s with Lanark, gray's second novel, 1982 Janine, embodies two distinct narrative strands, one 'real', the other 'fantasy'. In both manner and form, however, the twin worlds of Janine differ markedly from those of its predecessor. The analogous world depicted here is of an entirely different, but no less destructive, nature to that in Lanark. While that 'fantasy' realm was of the monsters and dragons variety most associated with the generic use of the word, in Janine the term becomes one of escapism, of deliberate, calculated, controlled and directed imagining. Taking the form of an extended, and greatly detailed, sadomasochistic autoerotic projection, this is the waking dream of Jock McLeish, 'an ageing, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations'. It is punctuated however, at varying intervals, by a number of intrusive and frequently unwelcome 'realities': the memories of the protagonist's past life, intermixed with a highly subjective account of the political condition of Scotland in the early years of the Thatcher era.
Whereas in Lanark the two relative fictions were distinguished by clear and separate 'Books', in Janine the delineation is not so obvious. Initially, the switching between narrative worlds is marked on the page by a distinct visual break, a clear space setting apart separate paragraphs. This quickly degenerates, however, to the point where the internal monologue leaps without warning, frequently within a single sentence:
… silk shirt not quite reaching the thick harness-leather belt which is not holding up the miniskirt but hangs in loops round the wasteband of the white suede miniskirt supported by the hips and unbuttoned as high as the top of the black fishnet stockings whose mesh is wide enough to insert three fingers I HATED clothes when I was young.
Occasionally such shifts are deliberate, a conscious effort on the part of McLeish to stop himself from becoming too quickly aroused. But more often they are the unwarranted result of mental associations, repressed memories struggling to the surface through the very fantasies which were intended to contain them.
It is, of course, the rapaciously perverse nature of McLeish's fantasies which have been the focus of the majority of criticism regarding Janine. Debate has raged long and hard over the supposed pornographic nature of the book. Many have criticized the attitudes towards women expressed in the 'Janine' side of the book's dichotomy. This, however, may be missing the point somewhat. To suggest that 1982 Janine is solely a work of pornography is to assume that the elaborate fantasies of McLeish are endemic to the book as a whole, that there is nothing more substantial about Gray's text than a desire to titillate. This is quite clearly not the case. While Jock's fantasy world is blatantly and cruelly pornographic, it is collapsing around him. The frequent interjections of the reality of his situation deflate and defuse his erotic fancies. The truth of his life, and of his nature, is shown to be infinitely sad, bitter, and confused, his fetishism undercut by regret, pathos, and loss. Like Duncan Thaw, Jock McLeish is 'bad at loving', a misfit estranged from the world about him. His fantasies are a compensation for a life lacking in humanity, a defense mechanism, a 'Dragonhide' way of withdrawing from painful reality. What Gray is depicting in Janine is not merely pornography, but pornography explained. That he refuses to wholly condemn his character in doing so may well be the real reason for his critical reproval.
But while he may be driven into constructing his imaginary worlds because of his inability to love, it is not that emotion which drives the fantasies of Jock McLeish. Instead, Jock's dreamworlds centre, as all pornography ultimately does, around issues of power. His life has, from childhood, been an ongoing process of disempowerment. Every aspect of his life has conspired to leave him feeling disenfranchised and impotent. He therefore finds himself in the position of having to invent a world which he can control, although paradoxically this construction rapidly becomes more a confinement than a liberation, excluding him even further from any real human contact. In his fantasies though, the lives of its inhabitants, at least, are his to control. He can manipulate and exploit them sexually, in much the same way as he finds himself manipulated and exploited in a commercial manner. It is also a place where he can be as sexually successful in fantasy, as he is unsuccessful in reality:
[Other men] hate being excited by women they can't possess. But real women don't frustrate me because I have this dirty imagination. I have Janine, Superb, Big Momma and Helga.
At every point in the process of his development, what should in theory have been there to protect or to nurture Jock is seen to actually damage or to debase him. Again like Duncan Thaw, Jock is portrayed as the ultimate product of an inhuman, and in this case actively dehumanizing, world. It is therefore little surprise that, in his mind, Jock should treat women as objects. He himself is seen as little more:
I am the instrument of a firm which installs instruments to protect the instruments of firms which produce meat cloth machines and whisky, instruments to feed, dress, move and stupefy us. But the National installs most of its instruments around nuclear reactors – instruments powering the instruments which light, heat and entertain us – and banks – instruments to protect and increase the profits of the instrument owners – and military depots where the weapons are kept to protect the nation's instruments and profits from the protective instruments of the Russian instrument-makers … Instruments serving instruments are the whole show.
That Jock should describe himself in precisely the same terms as meat, cloth, television sets, banks and nuclear weapons shows how successful and how complete the process of dehumanization has become. The teacher, 'Mad Hislop' (who may or may not be Jock's true father), is the clearest early instrument of this system at work on Jock, cruelly punishing young boys in the misguided belief that it will make them men: 'he really believed that teaching small people to take torture from big people, and crushing their natural reaction to it, was a way of improving them'. That Jock's father is also defined as an instrument, and is almost always referred to as 'my father the timekeeper' thereby making the man synonymous with his occupation, suggests that this was a function of society long before Jock McLeish was there for it to consume.
The final wellspring of self-loathing is a political one. Jock is a Tory. A capitalist complicit in the very destruction and greed he so clearly despises. And yet he cannot confess this even to himself. Instead Jock rationalizes his political capitulation as a form of conviction, a pragmatic, 'Falstaffian' acceptance of the order of things. Early in the book Jock, meditating on the nature of Scotland, declares:
The truth is we are a nation of arselickers, though we disguise it with surfaces … which is why, when England allowed us a referendum on the subject, I voted for Scottish self-government. Not for one minute did I think it would make us more prosperous, we are a poor little country, always have been, always will be, but it would be a luxury to blame ourselves for the mess we are in instead of the bloody old Westminster parliament. "We see the problems of Scotland in a totally different perspective when we get to Westminster," a Scottish M.P. once told me. Of course they do, the arselickers.
This sentiment jars somewhat with a professed Conservative standpoint, reinforcing the view that his right-wing opinions are born of defeat rather than from any genuine, deeply held belief. The conflict arising out of such contradictions is made evident later where, extending his sexual proclivity towards his country, McLeish declares that Scotland 'has been fucked. I mean that word in the vulgar sense of misused to give satisfaction or advantage to another'. That he himself is culpable in no small part for this, through his ready association with capitalism, the military, etc., is not lost on him.
The forgoing was adapted from Blurring the Edges, 1997.
