#GrayDay

DimaLinkDimaLink
2025-05-27

Venus – hot beyond the clouds and sulfuric acid

It is very hot planet. With dense atmosphere. And very high pressure. Lots of plains. And not high mountains and hills.

2025-04-18

Good morning everyone. It's gray and cold outside, so I will have a desk day and enjoy some good coffee. Maybe a bit of running after lunch.

#GrayDay #ButFirstCoffee

2025-03-29
O óculos é cênico, estava chovendo.
Santos, Brasil (2015).
#santos #saopaulo #brasil #beach #grayday #ocean #rain
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

“Novels like LANARK do what all the best art does: awaken your imaginative capacities without swallowing them whole. It does not give you answers, but it does give you the right questions.”

—Stephen Durkan: “LANARK: an escape to reality”

@bookstodon

stephendurkan.wordpress.com/20

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

North Lanarkshire Librarieslibrariesnl@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

"I regard a well-stocked library as the pinnacle of democratic socialism." - Alasdair Gray

Celebrate #GrayDay by delving into one of the many Alasdair Gray books in our well-stocked libraries.

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

Prof Alan Riach – who appears, briefly & fictionally, in Alasdair Gray’s 2007 novel OLD MEN IN LOVE (although not, I should add, as an old man in love) – discusses LANARK at our 2022 Schools Conference

8/8

youtube.com/watch?v=QTCGw6e_OS

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

“Taken together, the four prints underscore the oft-disputed unity of LANARK, as well as the sheer will of Gray’s effort to portray the individual’s capabilities for art & love against the backdrop of the modern industrialized state”

—David Auerbach on the sources of the frontispieces for LANARK’s four books, and how Alasdair Gray used them

7/8

waggish.org/2020/alasdair-gray

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

(although we’re still waiting for “The Provision Merchant as Agent of Evil in Scottish Literature from Galt to Gunn” tbh)

6/8

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

Which academic will finally dare to write the long-awaited paper “The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Alasdair Gray’s LANARK: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes”?

5/8

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

Alasdair Gray’s LANARK: Calvin & Hobbes, avant la lettre

4/8

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

The comic-strip characters Calvin and Hobbes, by William Boyd Watterson. Calvin is a small boy with yellow spiky hair and a red-and-black striped t-shirt, black trousers, and red-and-white sneakers; Hobbes is a tiger. In this image Calvin and Hobbes are lying on their stomachs: Calvin is reading a book, and Hobbes is lying beside him, resting his head on his – let's face it, arms.
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

The frontispiece’s quotation

“By Arts is formed that great Mechanical Man called a State, foremost of the Beasts of the Earth for Pride”

is based on Hobbes: “For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE…”

The 2nd part draws on the Bible—the description of Leviathan (Job 41.34):

“He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.”

3/8

tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gray-

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

A figurative State towes over a panoramic view across Scotland, looking from west to east. The figure is bearded, masculine, blank-eyed, and wears a crown. It holds a sword in its right hand, labelled "FORCE", and a crozier in its left hand, labelled "persuasion". Apart from the hands and face the giant figure is formed from little people: a ring of wigged judges around its throat, bowler-hatted men with pointing arms giving orders across its chest and shoulders, a teeming mass of faceless individuals making up its torso. Its left arm consists of kneeling worshippers and open-mouthed preachers; its right is a phalanx of marching soldiers. Above the figure is written

"By Arts is formed that great Mechanical Man called a State, foremost of the Beasts of the Earth for Pride"

Scotland, curved and distorted, is spread out beneath and in front of the figure. Discernible landmarks include Glasgow University tower; John Knox’s statue in the Glasgow Necropolis; the Wallace Monument; the Grangemouth oil refinery; St Giles Cathedral; Edinburgh Castle; the Forth & Tay bridges; & the experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor at Dounreay. Also visible are oil rigs in the North Sea, nuclear submarines in the Irish Sea & Holy Loch, & the paddle-steamer PS Waverley sailing down the Clyde.

Beneath the whole display are more drawings of war, work, and education. In the centre a banner reads

BOOK FOUR

and below it says

The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

Discernible landmarks include Glasgow University tower; John Knox’s statue in the Glasgow Necropolis; the Wallace Monument; the Grangemouth oil refinery; St Giles Cathedral; Edinburgh Castle; the Forth & Tay bridges; & the experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor at Dounreay. Also visible are oil rigs in the North Sea, nuclear submarines in the Irish Sea & Holy Loch, & the paddle-steamer PS Waverley sailing down the Clyde.

2/8

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

@bookstodon

The cover of this edition shows Gray’s frontispiece for Book 4. Based on Abraham Bosse’s 1651 frontispiece to Hobbes’ LEVIATHAN, it depicts a figurative State towering over a panoramic view across Scotland

1/8

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

Book cover

LANARK
A LIFE IN 4 BOOKS

"An ambitious and marvellously inventive novel" – Malcolm Bradbury

ALASDAIR GRAY

Publisher: Paladin

The artwork by Alasdair Gray – in black and white, with golden clouds – depicts a figurative State towering over a panoramic view across Scotland, looking from west to east. The figure is bearded, masculine, blank-eyed, and wears a crown. It holds a sword in its right hand, labelled "FORCE", and a crozier in its left hand, labelled "persuasion". Apart from the hands and face the giant figure is formed from little people: a ring of wigged judges around its throat, bowler-hatted men with pointing arms giving orders across its chest and shoulders, a teeming mass of faceless individuals making up its torso. Its left arm consists of kneeling worshippers and open-mouthed preachers; its right is a phalanx of marching soldiers.

Scotland, curved and distorted, is spread out beneath and in front of the figure. Discernible landmarks include Glasgow University tower; John Knox’s statue in the Glasgow Necropolis; the Wallace Monument; the Grangemouth oil refinery; St Giles Cathedral; Edinburgh Castle; the Forth & Tay bridges; & the experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor at Dounreay. Also visible are oil rigs in the North Sea, nuclear submarines in the Irish Sea & Holy Loch, & the paddle-steamer PS Waverley sailing down the Clyde.
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-02-25

INTERVIEWER: When somebody asks you to describe your book LANARK, what do you say to them?
ALASDAIR GRAY: I say it is a Scottish petit bourgeois model of the universe.
I: Just like that?
AG: Yes, I’ve rehearsed it & honed it down to as few words as possible.

It’s #GrayDay! Alasdair Gray’s LANARK was first published on 25 Feb 1981

@bookstodon
🧵
preface/

🎨 Screenprint of the title page to LANARK, by Gray & Murray Robertson

shop.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk/

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #Lanark

A coloured screenprint of a title page for LANARK: A Life in Four Books. The illustration contains dreamlike imagery against a background of stars and rushing clouds: at the very top, a black-and-white sketch of Glasgow tenements and streets; next to it, a strange figure, part woman, part tree, who is eating the apples that grow from her body; next to that, a hand reaches out of a stormy sea towards a golden sun. A monstrous, distorted mixture of a whale and an elephant, with human hands and breasts, is suckling two embracing figures: a blue man and a pink woman. Dominating the image is a blonde, blue-eyed woman, looking outwards. A thin, almost emaciated, monochrome male figure rises from the page of an open sketchbook. He holds a pencil and a set of dividers and is drawing a replica of his own face. On the sketchbook is written "For Andrew Gray and Morag McAlpine | Glasgow Print Studio | 2014"
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-01-30

GRAY DAY
25 Feb, Òran Mór, Glasgow – tickets £22.50

The annual celebration of all things Alasdair Gray from the @agrayarchive.bsky.social – with live readings, comedy performances, film screenings & more

thealasdairgrayarchive.org/eve

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay

25th February   Òran Mór   7–10 p.m.

The Alasdair Gray Archive

2025
GRAY DAY

a celebration of Alasdair Gray at 90 (an illustration by Alasdair Gray of a hand holding a pen inks in the zero of "90")

Supported by The Glasgow School of Art
GICF
Canongate
Glasgow 850
2024-10-04

There may be grey days, but it's better not to let the grey mood set in. Even on the darkest days, there are little things you can be happy about.

During our somewhat dreary workation in an icy January in South Tyrol, we didn't always feel like laughing. But the landscape and the small historic towns made every trip worthwhile.

#beAnywhere #Workation #SouthTyrol #Südtirol #Vinschgau #ValVenosta #GrayDay #GoodMood #HappyDay #JustSmile #Friday #smile #HappyFriday

Forest road through a bare larch forestStairs in the historic village centreArcades in a historic village centreSmiling despite the grey, gloomy mood
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2024-02-25

👆 The image illustrating the above article, if anyone doesn’t know it, is one part of a huge mural painted by Alasdair Gray over a number of years on the ceiling of the Òran Mór (formerly Kelvinside Parish Church), an arts & entertainment venue in Glasgow’s West End

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #mural #art

oran-mor.co.uk/arts-for-all/ce

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2024-02-25

Beyond POOR THINGS

Mazin Saleem’s Ode to Alasdair Gray’s Lesser-Known, Equally Deserving Books, Including a Gargantuan Retelling of the History of English Literature & a Bowdlerization of The Divine Comedy

@bookstodon

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #PoorThings

lithub.com/beyond-poor-things-

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