t's difficult knowing where to begin with Lanark. For the first time reader this is a very real problem. Book One, which convention would suggest ought to be the start of the novel, doesn’t begin the 121st page: logically enough following the prologue, but illogically also following Book Three. Even if the reader has skipped over the Table of Contents, or has chosen to ignore the book's anumerical construction, they’ll nonetheless find themselves deeply puzzled upon discovering a socio-realist Glasgow novel secreted in the midst of their cheerfully apocalyptic fantasy tale. Similarly, for those more familiar with Lanark's unconventional form, and with its dual narrative strands, the small matter of unraveling the text, of sorting and resorting both the story and its structure, is none too straightforward a task.
Lanark undeniably owes something of its unusual structure to the elaborate and elongated manner of its inception, being written on and off in the period between 1952 to 1979. This piecemeal construction certainly contributed to the fragmentary, dislocated form that the novel takes (Book One being a version of a text once offered for publication in its own right, and duly rejected). At an early stage however, Gray intended to mix this book with a darker, more 'Kafkaesque' tale in order to form "an epic novel that would forge the conscience of my race". Indeed, this fact is made explicit in a footnote to the Epilogue:
… the plots of the Thaw and Lanark sections are independent of each other and cemented by typographical contrivances rather than formal necessity. A possible explanation is that the author thinks a heavy book will make a bigger splash than two light ones.
Among the themes central to Lanark, and indeed to much of Gray's work, is one of duality. An issue reflected, not merely in the narrative of Lanark, but also in its structure. This is most clearly evident in the telling of two apparently disparate tales: one the recognizably realist story of Duncan Thaw growing up in the Glasgow of the mid 20th Century, and the other a fantastical tale of a man called Lanark cast into a monstrous underworld. The book's subtitle, Life in Four Books, together with a number of narrative elements, combine to suggest that, what may initially appear as two unrelated tales, one 'fantasy', the other 'reality', are in actuality linked by considerably more than merely the matter of their common bindings.
The world of Lanark is seen to be a reflection of that of Thaw, cast in a dark mirror. Or perhaps, given the supposed manner of Thaw's death, the reflection would be better seen as cast in water, because the image isn’t merely an inversion, but also an inconstant distortion, twisted by eddies and ripples. In Gray's own words, the worlds of Thaw and of Lanark are seen to be parallel, where "one is a highly exaggerated form of just about the everyday reality of the other". Therefore, in the contrasting worlds of Lanark, what is true in Thaw's life only in metaphor, becomes a literal 'reality' for Lanark. The 20th Century capitalist corporate body which consumes people as it would any other resource is, in Books Three and Four, a literal body, a living monster which will swallow Unthank and all therein. In 'the Institute' the exploitative upper classes literally feed off the lower, eating their processed flesh and living by the power of their exploding energies. This incendiary population is occasioned by one of the most striking among such literalized metaphors, the disease of Dragonhide: a condition whereby hard, scaled crusts form around individuals, trapping their warmth and turning them into inhuman, chimerical monsters. This is at once an extension of the eczema suffered by Gray in childhood, and also of the repressive nature of modern urban living. The 'warmth' being contained and constricted by this grotesque shell is both of a physical and an emotional nature, the 'explosions' a warning on the dangers of withholding and denying love.
Indeed, if there is one thing more than any other which unites Thaw and Lanark, it is their frustrated yearning to find real human contact, their undying search for love. Although both long to do so, it seems that neither Thaw nor Lanark are able to form a lasting relationship with a woman. In fact its this that forms the point of contact between the twin protagonists, or rather between the two halves of the one protagonist, for it would not be unfair to suggest that much of Duncan Thaw's existence revolves around his acceptability, or otherwise, to women. And it is precisely due to the fact that he is not so accepted that he lacks a concrete grasp on life, thus ultimately leading him to suicide. This sexual and romantic estrangement is therefore directly what leads Duncan Thaw into 'becoming' Lanark. He in his turn encounters only marginally greater success, for even though Lanark saves his beloved Rima from death, protects and shelters her during their hazardous journey along the 'intercalendrical zone', and fathers a child with her, she nonetheless leaves him for the stronger and more charismatic Sludden (a name seemingly born of a coupling between 'sullen' and 'dangerous').
Such failings don’t stop with the romantic however. They extend also into a greater, broader social realm. When Lanark is confronted by 'the author' (named as Nastler, and at once an extension of Gray and a separate character in his own right) he is told:
"The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by your narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason"
But if Thaw does find himself in a sort of purgatory following his suicide (it is difficult to talk of such things in concrete terms for so little is stated regarding the Thaw/Lanark continuity without being immediately contradicted), it is nonetheless because he finds himself unable to fit into his own world. Thaw is a misfit, a social pariah and emotional cripple. He is a 'displaced person' long before he finds himself as Lanark, without memory, sitting in the Elite Cafe. That Rima professes to have heard her own story from the Oracle, not that of Lanark (Books One and Two), merely serves to suggest that she too is a misfit, and that, by extension, all of the inhabitants of this 'underworld' are in some manner mesalliant.
With this emphasis upon the alienation of the individual from an absurd, inhuman world (for as we shall see, the surroundings of both Thaw as well as Lanark are shown to be dangerously lunatic), Lanark possesses elements of the existential, in both its subject matter and in its tone. In each of the two realities, the 'hero' struggles to come to terms with the nature of his existence, finding his every gesture and action meaningless or negative. Each finds himself lost (Lanark adds physical displacement to Thaw's emotional and spiritual), fragmented and rudderless in a seemingly malevolent, industrial world. The props upon which they most rely, the maps by which they have guided the course of their lives, namely art, love, hope, and God, ultimately prove inadequate and insubstantial. The world is moving and changing so bewilderingly around Thaw/Lanark that, in both lives, the only reliable recourse is to death. The final words of the novel serve only to underline this fact:
I STARTED MAKING MAPS WHEN I WAS SMALL SHOWING PLACE, RESOURCES, WHERE THE ENEMY AND WHERE LOVE LAY. I DID NOT KNOW TIME ADDS TO LAND. EVENTS DRIFT CONTINUALLY DOWN, EFFACING LANDMARKS, RAISING THE LEVEL, LIKE SNOW. I HAVE GROWN UP. MY MAPS ARE OUT OF DATE. THE LAND LIES OVER ME NOW. I CANNOT MOVE. IT IS TIME TO GO.
The form of existentialism embodied here in Lanark is, however, not only that of 'the philosophy of disorientation', but also (with what is perhaps a peculiarly Scottish slant) a philosophy of discomfiture. Ultimately it is a book, not only about the nature of existence, but about the perplexity of it – about the 'embarrassment of being', or rather, 'the embarrassment of not properly being able to be'.
The forgoing was adapted from Blurring the Edges, 1997.
