n his short story 'The Spread of Ian Nicol', Alasdair Gray describes a riveter splitting in two. The process begins with a bald patch on the back of the original Nicol's head, which gradually takes on the appearance of a human face. Eventually this face becomes a second head, a supposed cancer becomes a second heart, and even the spine convulsively doubles itself. The result is two identical Ian Nicols, each claiming the rights to their common name, birth certificate, wife and National Insurance benefit. The tale ends with a report that both men have recently developed bald patches to the rear of their scalps.

This story, from Unlikely Stories, Mostly, is in many ways emblematic of much of Gray's fiction. The blank, unquestioning acceptance of the utterly illogical, the split nature of the protagonist, and the circular manner in which the conclusion returns us to the beginning, are all aspects common to so many of Gray's more lengthy narratives. Even the darkly comic way in which these outlandish events are rationalized resembles the sardonic humour of his major novels, as exemplified by the Doctor's phlegmatic reply to Nicol's enquiry regarding the rarity of the condition: “Oh, it happens more than you would suppose. Among bacteria and viruses it's very common, though it's certainly less frequent among riveters”.

Another recurrent feature of Gray's fiction which is manifest in this story is the theme of duality. His tales are full of dual worlds, dual narratives, dual characters and dualistic psyches. Perhaps the most striking of Gray’s oppositions however, is the contrast between the schizophrenic worlds of 'fantasy' and 'reality'.

This apparent opposition is, however, an extension of a far more fundamental human duality – a Jekyll and Hyde contrast made explicit by an appropriately lunatic voice within Poor Things: “Modern Man … is essentially double: a noble soul fully instructed in what is wise and lawful, yet also a fiend who loves beauty only to drag it down and degrade it”. From Duncan Wedderburn's raving comes confirmation of the dark duplicity nestling in the human heart. And it is from this somber well that springs the dreamworld of Jock McLeish, the grotesque underworld of Lanark, and the Gothic romance of Poor Things.

Of course, all of these 'fantasies', be it in the allegorical manner of Lanark, the escapist form of Janine, or of the equivocal nature of Poor Things, are suitably juxtaposed against more conventional 'realist' texts. But while it may be easier to see these oppositions as divergent, it is clear that, in each case, the one informs the other to such a degree as to ensure that the two strands quickly become infused. Like the two sides of a single coin, the contrasting elements of 'fantasy' and 'reality' are, in practice, inseparable: the twin facets of a schizophrenic 'fantastical realist' entity. As Colin Manlove has noted, “these opposites are bound to one another, as though the one spawns the other, or each depends on their joint and yet totally oppugnant existence”.*

The forgoing was adapted from Blurring the Edges, 1997.

* From his book Scottish Fantasy Literature, Canongate Academic, 1994