Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [254]
QUINTILIANUS MARCUS FABRICIUS
Chap. 45, para. 5. Grant’s “form of self-expression second only to the sneeze” is an Implag from Book 11 of the Institutio Oratoria translated by John Bulwer in his Chironomia.
REICH, WILHELM
Book 3. The dragonhide which infects the first six chapters is a Difplag of the muscular constriction Reich calls “armouring.”
REID, TINA
Chap. 48, para. 15. The android’s method of cleaning the bed is a Difplag of Jill the Gripper from Licking the Bed Clean.
SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL
Chap. 18, para. 6. Chap. 21, para. 12. These are Difplags of the negative epiphanies experienced by the hero of Nausea.
SAUNDERS, DONALD GOODBRAND
Chap. 46. The peace-force led by Sergeant Alexander is blocked by God in a land whose shapes and colours come from Ascent:
The white shape is Loch Fionn,
Intimate with corners.
From here, the foothills
of Suilven,
The white shape is Loch Fionn.
The green shape is Glencanisp,
Detailed with rocks,
From here, the shoulder
of Suilven,
The green shape is Glencanisp.
The blue shape is the seas.
The blue shape is the skies.
From here, the summit
of Suilven,
My net returns glittering.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Books 1 and 2 owe much to the play Hamlet in which heavy paternalism forces a weak-minded youth into dread of existence, hallucinations and crime.
SITWELL, EDITH
Chap. 41, para. 12. “Speaking purely as a private person,” and much of the religious sentiment, are Im-and Difplag from the section of Facade which starts “Don’t go bathing in the Jordan, Gordon.”
SMITH, W. C.
Chap. 28. Blockplag from hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” with distorted final line.
SPENCE, ALAN
Chap. 45, para. 9. The fine colours are taken from the anthology Its Colours They Are Fine.
THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
Chap. 11, para. 5. The bag and listed contents are a Plag, Block- and Dif-, from the Fairy Blackstick’s bag in The Rose and the Ring.
THOMAS, DYLAN
Chap. 29, para 5. Contains small Implag and Difplag from the prose poem “The Map of Love.” Chap. 42, para. 5. Lanark’s words when urinating are a distorted Implag of the poem “Said the Old Ramrod.”
TOTUOLA, AMOS
Books 3 and 4. These owe much to The Palm Wine Drinkard, another story whose hero’s quest brings him among dead or supernatural beings living in the same plane as the earthly. (See also kafka.)
TURNER, BILL PRICE
Chap. 46, para. 1. “The sliding architecture of the waves” is from Rudiment of an Eye.
URE, JOAN
Chap. 48, para. 8. The batman’s wife is singing her own version of the song in the review Something may come of it: “Nothing to sing about/getting along/ very pedestrianly./People in aeroplanes/singing their song/ continue to fly over me./Something they’ve got that I’ve not?/ Something I’ve got that they’ve not?/Nothing to sing about./ Nothing to sing about.”
VONNEGUT, KURT
Chap. 43, Monboddo’s speech. The description of the earth as a “moist blue-green ball” is from the novel Breakfast of Champions.
WADDEL, REVEREND P. HATELY
Chap. 37, para. 4. The overheard prayer is from Rev. Waddel’s lowland Scottish translation of Psalm 23.
WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE
The institute described in Books 3 and 4 is a combination of any large hospital and any large university with the London Underground and the BBC Television Centre, but the overall scheme is stolen from 21st-century London in The Sleeper Awakes and from the Selenite sublunar kingdom in The First Men on the Moon. In the light of this fact, the “conjuror’s” remark about H. G. Wells in the Epilogue seems a squid-like discharge of vile ink for the purpose of obscuring the critical vision. See footnote 5.
WOLFE, TOM
Chap. 41, para. 6. The hysterical games-slang in this section is an Implag from the introduction to an anthology, The New Journalism.
XENOPHON
Chaps. 45, 46, 47, 48, 49. The mock-military excursion throughout these is an extended Difplag of the Anabasis.
YOUNGHUSBAND, COL. STUKELY
Chap 49, para. 49. “Down the crater of Vesuvius in a tramcar” is a remark attributed to General Douglas