A recent exchange between Andrew Marr of the BBC and Alasdair Gray (verbatim);
Marr:
Alasdair, on the cover of one of your books you have in gold the words: 'Work as if you were living in the early days of a better nation'. And much of what you have done is trying to create a stronger sense of parts of that nation...a stronger sense of place.
(Pause)
Gray:
Oh, good. (Strangulated tone). I did not mean to. I just wanted to tell stories and make pictures that people would enjoy.
Marr:
And yet it's almost impossible to imagine your drawing and your – your – writing without your native city. I mean, you seem to be as rooted in Glasgow and Glasgow is as important for you as, you know, parts of Northern Ireland are for Seamus Heaney, or one could go on.
Gray:
(In a high pitch)
Or St Petersburg for Dostoevsky or Dickens for London! Yes, I'm perfectly ordinary that way!
After this disconcerting start, Mr Marr insists on digging an even bigger hole for himself. He asks Mr Gray about the origins of his style as an artist.
'Partly from Walt Disney and partly from the Beano and the Dandy comics,' comes the reply, 'and then every other artist who ever lived.'
Art college is written off with admirable candour: 'I just wanted to draw bare naked women'.
Is there anywhere left for this interview to go? It seems there is.
Marr:
This is a book of pictures. One of the many interesting parts of it is very early on you just show some of the many illustrated books that you grew up with as a child and it strikes me that we live now in a world of screens and television and so on, but the notion of gorgeously illustrated, carefully drawn and illustrated books has rather fallen out of the culture and this is a diminishment...
Gray:
(Adopting mock-American accent)
Yes! I can only agree with you, sirrr!
Marr:
I'm going to stop asking such long questions, and then we'll get some kind of answers.
Alasdair Gray has, however, given a perfectly reasonable answer to the question, if it was a question in the first place. Mr Marr has suggested that the passing of the tradition of illustrated books has been a diminishment of the culture and Mr Gray has agreed. What else is there to say? Mr Marr has answered the question himself, at some length, as interviewers do.
Mr Marr does then attempt to express himself more succinctly. He goes on to propose to Alasdair Gray that there had been a 'busy' world of writers and artists in Glasgow when the interviewee was making his way.
'I just wondered if that's faded a bit these days,' he adds helpfully.
Painful pause; clearing of throat.
'I don't think it was a busy scene at all. I knew a few folk. Not many. Only Archie Hind, and Betty Clark the playwright. Largely ignored.'
Well, the hapless interviewer persists, it must be better now for writers and artists. For once, Mr Gray is merciful. He agrees. Then adds: 'But every other industry in Scotland has been destroyed. Except tourism'. As for Scottish education, once the envy of the world, it exists now 'to get jobs for the clever boys in England'. He is looking at Mr Marr.
Way to go Sir Alasdair of Gray, say I.
<with thanks to Kenneth Roy's very excellent Scottish Review>