This is a very different kettle of fish from The Island which I have just written about and which I read in the middle of reading Lanark. When we visited Glasgow earlier in the year we saw an exhibition of Alasdair Gray's art and getting home I looked in the library for the book of that exhibition, they didn't have that but they did have Lanark and so while it is a bit of a door stop of a novel I gave it a go.
The covers of the book are crammed full of praise, claiming that Lanark called forth a new era in Scottish writing which is almost as off putting as hearing a book won a Richard & Judy prize!
The 4 parts of the novel are arranged so you read part 3, then 1, 2 and 4 with the prologue and epilogue somewhere in the middle. Parts 1 and 2 have only a very loose connection with 3 and 4 (something a God like character "the author" notes at one point in the book - a device that I have never found successful). Parts 1 and 2 are basically realist while 3 and 4 are a kind of dystopian science fiction, this is held up to parody when a teacher criticises the writing of Lanark/Thaw for trying to combine realism and fantasy - claiming this is something even the greatest of writers struggle with. It is as if Gray is eye-balling you and daring you to say "nice try but maybe try something a little less ambitious next time..."
It is a political satire, and it is clear there is anger at the way Glasgow was declining with the collaspe of heavy industry. But with his anti-hero Lanark/Thaw Gray seems only to confirm the hopelessness of the situation. That those with the brains to understand the situation will either be depressed to the point of inaction or be corrupted by "the system" and despite continuing to spout proletarian rhetoric find their own beds feathered with others misery (Lanark ends up doing both in turns). It seems to me this is an entirely bleak vision.
Given the novel is over 30 years old there must be a question about whether its politics has enduring relevance. Off the back of the recent global financial melt-down much of Gray's more depressing depictions of the soulless system feel deeply contemporary - the "too big to fail" mentality fits into its picture of entangled organisations and the blurring of state and corporationl. What has changed perhaps is the settling - it is not the streets of Glasgow (even the poorest of Glasgow's streets) where the full force of the financial annihilation is now felt.
The most hopefully message Gray seems to manage is that in the face of extremes of life the ordinary misery of the individual will endure - "I am miserable therefore I am"
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