Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [256]
7. This remark is too ludicrous to require comment here.
8. But the fact remains that 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.
9. In this context to butter up means to flatter. The expression is based upon the pathetic fallacy that because bread tastes sweeter when it is buttered, bread enjoys being buttered.
10. The president in question was Felix Fauré, who died in 1909 upon the conservatory sofa, not office sofa, of the Elysée Palace.
11. The township of Wumbijee is in southern Queensland, not new South Wales, and even at the present moment in time (1976) is too small to support a local dentist. In 1909 it did not exist. The laughing gas incident is therefore probably apocryphal but, even if true, gives a facetious slant to a serious statement of principle. It will leave the readers (whom the author pretends to cherish) uncertain of what to think about his work as a whole.
12. Had Lanark’s cultural equipment been wider, he would have seen that this conclusion owed more to Moby Dick than to science fiction, and more to Lawrence’s essay on Moby Dick than to either.
13. As this “Epilogue” has performed the office of an introduction to the work as a whole (the so-called “Prologue” being no prologue at all, but a separate short story), it is saddening to find the “conjuror” omitting the courtesies appropriate to such an addendum. Mrs. Florence Allan typed and retyped his manuscripts, and often waited many months without payment and without complaining. Professor Andrew Sykes gave him free access to copying equipment and secretarial help. He received from James Kelman critical advice which enabled him to make smoother prose of the crucial first chapter. Charles Wild, Peter Chiene, Jim Hutcheson, Stephanie Wolf Murray engaged in extensive lexical activity to ensure that the resulting volume had a surface Consistency. And what of the compositors employed by Kingsport Press of Kingsport, Tennessee, to typeset this bloody book? Yet these are only a few out of thousands whose help has not been acknowledged and whose names have not been mentioned.
CHAPTER 41.
Climax
He looked down, startled, at Libby, who lay curled with her legs under her in the angle between wall and carpet looking unconscious. She was a gracefully plump, dark-haired girl. Her skirt was shorter and blouse silkier than he remembered, and her sulky slumbering face looked far more childish than the clothes. She opened her eyes saying “What?” and sat up and glanced at her wristwatch. Without blame she said, “You’ve been hours in there. Hours and hours. We’ve missed the opera.”
She held out a hand and he helped her up. She said, “Did he feed you?”
“He did. Now I would like to speak to Wilkins.”
“Wilkins?”
“Or Monboddo. On second thought, I would prefer to see Monboddo. Is that possible?”
She stared at him and said, “Do you never relax? Don’t you ever enjoy yourself?”
“I did not come here to relax.”
“Sorry I asked.”
She walked down the corridor. He followed, saying, “Listen, if I’m being rude I apologize, but I’m very worried just now. And anyway, I’ve always been bad at enjoying myself.”
“Poor old you.”
“I’m not complaining,” said Lanark defensively. “Some very nice things have happened to me, even so.”
“When, for instance?”
Lanark remembered when Sandy was born. He knew he must have been happy then or he wouldn’t have rung the cathedral bell, but he couldn’t remember what happiness felt like. His past suddenly seemed a very large, very dreary place. He said tiredly, “Not long ago.”
In the hall beside the lift doors she halted, faced him and said firmly, “I don’t know where Monboddo and Wilkins