Seldom Speedy: February 2023

Friday, February 24, 2023

Rereading Lanark

The except below is from the novel Lanark by Alasdair Gray chapter 36, pages 409-411 . Despite the warnings on the copyright page of that book, I'm reprinting this excerpt. Alasdair is dead now and I know he wouldn't object and if Harcourt Brace thinks that suing an old man in Superior, Wisconsin for drumming up a bit more interest in a book they've let slip out of print then they are bigger fools than me. And quoting a brief except in the context of a review is fair use. My review is this: Lanark is a fine, though-provoking book and more people should read it.

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Lanark sat on a seat near the fire. Grant's voice offended him. It was loud, penetrating and clearly used to addressing crowds without help from the equipment which lets a man talk softly to millions. Lanark said, "Where's Polyphemus?"

"Eh?"

"I heard that someone called Polyphemus was here." Grant grinned and said, "I'm here all right. Smollet calls me that."

"Why?"

"Polyphemus was a one-eyed ogre in an old story. I keep reminding the committee of a fact they want to forget, so they say I have only one way of seeing things."

"What fact is that?"

"None of them are makers."

"Do you mean workers?"

"No, I mean makers. Many hard workers make nothing but wealth. They don't produce food, fuel, shelter or helpful ideas; their work is just a way of tightening their grip on folk who do."

"What do you make?"

"Homes. I'm a shop steward with the Volstat Mohome group."

Lanark said thoughtfully, "These groups ---Volstat, Algolagnics and so on --- are they what people call the creature?"

"Some of us call it that. The council is financed by it. So is the institute. So it likes to call itself the foundation."

"I'm sick of these big vague names that power keeps hiding behind," said Lanark impatiently.

"So you prefer not to think of them," said Grant, nodding amiably. "That's typical of intellectuals. The institute has bought and sold you so often that you're ashamed to name your masters."

"I have no masters. I hate the institute. I don't even like the council."

"But it helped you come here, so it still has a use for you."

"Blethers!" cried Lanark. "People usually help each other if they can do it without troubling themselves much."

"Try a cigarette," said Grant, offering a packet. He had grown friendlier as Lanark grew angrier.

"Thank you, I don't smoke," said Lanark, cooling a little.

A while later Lanark said, "Would you tell me exactly what the creature is?"

"A conspiracy which owns and manipulates everything for profit."

"Are you talking about the wealthy?"

"Yes, but not the wealthy in coins and banknotes-that sort of wealth is only coloured beads to keep the makers servile. The owners and manipulators have smarter ways of banking energy. They pay themselves with time: time to think and plan, time to examine necessity from a distance."

An old man leaning on a stick and a dark young man with a turban entered and stood talking quietly by the pillar. Grant's loud voice had been even and passionless, but suddenly he said, "What I hate most is their conceit. Their institute breaks whole populations into winners and losers and calls itself culture. Their council destroys every way of life which doesn't bring them a profit and calls itself government. They pretend culture and government are supremely independent powers when they are nothing but gloves on the hands of Volstat and Quantum, Cortexin and Algolagnics. And they really think they are the foundation. They believe their greed holds up the continents. They don't call it greed, of course, they call it profit, or (among themselves, where they don't need to fool anyone) killings. They're sure that only their profit allows people to make and eat things."

"Maybe that's true."

"Yes, because they make it true. But it isn't necessary. Old men remember when the makers unexpectedly produced enough for everyone. No crop failed, no mine was exhausted, no machinery broke down, but the creature dumped mountains of food in the ocean because the hungry couldn't pay a profitable price for it, and the shoemaker's children went shoeless because their father had made too many shoes. And the makers accepted this as though it was an earthquake! They refused to see they could make what they needed for each other and to hell with profit. They would have seen in the end, they would have had to see, if the council had not gone to war."

"How did that help?"

"As the creature couldn't stay rich by selling necessary things to the folk who made them it sold destructive things to the council. Then the war started and the destructive things were used to wreck the necessary things. The creature profited by replacing both."

"Who did the council fight?"

"It split in two and fought itself."

"That's suicide!"

"No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation."

"I refuse to believe men kill each other just to make their enemies rich."

"How can men recognize their real enemies when their family, schools and work teach them to struggle with each other and to believe law and decency come from the teachers?"

"My son won't be taught that," said Lanark firmly.

"You have a son?"

"Not yet."

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