Worst, but Gray's prose and ability to unsexify sex makes this a lot of gloomy fun to read.
October 20, 2013
My favourite novel. It's complex, pretty disturbing in parts, but by the end is deeply moving and uplifting - a real call to arms.
It's about depression. The loss of youthful optimism about the world and the descent into the darkest cynicism - and how this mirrors Britain's recent history. It's about self loathing. How we reshape our view of the world to fit with our view of ourselves. It's about alcoholism - and contains passages of the most excruciating social embarrassment you will ever read. It's about conservatism and socialism and how the class system ruins lives. It's a book about how rigid we become in our views as we grow older, how we cling to them and disastrously refuse to learn and change our minds. It's about fantasy, escape, suicide, relationships and work. About the nature of god. It's stylistically brilliant. Like watching - transfixed - a sky full of fireworks, even though you are being continually hit by hailstone-like icy truths. In the end, it's a book about courage and hope.
It's about depression. The loss of youthful optimism about the world and the descent into the darkest cynicism - and how this mirrors Britain's recent history. It's about self loathing. How we reshape our view of the world to fit with our view of ourselves. It's about alcoholism - and contains passages of the most excruciating social embarrassment you will ever read. It's about conservatism and socialism and how the class system ruins lives. It's a book about how rigid we become in our views as we grow older, how we cling to them and disastrously refuse to learn and change our minds. It's about fantasy, escape, suicide, relationships and work. About the nature of god. It's stylistically brilliant. Like watching - transfixed - a sky full of fireworks, even though you are being continually hit by hailstone-like icy truths. In the end, it's a book about courage and hope.
April 26, 2023
“Freedom is useless to a coward.”
Why isn’t anyone talking about Alasdair Gray!!??? FORGET IT. It’s all just quack quack quackery. Or no it isn’t. In fact, here is the epitomizing, electric, extravagant ethos of a working-class Glaswegian! Gray’s Jock McLeish, his egregious “underground man,” his Nabokovian fantasy, Vonneguttian tragic-comedy, is as heartbreaking as it is repelling. In the opening pages, Jock says “my problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is. I want revenge on a woman who is not real.” Over the span of one night of alcoholic stupor in a dark hotel room, Jock constructs bondage fantasies that conceal a traumatic life of disappointment, confusion, and self-deceit. Life is a series of disappointments, never measuring up to his flashy fantasies. As Hislop, Jock’s abusive teacher put it, “Was it for this the clay grew tall?”
Yahoohay! Here is eroticism that is not real, that unravels a fantasy of the inner mind’s fears, and a real horror that conceals itself in the illusion of sexual desire. Quickly, it dawns on the reader that whatever film is reeling in Jock’s mind is actually some upside-down house of mirrors, an incel’s madhouse of traumatic encounters and inner despair.
A ministry of voices (go away God, not now G.) interrupt in labyrinthine marginalia the ecstatic flow of Jock’s pornographic plots, a battle of repressed unconscious blatherings from beyond, from a crevasse in the conscience. Feeble villains are good for a quick wank but no self-awareness will come of that! Hopelessly, we spiral with Jock ever further into the Dantean pits of vice and filth and lechery, a “typically human” fall from grace, and shudder at the constant circles he traces as God subverts him with associations that spark hideous remembrances—God, the saboteur of sexdreams!!
This is just it: suicidal ideation flagellates the inner thoughts of men who cannot seem to cry.
“God.
I.
Think.
I.
Am.
Going.
To.
Weep.”
I’m reminded of a phrase I once saw etched into a wooden bench swing near my house in Canada. Swinging on the bench, I stared at the slow stream, and the geese that sat on the grey water, repeating to myself that scratched psalm: “my dreams make me sick, my dreams make me sick, my dreams make me sick…”
Why isn’t anyone talking about Alasdair Gray!!??? FORGET IT. It’s all just quack quack quackery. Or no it isn’t. In fact, here is the epitomizing, electric, extravagant ethos of a working-class Glaswegian! Gray’s Jock McLeish, his egregious “underground man,” his Nabokovian fantasy, Vonneguttian tragic-comedy, is as heartbreaking as it is repelling. In the opening pages, Jock says “my problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is. I want revenge on a woman who is not real.” Over the span of one night of alcoholic stupor in a dark hotel room, Jock constructs bondage fantasies that conceal a traumatic life of disappointment, confusion, and self-deceit. Life is a series of disappointments, never measuring up to his flashy fantasies. As Hislop, Jock’s abusive teacher put it, “Was it for this the clay grew tall?”
Yahoohay! Here is eroticism that is not real, that unravels a fantasy of the inner mind’s fears, and a real horror that conceals itself in the illusion of sexual desire. Quickly, it dawns on the reader that whatever film is reeling in Jock’s mind is actually some upside-down house of mirrors, an incel’s madhouse of traumatic encounters and inner despair.
A ministry of voices (go away God, not now G.) interrupt in labyrinthine marginalia the ecstatic flow of Jock’s pornographic plots, a battle of repressed unconscious blatherings from beyond, from a crevasse in the conscience. Feeble villains are good for a quick wank but no self-awareness will come of that! Hopelessly, we spiral with Jock ever further into the Dantean pits of vice and filth and lechery, a “typically human” fall from grace, and shudder at the constant circles he traces as God subverts him with associations that spark hideous remembrances—God, the saboteur of sexdreams!!
This is just it: suicidal ideation flagellates the inner thoughts of men who cannot seem to cry.
“God.
I.
Think.
I.
Am.
Going.
To.
Weep.”
I’m reminded of a phrase I once saw etched into a wooden bench swing near my house in Canada. Swinging on the bench, I stared at the slow stream, and the geese that sat on the grey water, repeating to myself that scratched psalm: “my dreams make me sick, my dreams make me sick, my dreams make me sick…”
February 21, 2024
It's very rare when I add comments to a book I've read, I am a big believer in reading a book blind to get it's full effect. It's also very rare that I find a book that makes me pause in the best way possible. This quirky book is that book. I read this, finished it, and then read it all over again.
Straight into the favourites pile.
Straight into the favourites pile.
May 16, 2022
i go between 3 and 4 on this one
alasdair’s beautiful experimental prose present as usual
reading this makes one feel dirty and openly supportive of the objectification of women
i did enjoy but it is not something to be read at breakfast
continues my love for Alasdair’s bizarre energy
alasdair’s beautiful experimental prose present as usual
reading this makes one feel dirty and openly supportive of the objectification of women
i did enjoy but it is not something to be read at breakfast
continues my love for Alasdair’s bizarre energy
February 14, 2024
Took me a while but such a twisted sad funny grim book.
October 25, 2023
Wow. It’s a shocker all right (due to its use of pornographic fantasy as a literary device), but it is also incredibly poignant. For me, it is the sadness and expectation of disappointment that lives in all our souls - to a greater or lesser extent - that Alasdair Gray captures better than almost any other novelist. And his writing is very evocative of time and place. His first novel, Lanark was even stronger in that regard because place (especially the future of the place) was a major theme, but even here Gray captures atmospheres and periods beautifully- from 1960’s/70’s Glasgow, Edinburgh and Fife (and the hills in between); to the beginning of the end of the mining industry in Scotland; to Californian beach movies and Jane Russell. It fascinates me how Gray can trigger such strong feelings of memory and deja-vu so effortlessly. For example, you can almost smell the venue of the Edinburgh fringe-festival theatrical production in which the narrator (Jock MacLeish) participates as a young man.
The story revolves around the 50 year old, lonely, disappointed, alcoholic MacLeish booking himself into a hotel in the Scottish Borders with the intention of killing himself. As a build up to the act he imagines a long, detailed sexual fantasy which - against his best efforts - starts to morph into poignant memories of his life and lovers. It is these memories that are at the heart of the book.
For all of my admiration for Gray and this book, I confess I nearly closed it around page 160 and filed it under DNF, simply because reading about sex is of limited interest to me (I believe us men are more stimulated by pictures than words on that subject). Luckily, I flicked forward and saw that it transforms into something akin to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is very similar to one of the two parallel stories in Gray’s first novel, Lanark. This was far more appealing to me, so I kept reading. And I am glad I did. Gray himself admits that his plan when he first started writing was to write a full Scottish working-class counterpoint / tribute to Joyce’s middle-class Irish classic, but he worried it would not sell so once it was written he wove it (brilliantly) into an incredible futuristic fantasy that became ‘Lanark’. In ‘Janine, 1982’ the evolution from fantasies to memories to decisions is more logical and believable. Ie it was Gray’s plan from the start with Janine that part of his life story would be key to the outcome. For me, it works….
… but would I recommend it? Only if the other person likes / can handle experimental writing styles (eg chapter 11 uses marginalia in a way that few books have ever done). And ONLY if the person can handle half a book of sexual fantasy. That is a big ask, I know. I can understand why some critics (eg in the Irish press) hated the book, though their attempts to say they hated Gray’s experimental writing style / obsession with his own life story etc were disingenuous. What they really hated was the sex. Pure and simple. They would have done better to just say it and leave it at that. To be clear, the fantasies are not particularly explicit by the standards of 2023, but that (in a way) is Gray’s point: they reflect the limited ambitions and experience of a lonely, alcoholic, 50-year old electrical engineer, not the lived experiences of a movie star or rock god! They are meant to be slightly pathetic, for that is where a lot of the pathos and poignancy comes from. Anyway, if you are intrigued, give it a go. But also try Lanark - which has a lot more crazy stuff and a lot less sex!
The story revolves around the 50 year old, lonely, disappointed, alcoholic MacLeish booking himself into a hotel in the Scottish Borders with the intention of killing himself. As a build up to the act he imagines a long, detailed sexual fantasy which - against his best efforts - starts to morph into poignant memories of his life and lovers. It is these memories that are at the heart of the book.
For all of my admiration for Gray and this book, I confess I nearly closed it around page 160 and filed it under DNF, simply because reading about sex is of limited interest to me (I believe us men are more stimulated by pictures than words on that subject). Luckily, I flicked forward and saw that it transforms into something akin to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is very similar to one of the two parallel stories in Gray’s first novel, Lanark. This was far more appealing to me, so I kept reading. And I am glad I did. Gray himself admits that his plan when he first started writing was to write a full Scottish working-class counterpoint / tribute to Joyce’s middle-class Irish classic, but he worried it would not sell so once it was written he wove it (brilliantly) into an incredible futuristic fantasy that became ‘Lanark’. In ‘Janine, 1982’ the evolution from fantasies to memories to decisions is more logical and believable. Ie it was Gray’s plan from the start with Janine that part of his life story would be key to the outcome. For me, it works….
… but would I recommend it? Only if the other person likes / can handle experimental writing styles (eg chapter 11 uses marginalia in a way that few books have ever done). And ONLY if the person can handle half a book of sexual fantasy. That is a big ask, I know. I can understand why some critics (eg in the Irish press) hated the book, though their attempts to say they hated Gray’s experimental writing style / obsession with his own life story etc were disingenuous. What they really hated was the sex. Pure and simple. They would have done better to just say it and leave it at that. To be clear, the fantasies are not particularly explicit by the standards of 2023, but that (in a way) is Gray’s point: they reflect the limited ambitions and experience of a lonely, alcoholic, 50-year old electrical engineer, not the lived experiences of a movie star or rock god! They are meant to be slightly pathetic, for that is where a lot of the pathos and poignancy comes from. Anyway, if you are intrigued, give it a go. But also try Lanark - which has a lot more crazy stuff and a lot less sex!
July 9, 2015
1982 Janine, by the Scottish author and artist Alasdair Gray, is a work of great eccentricitie, an experimental novel with a strong narrative and representational prose style, which is autobiographical and individualistic to the core. It is also the work of an author and narrator who exists most comfortably in self-opposition. Thus, among many other things, the self-deprecating, self-hating hero is a conservative technocrat given to political ranting in such a way as to reinforce, without irritating irony, the opposite viewpoint, held by the author, who is a man of the left. He subjects its imaginary heroines (there are at least three, avatars (and how I wish this word had not been cursed by James Cameron!) of real women) to lengthy, indeterminate, repetitive, sado-masochistic fantasies which never reach beyond absurdity and seem to further degrade not the women but the man whose fantasies they are. It is a typical post-modern book, with its self-conscious, self-deconstructing meta-narrative, it’s rampant fantasies within a realistic plot, its kitchen sink approach to genre.
But did I say it was hilarious and touching by turns?
He loads the deck with effects and affects. You quite simply don’t get the comfy narrative till almost 2/3rds of the way through. His character, Jock McLeish, isn’t so much a bad man as a man with a guilty conscience, self-obsessed, seemingly a bore. He is suicidal. He takes an overdose of pills and plunges into a wee Finnegans Wake episode, with polyphonic upside-down writing in the margins.
Gray is knowing. He is not trying to do anything. But the prose! Its excellence is its willful waywardness, as sentences simply end where it is convenient for him to end them. Others go on. The self-indulgence is McLeish’s. Gray uses simple, short, rough-hewn sentences whenever they will suffice. But he has the ability to describe economically and beautifully whatever he chooses to, and so place is set realistically and well, such that I was always vividly aware of where I was, whether it was the fantasy hells constructed for the women (dark stages, police stations, the back seats of cars, where heroines are handcuffed and undressed and raped) or an Edinburgh neighborhood during The Festival, or shabby rooms where McLeish lives for a while with the depressingly dumpy but kind and good Denny, who is his original sin. By the end McLeish’s whole emotional life is laid bare. He is a good man who has done shitty things. His self-punishment exceeds the crime. He has failed to love, or recognize the love of others. He has been obtuse. In the end he realizes this. And then the novel is over.
So why put up with it?
Because it was screamingly funny, perverse and intelligent and never once flagged in its pursuit of both emotional truth and the clownish bullshit people spew to deny it.
But did I say it was hilarious and touching by turns?
He loads the deck with effects and affects. You quite simply don’t get the comfy narrative till almost 2/3rds of the way through. His character, Jock McLeish, isn’t so much a bad man as a man with a guilty conscience, self-obsessed, seemingly a bore. He is suicidal. He takes an overdose of pills and plunges into a wee Finnegans Wake episode, with polyphonic upside-down writing in the margins.
Gray is knowing. He is not trying to do anything. But the prose! Its excellence is its willful waywardness, as sentences simply end where it is convenient for him to end them. Others go on. The self-indulgence is McLeish’s. Gray uses simple, short, rough-hewn sentences whenever they will suffice. But he has the ability to describe economically and beautifully whatever he chooses to, and so place is set realistically and well, such that I was always vividly aware of where I was, whether it was the fantasy hells constructed for the women (dark stages, police stations, the back seats of cars, where heroines are handcuffed and undressed and raped) or an Edinburgh neighborhood during The Festival, or shabby rooms where McLeish lives for a while with the depressingly dumpy but kind and good Denny, who is his original sin. By the end McLeish’s whole emotional life is laid bare. He is a good man who has done shitty things. His self-punishment exceeds the crime. He has failed to love, or recognize the love of others. He has been obtuse. In the end he realizes this. And then the novel is over.
So why put up with it?
Because it was screamingly funny, perverse and intelligent and never once flagged in its pursuit of both emotional truth and the clownish bullshit people spew to deny it.
February 19, 2024
It is always a comfort to have other people put into words a fairly accurate representation of how my own mind works. Narcissistic comfort, a cold comfort, but I can always avoid utter embarrassment in this case by stating proudly, my imagination is not as lurid as Gray's narrator. I can only shrug and say the internet in my defense. But what is this book about anyway?
Simply, it's the ongoing rantings of an over the hill drunk split between sexual fantasies, repression and thoughts of suicide. But the humor in it saves it from the gallows but is waiting in line all the same. About a little over halfway, the story flips in an (in my opinion) overly meta way and the reward is a straightforward rise and fall of a young man tale. It's something of a letdown.
Lanark didn't charm me that much either but had more imagination. Poor Things is still my favorite.
Simply, it's the ongoing rantings of an over the hill drunk split between sexual fantasies, repression and thoughts of suicide. But the humor in it saves it from the gallows but is waiting in line all the same. About a little over halfway, the story flips in an (in my opinion) overly meta way and the reward is a straightforward rise and fall of a young man tale. It's something of a letdown.
Lanark didn't charm me that much either but had more imagination. Poor Things is still my favorite.
July 7, 2023
*4.5 stars
The first hundred pages had me questioning the point of the book, assuming it was devoid of any moral tale or social commentary. Then the (erotically-charged) stream of consciousness of the protagonist, Jock, started to take other forms, giving the reader an insight into the inner turmoil he faced from his lived experiences.
Loved the writing style, as if you were right in Jock’s head, made this such a breeze to read. Political commentary that was threaded throughout last 2/3’s of the book was at times a touch tedious but that’s probably because I wanted to hear more about Jock’s personal life. Optimistic ending also.
The first hundred pages had me questioning the point of the book, assuming it was devoid of any moral tale or social commentary. Then the (erotically-charged) stream of consciousness of the protagonist, Jock, started to take other forms, giving the reader an insight into the inner turmoil he faced from his lived experiences.
Loved the writing style, as if you were right in Jock’s head, made this such a breeze to read. Political commentary that was threaded throughout last 2/3’s of the book was at times a touch tedious but that’s probably because I wanted to hear more about Jock’s personal life. Optimistic ending also.
April 3, 2023
Objet littéraire unique en son genre. Janine 1982 vous plonge dans les tortueuses pensées de Jock McLeish, homme rongé par l'alcool et autres perversités. Jonglant entre réalité et fabulations, les démons de son esprit manient le verbe comme pour recouvrir l'enfer d'un quotidien morne.
Dernière danse d'un homme qui ne laissera derrière lui aucun souvenir, ce roman indescriptible donnera à voir l'autre côté du miroir.
Dernière danse d'un homme qui ne laissera derrière lui aucun souvenir, ce roman indescriptible donnera à voir l'autre côté du miroir.
October 2, 2020
Quit your job, upend the oppressor, forgive yourself.
Perfect.
Perfect.
September 20, 2023
A sorry window into one man’s rich but depraved interior life. The writing has a boundless momentum, full of rage and inventiveness. Ends on a hopeful note which is surprising, but it’s earned.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews