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Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers
Men in Love, like The Arabian Nights, is about a storyteller whose stories contain other stories. As in Alasdair Gray`s Lanark, 1982 Janine, Poor Things, and The Book of Prefaces, this one has many styles of narrative and location. Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset mingle with Britain under the New Labour Party, viewed from the West End of Glasgow. More than 50% is fact and the rest possible, but must be read to be believed.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
18 people are currently reading
307 people want to read
About the author
Alasdair Gray
97 books896 followersAlasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.
His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced it. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Chris Kelso and Iain Banks. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979, and professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities from 2001 to 2003.
Gray was a civic nationalist and a republican, and wrote supporting socialism and Scottish independence. He popularised the epigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" (taken from a poem by Canadian poet Dennis Leigh) which was engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004. He lived almost all his life in Glasgow, married twice, and had one son. On his death The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".
He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.
His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced it. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Chris Kelso and Iain Banks. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979, and professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities from 2001 to 2003.
Gray was a civic nationalist and a republican, and wrote supporting socialism and Scottish independence. He popularised the epigram "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" (taken from a poem by Canadian poet Dennis Leigh) which was engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh when it opened in 2004. He lived almost all his life in Glasgow, married twice, and had one son. On his death The Guardian referred to him as "the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art".
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 15, 2013
Who said If you can't make your novel great at least make it peculiar? I don't recall. Anyway, that appears to be the modus operandi in Alasdair Gray's Old Men In Love. John Tunnock, a retired Glaswegian school teacher, has been found murdered in his Glasgow home and the crime is unsolved when his nearest relative is tracked down in Beverly Hills, California, and bequeathed a modest legacy. It includes Tunnock's house and numerous miscellaneous writings. A fictional Alasdair Gray is consulted as to the proper disposition of the manuscripts and advises the legatee to publish them all in a single volume, despite the fact that they are a pastiche of many projects worked on by Tunnock over a many years. Is this a novel? I think that's the question Gray wishes to ask. Gray does make an attempt to piece it all together through his "editing." And it is readable. I did finish it despite one or two tedious stretches. There are some excellent pages. It's the structure I'm not crazy about.
The book reads very much like what it is purported to be: a grab bag of miscellaneous writings. These focus on (1) Pericles and ancient Athens, (2) Fra Fillipo Lippi and Renaissance Florence, (3) the rise and gradual eclipse of Victorian-era religious fraud Henry James Prince, (4) extracts from the late Tunnock's diaries and (5) other bouncy bits. Gray as editor makes an occassional marginal comment in blue ink. The only part I had to fight through (a little) was the overlong section on Henry James Prince, a millenarian like many others but with his own peculiarly sleazoid take on the Second Coming. Like other books by Gray, including the masterwork Lanark, the novel gives one a glimpse of present-day Glasgow. The book itself is a nice production. I have the UK edition (Bloombury) which was printed in Italy (acid-free paper?) and bound with sewn signatures (who still does that?) in elaborately embossed faux-buckram boards. Recommended for those who love Gray. Not his best book despite some fine writing. Newcomers should start with Lanark.
The book reads very much like what it is purported to be: a grab bag of miscellaneous writings. These focus on (1) Pericles and ancient Athens, (2) Fra Fillipo Lippi and Renaissance Florence, (3) the rise and gradual eclipse of Victorian-era religious fraud Henry James Prince, (4) extracts from the late Tunnock's diaries and (5) other bouncy bits. Gray as editor makes an occassional marginal comment in blue ink. The only part I had to fight through (a little) was the overlong section on Henry James Prince, a millenarian like many others but with his own peculiarly sleazoid take on the Second Coming. Like other books by Gray, including the masterwork Lanark, the novel gives one a glimpse of present-day Glasgow. The book itself is a nice production. I have the UK edition (Bloombury) which was printed in Italy (acid-free paper?) and bound with sewn signatures (who still does that?) in elaborately embossed faux-buckram boards. Recommended for those who love Gray. Not his best book despite some fine writing. Newcomers should start with Lanark.
July 31, 2012
I read this since my undiagnosed obsessive-compulsiveness towards canon completion (or oeuvre overdoing) bade me do it. Do you see. No question mark. There was simply no way, having read eighteen other books by Alasdair Gray, and sampled two others, plus a biography, I wasn’t going to read Old Men in Love, his last novel. Illogical. In this universe, in this incarnation of me I was always going to read Old Men in Love at some point. Kismet. Geddit. No question mark. My verdict is really irrelevant here, since what I should be reviewing is the book in relation to the others in my OCD canon completion experience. How did this, as the nineteenth book in my reading order, match up to the other five or six I read through blind loyalty to an author I cherished in my late teens? Answer: matches up swell. Old Men in Love is a cunning cut-and-paste exercise by a master of the half-arsed-but-beautifully-designed last-minuter. As Gray’s self-annihilating alter ego Sidney Workman writes in the afterword, the novel comprises bits culled from old TV plays, dreary historical narratives, and previously published articles on politics and place. The whole thing is an A+ exercise in suturing old bits and passing it off as an At Swim-Two-Birds or If on a winter’s night a traveller-style exercise in stops-and-starts frames-within-frames and yada yada. Gray has been looting the avant-garde for most of his career, and since most Scottish readers have never heard of the postmodern authors he steals from he’s held up as an original in this naive land. So this is not a novel. The individual bits work together quite well. The Tunnock sex fantasies are silly. I had to skip the Socratic dialogue and parts of the religious narrative. Bits are merely Gray chatting to himself. Anywho. I am almost finished with Gray. One left. G’night.
July 30, 2011
Gray's fiction can mostly be divided in two: those based on plays written in the 60s and 70s (The History Maker, McGrotty and Ludmilla, Agnes Belfridge, Something Leather) and that written fresh (Lanark, Poor Things, 1982 Janine). As a rule, the latter is always much better and fresher. Old Men in Love is different, consisting of three long sections adapted from earlier plays, enveloped in a conceipt that they're the writings of John Tunnock (as in the nice teacakes) and gathered together and edited by Gray, contained within diary entries and letters of Tunnock on his way to meeting a bad end at the hand of business acquaintances of his drug dealing girlfriend.
Any new fiction from Gray is a pleasure - I should know, I edited a book about him for the British Library - but as might be expected this is a mixed bag. The Socrates and Renaissance Italy sections are all in Gray's own voice and interesting but hardly groundbreaking, but the section on the messianic Victorian preacher Henry James Prince and the Lampeter Brethren setting up their apocalypse colony in Somerset is among the very best Gray has written since Poor Things in the early 90s. So, all in all, very enjoyable, but not essential reading for fans of gray - wait for his combined art history / autobiography to be published next year.
Any new fiction from Gray is a pleasure - I should know, I edited a book about him for the British Library - but as might be expected this is a mixed bag. The Socrates and Renaissance Italy sections are all in Gray's own voice and interesting but hardly groundbreaking, but the section on the messianic Victorian preacher Henry James Prince and the Lampeter Brethren setting up their apocalypse colony in Somerset is among the very best Gray has written since Poor Things in the early 90s. So, all in all, very enjoyable, but not essential reading for fans of gray - wait for his combined art history / autobiography to be published next year.
March 9, 2012
It is not a novel, no matter how Will Self starts his "short review" on the dust jacket. Alasdair Gray's book Old Men in Love is, instead, a hodgepodge of loosely-connected fragments, all (or almost all) ostensibly from the pen of the departed John Sim Tunnock, a Glaswegian schoolteacher and would-be author. Gray is merely the editor, the assembler, of these fragments—or such is the conceit, anyway.
The fragments presented are primarily historical fictions, whose settings range from Periclean Athens and Renaissance Italy to the largest and least digestible portion of the book which was, for me, the section on the Belovéd Henry James Prince, an apostate Anglican priest who lived in 19th Century England and who was told by an entirely too typical sort of God that he must, among other things, accumulate a number of young and submissive wives. This turns out to be not nearly as titillating as an old man in love might hope or expect.
These historical fictions are tied together with excerpts from Tunnock's diary, which show him to be another old man in love, although the object of that love seems primarily to be himself—various young women do show up in these sections, and are variously involved with John, but none of them seems especially loving or lovable. After Tunnock's abrupt demise, the specifics of which are only hinted at, the book ends with a snarky epilogue directed at Gray, from the pen of one Sidney Workman (who is another of Gray's alter egos, of course, although Google does ask me on its first page of results, "Did you know Sidney Workman's criminal history is searchable?").
The book itself is an interesting physical artifact, as Gray's hand-designed volumes tend to be. Its several unusual features include spelling that's idiosyncratic even for Gray; words like "advize" appear frequently. The text sometimes gives the appearance of having been transcribed verbatim from Tunnock's diaries, which I'm sure was the intent. There are also numerous illustrations and hand-drawn visual separators from Gray's own pen. The use of blue text in explanatory side notes, instead of footnotes or endnotes, is another quirk, although unfortunately the lower-contrast ink and positioning of these made them easier for me to overlook; I kept having to go back and seek them out. Also, the bulk of Old Men in Love was typeset in Zapf Optima (or a very similar font—I'll admit I don't have a reliable eye for such distinctions, and I could not find a note on the type itself). Optima is a very distinctive style, nominally sans serif but with subtle swellings at the terminals of each letter; it's usually used for signs and its use at such lengths as here is vanishingly rare.
The most compelling part of the book for me was the playlet concerning the trial of Socrates; Gray (I mean Tunnock, of course) vividly evokes the method that bears Socrates' name in humorous and world-weary ways, as the Athenians against him rush to judgment. But that's a small part and comes late in the book. On the whole, I did not enjoy reading Old Men in Love all that much, despite my high general opinion of Gray's work; perhaps this one was too much of a memento mori for me to be thoroughly entertained. However... here's a part of Will Self's brief review that is manifestly true:
The fragments presented are primarily historical fictions, whose settings range from Periclean Athens and Renaissance Italy to the largest and least digestible portion of the book which was, for me, the section on the Belovéd Henry James Prince, an apostate Anglican priest who lived in 19th Century England and who was told by an entirely too typical sort of God that he must, among other things, accumulate a number of young and submissive wives. This turns out to be not nearly as titillating as an old man in love might hope or expect.
These historical fictions are tied together with excerpts from Tunnock's diary, which show him to be another old man in love, although the object of that love seems primarily to be himself—various young women do show up in these sections, and are variously involved with John, but none of them seems especially loving or lovable. After Tunnock's abrupt demise, the specifics of which are only hinted at, the book ends with a snarky epilogue directed at Gray, from the pen of one Sidney Workman (who is another of Gray's alter egos, of course, although Google does ask me on its first page of results, "Did you know Sidney Workman's criminal history is searchable?").
The book itself is an interesting physical artifact, as Gray's hand-designed volumes tend to be. Its several unusual features include spelling that's idiosyncratic even for Gray; words like "advize" appear frequently. The text sometimes gives the appearance of having been transcribed verbatim from Tunnock's diaries, which I'm sure was the intent. There are also numerous illustrations and hand-drawn visual separators from Gray's own pen. The use of blue text in explanatory side notes, instead of footnotes or endnotes, is another quirk, although unfortunately the lower-contrast ink and positioning of these made them easier for me to overlook; I kept having to go back and seek them out. Also, the bulk of Old Men in Love was typeset in Zapf Optima (or a very similar font—I'll admit I don't have a reliable eye for such distinctions, and I could not find a note on the type itself). Optima is a very distinctive style, nominally sans serif but with subtle swellings at the terminals of each letter; it's usually used for signs and its use at such lengths as here is vanishingly rare.
The most compelling part of the book for me was the playlet concerning the trial of Socrates; Gray (I mean Tunnock, of course) vividly evokes the method that bears Socrates' name in humorous and world-weary ways, as the Athenians against him rush to judgment. But that's a small part and comes late in the book. On the whole, I did not enjoy reading Old Men in Love all that much, despite my high general opinion of Gray's work; perhaps this one was too much of a memento mori for me to be thoroughly entertained. However... here's a part of Will Self's brief review that is manifestly true:
"...Alasdair Gray remains, first and foremost, entirely sui generis. He's the very best Alasdair Gray that we have, and we should cherish his works accordingly."
January 6, 2023
I’m keeping this here because I fear I’ll be leaving this book in Glasgow (home turf, [printed in Italy]): “One beginning and ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and interrelated only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.”
—At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
This quoted at the front of the book. Good advice. Alasdair’s writers brain works so well for it. I want to think he outlines but there are those surreal jilting paths one finds in ‘Lanark’ that means it can’t be a guarantee.
Saturday, 28th of April mentioned—Yes! My birthday in an Alasdair Gray book. This semi/-extension of A.G. dies on my birthday. (Death’s scythe bears the words “so it goes.”) I remember seeing a movie featuring the date I arrived in London during this trip which also gave me pleasure—13th June.
This historical scene of Greco soldiers is quite abrasive and simple in the social politics. Not as interesting as ‘Janine’ or ‘Lanark.’ But rehash it, Alasdair, for as much as you were capable of, more the better.
The idea that money might be pumped into the relatively small military populace by the rich when war threatens them. Only for those militarised humans to be as threatened by capitalism not only with their life but by being a brainwashed piece of “The Many.”
A quick whimsical mind blowing origin of the species. Those little guys!
Talked with Sorcha about how grand ‘Lanark’ would be to adapt. ‘Old Men in Love’ would do well in an 80s Peter Greenaway production.
The subversion of structure isn’t completely random. There’s always an excuse. As in ‘Something Leather’ when the author suddenly talks explicitly for a chapter, mainly about the context of the existence of the book.
Had a love-hate experience with the book. Often bored by the historical plain politics, he shied away from the interesting action of the situations. But the Tunnack diaries are wonderful.
Something I wrote hoping for the AG Archive to have some use of:
It seems only natural that each city should have an Alasdair Gray. Only that he is a miracle artist. Not once in a city, but one in a billion. The conditions of a human life are ruinously infinite. To beat the odds of being born with enough imagination, to see character in all things, and perception for narrative. To be as singular as A.G. Where one child might prosper in one such area, another’s vision dies off before they reach anything significant.
In this laborious world.
Even though Glasgow is a key part to Alasdair’s writings he is one of the artists with individual fascinations. Seeing the world through a nondescript encyclopaedia, and universal fables, mixed with the social dramedy of local family and friends. Minds built on the intangible, or things as widespread as flora and fauna. Urban and pastoral. These contrasts of nature and society. Social structures that, boiled down, exist everywhere.
Another reason it’d be hard to find such a storyteller, one cultured by a locale, is that, now, many of us grow up surrounded by the rest of the world.
Film imports might’ve given the vision of America in Glasgow through Alasdair’s youth. This century has all sorts of media imports, and the internet—images of other places, mottled stimulus for the imagination, and a dream to see it all, become worldly. Maybe the world would’ve had more Alasdair Grays if I hadn’t been able to find this Canongate book in a Wellington, New Zealand suburb. If storytelling had always been regional.
Up until recently all I knew intimately was New Zealand life, aside from in stories, movies and books (mostly imported from the EU and US). At the time I found ‘Lanark’ in a random thrift shop I was looking for a whimsical fantasy with a grander perspective than ‘Harry Potter.’ The Glasgow Alasdair presented was sooty, British, political, comforting; dramatic in all these ways. Staying in London, midsummer, with a week’s accommodation booked and hostel’s prices rising, an overnight bus was the cheapest option. I hesitated because the only expectations on Glasgow came from a short stack of books. It was the best travel decision I made for 6 months in that continent. I went on to spend almost a third of those six in Scotland.
To pursue him in Glasgow as it is now is not as familiar. I craved to see mid 20th century Glasgow life. Certainly sections and the grander old architecture with its adornments, inspirations for drawings, and a way to see the human form, in stone; cartoonish; mature or cherub-like. Alasdair’s remaining murals are great. A piece of his world.
Touristry wasn’t on the minds of working class Britain post-WWII. Interested in a better job, but not too far from home. In the mid-late 2000s I was swept up in children’s fiction and the movies. Though Christchurch was as wonderful a background as any (lack of old architecture hindered it).
Alasdair references writing philosophies he exemplifies. Robert Graves’ ‘Devil’s Advice to Storytellers’ and ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O'Brien. Experimental writing—the act of embodying Glasgow, and himself in fiction. Experimentation that isn’t a science. It isn’t the attempt to write a novel omitting words with the letter “i.” To experiment like that for the sake of it isn’t a misdeed, but look at chemists who blow their fingers off with unidentified gunpowder. A second hand science report doesn’t imbue one with the same passion as one’s life story, adapted to fiction, does.
New Zealand has always felt wrong in literature. Poetry about local spots jilts me. Fiction set in nearby suburbs. It’s too close, and used incidentally. They don’t divine any romance from these places. Alasdair sees the romance in Glasgow and its people. With a little thought I’m sure I could nail what makes Wellington magic. But the rest of the world looks cinematic from here. Housing crisis and greedy supermarkets aren’t my idea of fun subject matter. But these issues have their characters of deluded whimsy, even the politicians who perpetuate these issues.
And here’s R. Graves’ ‘Devil’s Advice to Storytellers’ to have them conveniently close:
“Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue,
Keep probability-some say-in view.
But my advice to story-tellers is:
Weigh out no gross possibilities,
Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of
Known instances of virtue, crime or love.
To forge a picture that will pass for true,
Do conscientiously what liars do-
Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid
The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps
That may shake down into a world, perhaps;
People this world, by chance created so,
With random persons who you do not know-
The teashop sort, or travelers in a train
Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;
Let the erratic course they steer surprise
Their own and your own and their readers’ eyes;
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (As in despair)
Motive and end and moral in the air;
Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.
—At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
This quoted at the front of the book. Good advice. Alasdair’s writers brain works so well for it. I want to think he outlines but there are those surreal jilting paths one finds in ‘Lanark’ that means it can’t be a guarantee.
Saturday, 28th of April mentioned—Yes! My birthday in an Alasdair Gray book. This semi/-extension of A.G. dies on my birthday. (Death’s scythe bears the words “so it goes.”) I remember seeing a movie featuring the date I arrived in London during this trip which also gave me pleasure—13th June.
This historical scene of Greco soldiers is quite abrasive and simple in the social politics. Not as interesting as ‘Janine’ or ‘Lanark.’ But rehash it, Alasdair, for as much as you were capable of, more the better.
The idea that money might be pumped into the relatively small military populace by the rich when war threatens them. Only for those militarised humans to be as threatened by capitalism not only with their life but by being a brainwashed piece of “The Many.”
A quick whimsical mind blowing origin of the species. Those little guys!
Talked with Sorcha about how grand ‘Lanark’ would be to adapt. ‘Old Men in Love’ would do well in an 80s Peter Greenaway production.
The subversion of structure isn’t completely random. There’s always an excuse. As in ‘Something Leather’ when the author suddenly talks explicitly for a chapter, mainly about the context of the existence of the book.
Had a love-hate experience with the book. Often bored by the historical plain politics, he shied away from the interesting action of the situations. But the Tunnack diaries are wonderful.
Something I wrote hoping for the AG Archive to have some use of:
It seems only natural that each city should have an Alasdair Gray. Only that he is a miracle artist. Not once in a city, but one in a billion. The conditions of a human life are ruinously infinite. To beat the odds of being born with enough imagination, to see character in all things, and perception for narrative. To be as singular as A.G. Where one child might prosper in one such area, another’s vision dies off before they reach anything significant.
In this laborious world.
Even though Glasgow is a key part to Alasdair’s writings he is one of the artists with individual fascinations. Seeing the world through a nondescript encyclopaedia, and universal fables, mixed with the social dramedy of local family and friends. Minds built on the intangible, or things as widespread as flora and fauna. Urban and pastoral. These contrasts of nature and society. Social structures that, boiled down, exist everywhere.
Another reason it’d be hard to find such a storyteller, one cultured by a locale, is that, now, many of us grow up surrounded by the rest of the world.
Film imports might’ve given the vision of America in Glasgow through Alasdair’s youth. This century has all sorts of media imports, and the internet—images of other places, mottled stimulus for the imagination, and a dream to see it all, become worldly. Maybe the world would’ve had more Alasdair Grays if I hadn’t been able to find this Canongate book in a Wellington, New Zealand suburb. If storytelling had always been regional.
Up until recently all I knew intimately was New Zealand life, aside from in stories, movies and books (mostly imported from the EU and US). At the time I found ‘Lanark’ in a random thrift shop I was looking for a whimsical fantasy with a grander perspective than ‘Harry Potter.’ The Glasgow Alasdair presented was sooty, British, political, comforting; dramatic in all these ways. Staying in London, midsummer, with a week’s accommodation booked and hostel’s prices rising, an overnight bus was the cheapest option. I hesitated because the only expectations on Glasgow came from a short stack of books. It was the best travel decision I made for 6 months in that continent. I went on to spend almost a third of those six in Scotland.
To pursue him in Glasgow as it is now is not as familiar. I craved to see mid 20th century Glasgow life. Certainly sections and the grander old architecture with its adornments, inspirations for drawings, and a way to see the human form, in stone; cartoonish; mature or cherub-like. Alasdair’s remaining murals are great. A piece of his world.
Touristry wasn’t on the minds of working class Britain post-WWII. Interested in a better job, but not too far from home. In the mid-late 2000s I was swept up in children’s fiction and the movies. Though Christchurch was as wonderful a background as any (lack of old architecture hindered it).
Alasdair references writing philosophies he exemplifies. Robert Graves’ ‘Devil’s Advice to Storytellers’ and ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O'Brien. Experimental writing—the act of embodying Glasgow, and himself in fiction. Experimentation that isn’t a science. It isn’t the attempt to write a novel omitting words with the letter “i.” To experiment like that for the sake of it isn’t a misdeed, but look at chemists who blow their fingers off with unidentified gunpowder. A second hand science report doesn’t imbue one with the same passion as one’s life story, adapted to fiction, does.
New Zealand has always felt wrong in literature. Poetry about local spots jilts me. Fiction set in nearby suburbs. It’s too close, and used incidentally. They don’t divine any romance from these places. Alasdair sees the romance in Glasgow and its people. With a little thought I’m sure I could nail what makes Wellington magic. But the rest of the world looks cinematic from here. Housing crisis and greedy supermarkets aren’t my idea of fun subject matter. But these issues have their characters of deluded whimsy, even the politicians who perpetuate these issues.
And here’s R. Graves’ ‘Devil’s Advice to Storytellers’ to have them conveniently close:
“Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue,
Keep probability-some say-in view.
But my advice to story-tellers is:
Weigh out no gross possibilities,
Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of
Known instances of virtue, crime or love.
To forge a picture that will pass for true,
Do conscientiously what liars do-
Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid
The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps
That may shake down into a world, perhaps;
People this world, by chance created so,
With random persons who you do not know-
The teashop sort, or travelers in a train
Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;
Let the erratic course they steer surprise
Their own and your own and their readers’ eyes;
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (As in despair)
Motive and end and moral in the air;
Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.
February 16, 2024
What a pleasure this was to read.
April 13, 2025
Алистър Грей и неговите „Стари влюбени мъже“: https://knigolandia.info/stari-vliube...
Още в началото авторът ни запраща в посока Глазгоу, едно никак безопасно място за Европа, но пък направо прилично спрямо американските стандарти, където един необикновен покойник, пенсионираният учител Джон Тънок, е оставил творби, които може би заслужават посмъртно издаване. Но… „Нито едно държащо на името си издателство нямало да се заеме с издаването на работата на автор, който е едновременно неизвестен, шотландец и покойник“, както отсъжда правдиво Грей, и скоро вмъква самия себе си като герой, който се наема с нелеката задача да сглоби в едно дневника, личните записки, откъсите от исторически романи на Тънок, обединени от централната тема за влюбените мъже. Както ще разберем, учителят е искал да напише „голям исторически триптих, или трилогия, посветена на любовта, секса, парите, изкуството, политиката и всичко останало“, като три основни времеви момента са привличали вниманието му.
Издателство "Еднорог"
https://knigolandia.info/stari-vliube...
Още в началото авторът ни запраща в посока Глазгоу, едно никак безопасно място за Европа, но пък направо прилично спрямо американските стандарти, където един необикновен покойник, пенсионираният учител Джон Тънок, е оставил творби, които може би заслужават посмъртно издаване. Но… „Нито едно държащо на името си издателство нямало да се заеме с издаването на работата на автор, който е едновременно неизвестен, шотландец и покойник“, както отсъжда правдиво Грей, и скоро вмъква самия себе си като герой, който се наема с нелеката задача да сглоби в едно дневника, личните записки, откъсите от исторически романи на Тънок, обединени от централната тема за влюбените мъже. Както ще разберем, учителят е искал да напише „голям исторически триптих, или трилогия, посветена на любовта, секса, парите, изкуството, политиката и всичко останало“, като три основни времеви момента са привличали вниманието му.
Издателство "Еднорог"
https://knigolandia.info/stari-vliube...
June 12, 2010
Eh. Lanark was great, and this book in the realist memoirs section and the diaries of the main character is still really vibrant. Even Gray's typical framing devices -- the meta-referential "criticism" pointing out that the book is largely recycled (and that pointing that out is in itself criticism deflection), the notes, the gorgeous design, the real people mingling with the fictional -- all this has its charm. But the historical fictions that are the book's ostensible driving force are frankly exquisitely dull. The long long sections on Periclean Athens and Victorian religious mania are almost mind numbing. The disquisitions on the history of Scottish literature are interesting enough to me, b/c I studied the subject long enough ago to like to meet old friends in this way, but would seem outrageously trite to anyone versed in the subject or impossibly boring to someone without a modicum of background.
Disappointing!
Disappointing!
January 28, 2024
I think a large part of my not hating this book is just that it's pretty, and because every so often there's a really good line. Though my overall impression was just "is this really the state of Scottish socialism?". No, but the lampshadey criticisms woven in really want you to think it's radical.
September 12, 2020
In Old Men in Love – the Posthumous Papers of John Tunnock, Alasdair Gray launches his craft on the unpredictable waters of metafiction. At times it is hard to see how he will arrive on the opposite shore, however, what emerges is a volume abounding in surprise and with an intellectual and playful fecundity which captured the imagination of this reader until the last full stop. The book poses as material edited by Gray himself and is provided with a brusque and rather offhand introduction by John Tunnock’s surviving relative who inherits his Glasgow abode following his sudden death. Is this death murder or just an unfortunate accident? This latter outcome would of course cause the glamorous sheen of a tragic destiny to become dull and stale as many real lives seem always threatening to be.
Tunnock is engaged on a mighty socio-historical examination which is by turns fictional but also concerned to be truthful and replete with authentic detail. This work spans the centuries of human endeavour from the Greeks through to the nineteenth century, exploring its male protagonists in relation to their love of women or God and their fraught relationship with the state that can either support or thwart their visions and passions. Tunnock is a Socialist and his hopes and ideals alternately flare and fizzle within these pages as his personal life and troubles influence and waylay his literary pursuits.
It is in many ways a referential work whose loops and digressions and sly, quirky narrator bring to mind Sterne and his Tristram Shandy. In part of Tunnock’s writings, there is an outrageous excursion into world history that has some bravura, recalling in a wriiten form, the bizarre fondly imagined visions of Disney’s Fantasia or that sudden appearance of the dinosaurs in Terrence Malick’s deeply felt philosophical film The Tree of Life.
Above and beyond all this, the implicit consideration of the meaning of fiction in the presentation of this story asks the reader ongoing questions about his or her relationship to the author, the story and the truth it seeks to represent. As Tunnock seeks to shape his own experience in encounters with history in his novel/treatise and his own circumstances in an intermittent diary, so Gray shapes the work of art that emerges and engages with truth beyond its self-imposed boundaries , thus conditioning our reactions through a sleight-of-hand that deceives and makes us aware of shifting dimensions much as trompe-l’oeil technique operates in the domain of painting.
An appreciation of truth and how problematical it is to locate seems to lurk behind the unruly architecture of this work. There is a poignancy at the close when the fates of Tunnock and Socrates whose trial he reproduces seem aligned in a desperate idealism of knowledge-seeking and a quest for freedom beyond the system and the conventions, an idealism, which their different world’s implacably oppose.
Tunnock is engaged on a mighty socio-historical examination which is by turns fictional but also concerned to be truthful and replete with authentic detail. This work spans the centuries of human endeavour from the Greeks through to the nineteenth century, exploring its male protagonists in relation to their love of women or God and their fraught relationship with the state that can either support or thwart their visions and passions. Tunnock is a Socialist and his hopes and ideals alternately flare and fizzle within these pages as his personal life and troubles influence and waylay his literary pursuits.
It is in many ways a referential work whose loops and digressions and sly, quirky narrator bring to mind Sterne and his Tristram Shandy. In part of Tunnock’s writings, there is an outrageous excursion into world history that has some bravura, recalling in a wriiten form, the bizarre fondly imagined visions of Disney’s Fantasia or that sudden appearance of the dinosaurs in Terrence Malick’s deeply felt philosophical film The Tree of Life.
Above and beyond all this, the implicit consideration of the meaning of fiction in the presentation of this story asks the reader ongoing questions about his or her relationship to the author, the story and the truth it seeks to represent. As Tunnock seeks to shape his own experience in encounters with history in his novel/treatise and his own circumstances in an intermittent diary, so Gray shapes the work of art that emerges and engages with truth beyond its self-imposed boundaries , thus conditioning our reactions through a sleight-of-hand that deceives and makes us aware of shifting dimensions much as trompe-l’oeil technique operates in the domain of painting.
An appreciation of truth and how problematical it is to locate seems to lurk behind the unruly architecture of this work. There is a poignancy at the close when the fates of Tunnock and Socrates whose trial he reproduces seem aligned in a desperate idealism of knowledge-seeking and a quest for freedom beyond the system and the conventions, an idealism, which their different world’s implacably oppose.
February 6, 2019
Oh dear, Gray is one of my favorite all-time novelists and story writers, and much of this is quite good, but the lengthy part on Henry James Prince and his cult of pseudo-Anglican egotism is unbearable. I get Gray's point, but you needed a very critical editor on this one. (The physical book itself is gorgeously illustrated, as always.). Read "Unlikely Stories, Mostly", "Janine, 1982", "Poor Things", "Something Leather"...all of which I'd recommend to anyone who loves fiction. Gray likes to take earlier small pieces -- short stories, screenplays, stage plays, essays, political polemics -- and combine them into novels. This tme it didn't work. Nonetheless, dear old Alasdair, WRITE MORE!
August 26, 2020
This took me a while to get through. It had feelings of other books by Gray, namely ‘Lanark’ which I liked and is hailed as a Scottish modern masterpiece, and ‘Poor Things’.
My senses of this were due to various stories within one novel that had very little connection to each other, dragged on relentlessly and were set up by being ‘found-writings’ from a random person in Scotland.
I felt I should finish it and the parts where the main writer writes about himself was interesting, his story of Ancient Greece was interesting too.
The story about the new church in England felt very dull and I didn’t feel I got much from it.
An Epilogue was included which is very interesting to read and possibly I should have read this before the book as it lists praises for the author, from a person known to the author, as well as clear criticisms with the last sentence saying ‘don’t read this book’.
I believe this to be Gray’s last novel and I feel it is a shame as a few of his I’ve read; I absolutely love his artwork and would hang some in my home if I got any. I visited an exhibition of his work twice in Glasgow which was fascinating.
His artwork is incredibly detailed and beautiful whereas his writing seems to just be not exactly nonsense but lacking any thought-provoking or keen interest from my part.
As the Epilogue states, there have now become a few Scottish authors that have garnered a very huge following due to their stories being much more able to be engaged. Namely these being Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh, alongside day Christopher Brookmyre and Ian Rankin. That being said Gray’s topics in the novels I’ve read (even the short stories) are very different to any other writing I’ve read and so maybe it’s just not getting much public appeal and not enough people engage with what he writes and how he writes.
My senses of this were due to various stories within one novel that had very little connection to each other, dragged on relentlessly and were set up by being ‘found-writings’ from a random person in Scotland.
I felt I should finish it and the parts where the main writer writes about himself was interesting, his story of Ancient Greece was interesting too.
The story about the new church in England felt very dull and I didn’t feel I got much from it.
An Epilogue was included which is very interesting to read and possibly I should have read this before the book as it lists praises for the author, from a person known to the author, as well as clear criticisms with the last sentence saying ‘don’t read this book’.
I believe this to be Gray’s last novel and I feel it is a shame as a few of his I’ve read; I absolutely love his artwork and would hang some in my home if I got any. I visited an exhibition of his work twice in Glasgow which was fascinating.
His artwork is incredibly detailed and beautiful whereas his writing seems to just be not exactly nonsense but lacking any thought-provoking or keen interest from my part.
As the Epilogue states, there have now become a few Scottish authors that have garnered a very huge following due to their stories being much more able to be engaged. Namely these being Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh, alongside day Christopher Brookmyre and Ian Rankin. That being said Gray’s topics in the novels I’ve read (even the short stories) are very different to any other writing I’ve read and so maybe it’s just not getting much public appeal and not enough people engage with what he writes and how he writes.
August 9, 2020
Truly one of the most disappointing books I have ever read, which pains me to say as Lanark is one of my all-time favourites. Born in a dusty lecture hall from an uncharismatic tutor, the story line is completely dull and frankly boring throughout. The punctuated visits to ancient times present frustratingly dull interactions, and the philosophical motivations are ultimately too buried in dust. The ‘present tale’ is the only point of interest and it’s moments are few and far between.
November 3, 2019
Ik kocht dit boek omdat ik in de aanloop naar een reis in Schotland toch iets van een Schotse auteur wou lezen. Prachtige uitgave in tweekleurendruk! Maar wat een zootje heeft die Alasdair Gray samengekrabbeld. Dit lijkt echt nergens op. Het gaat naar de rommelmarkt.
August 19, 2023
Alasdair Gray was a genius. This is his last book and his worst. It's meta to the max but is made out of such disparate parts that, ultimately, it fails to hold interest over 300 pages. Instead let me recommend his Lanark, often called Scotland's Ulysses. It's one of the great books.
July 19, 2024
I didn't fully understand everything, but I still had fun - will maybe attempt it again later
March 9, 2014
Alasdair Gray este un scriitor al carui romane sunt precum piersicile zemoase: lipicioase si delicioase.
Romanul Bătrâni îndrăgostiți este un exercițiu pe care Alasdair Gray îl încearcă pe cârca cititorului, exercițiu la care, trebuie să recunosc, am participat cu foarte multă plăcere. Pentru astfel de cărți mă bucură enorm de mult faptul că s-a inventat scrisul și că există scriitori precum sus numitul romancier scoțian. Alasdair Gray creează un melanj, culegând și folosind în roman fragmente întregi de la alți autori (Platon, Hepworth Dixon etc.) însă asta nu aduce nicidecum un deserviciu cărții, ba dimpotrivă, le oferă un aer de veridicitate lucrării și firii personajului John Tunnock pe care Gray îl creează.
John Tunnock este un bătrân care, ieșit la pensie, îsi încearcă talentul de scriitor, încercare la care suntem martori post-mortem. Jurnalul pe care John Tunnock îl scrie și care a încăput pe mâinile lui Alasdair Gray ne arată un bătrânel desfranat care, datorită unei relații cu o dilăriță de droguri, își află moartea înainte de terminarea proiectului său literar.
Ambiția lui John Tunnock este de a scrie un roman despre trei personaje, astfel încât să arate evoluția omenirii. Cele trei personaje principale sunt Socrate, fra Filippo și Henry James Prince.
Din păcate, moartea prematură a lui Tunnock îl împiedică pe acesta, precum pe mulți alții, să-și termine capodopera, în mâinile noastre ajungând capitole pe care acesta le-a scris când, bineînțeles, era încă în viață și nehotărât asupra versiunii finale a lucrării.
Un citat:
Un profesor către Tunnock: „ -Ești aici ca să înveți, nu să gândești. Ești bursier? (…) – Nu văd de ce impozitele plătite de mine ar susține un student care nu înțelege scopul universității.”
Restul recenziei: http://razvanvanfirescu.wordpress.com...
Romanul Bătrâni îndrăgostiți este un exercițiu pe care Alasdair Gray îl încearcă pe cârca cititorului, exercițiu la care, trebuie să recunosc, am participat cu foarte multă plăcere. Pentru astfel de cărți mă bucură enorm de mult faptul că s-a inventat scrisul și că există scriitori precum sus numitul romancier scoțian. Alasdair Gray creează un melanj, culegând și folosind în roman fragmente întregi de la alți autori (Platon, Hepworth Dixon etc.) însă asta nu aduce nicidecum un deserviciu cărții, ba dimpotrivă, le oferă un aer de veridicitate lucrării și firii personajului John Tunnock pe care Gray îl creează.
John Tunnock este un bătrân care, ieșit la pensie, îsi încearcă talentul de scriitor, încercare la care suntem martori post-mortem. Jurnalul pe care John Tunnock îl scrie și care a încăput pe mâinile lui Alasdair Gray ne arată un bătrânel desfranat care, datorită unei relații cu o dilăriță de droguri, își află moartea înainte de terminarea proiectului său literar.
Ambiția lui John Tunnock este de a scrie un roman despre trei personaje, astfel încât să arate evoluția omenirii. Cele trei personaje principale sunt Socrate, fra Filippo și Henry James Prince.
Din păcate, moartea prematură a lui Tunnock îl împiedică pe acesta, precum pe mulți alții, să-și termine capodopera, în mâinile noastre ajungând capitole pe care acesta le-a scris când, bineînțeles, era încă în viață și nehotărât asupra versiunii finale a lucrării.
Un citat:
Un profesor către Tunnock: „ -Ești aici ca să înveți, nu să gândești. Ești bursier? (…) – Nu văd de ce impozitele plătite de mine ar susține un student care nu înțelege scopul universității.”
Restul recenziei: http://razvanvanfirescu.wordpress.com...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 16, 2012
This was the last of Gray's more interesting novels that I hadn't read. In my opinion, he's written one masterpiece (Lanark), and one other great novel (Janine 1982), which is good without being on the same level. Old Men in Love is interesting but mostly reads as a collage of material that wouldn't necessarily be very interesting on its own, with the exception of the Socratic chapters, which I would have preferred to see fleshed out as a full novel and could have been a genuine contribution to his body of work. The whole thing had Gray's great narrative technique (the prose is still brisk and sharp, and the best sections have a sort of perfect ambiance), and while it's probably not as good as History Maker or Poor Things, it avoided the mistake those novels made of drowning a decent piece in unnecessary appendices. Until now I've mainly been interested in him as a novelist, but I'm thinking after this I might check out one of his short story collections as well. This novel feels like an attempt for him to get in his last thoughts on literature, socialism, etc, and while I would have appreciated something more ambitious--I think Gray is a genuinely great writer who, later in his career, simply hasn't tried hard enough--it's still worth checking out for people interested in his work.
June 29, 2015
No financial arrangement is ever flawless. - Lady Sara Sim-Jaegar, Introduction, Pg. 2
They love their messes like cats that have not been housetrained so claim a new territory by pissing over it. - Tunnock's Diary 2001, Pg. 9
"Nature has created many men who are small and insignificant in appearance but who are endowed with spirits so full of greatness and hearts of such boundless courage that they have no peace until they undertake difficult and almost impossible tasks and bring them to completion, to the astonishment of those who witness them." - Introduction of Filippo Brunelleschi in Vasari’s The Lives of the Great Artists, Pg. 11
Hunger and dread make sleep difficult. - Pg 14
"A soul that doesn't fit its body is as uncomfortable as a foot that doesn't fit its shoe." - Socrates, Pg. 39
"Ugliness encourages virtue." - Socrates, Pg. 39
They love their messes like cats that have not been housetrained so claim a new territory by pissing over it. - Tunnock's Diary 2001, Pg. 9
"Nature has created many men who are small and insignificant in appearance but who are endowed with spirits so full of greatness and hearts of such boundless courage that they have no peace until they undertake difficult and almost impossible tasks and bring them to completion, to the astonishment of those who witness them." - Introduction of Filippo Brunelleschi in Vasari’s The Lives of the Great Artists, Pg. 11
Hunger and dread make sleep difficult. - Pg 14
"A soul that doesn't fit its body is as uncomfortable as a foot that doesn't fit its shoe." - Socrates, Pg. 39
"Ugliness encourages virtue." - Socrates, Pg. 39
January 31, 2011
I was going to give this three stars for most of the book, as it is mainly a series of disconnected vignettes with the thinnest of connecting tissue, a fix up novel like many science fiction novels written before 1960 or so, and while Gray is a strong writer there was none of the fantastical imagination that made me enjoy Lanark and an earlier short story collection of his, but by the time I reached the end I did have a smile on my face so I raise my grade to 4 stars. Basically the fundamental decentness of the author shines through whether he writes about old men in England, Socrates or Victorian religious extremists, and on a gloomy January it is nice to spend time in the company of one of the decent chaps in the world.
December 7, 2007
A bit of a disappointment to be honest. Not enough narrative drive and frankly more than a little bit dull. It's intellectually stimulating and beautifully produced and illustrated as ever, but using the device of collected 'found' unfinished writings doesn't really bond all these writings into a coherent whole.
Gray cheerfully admits that much of it is recycled but his honesty and admission of the book's faults can't paper over the cracks although it does make you like him just as much as ever.
Gray cheerfully admits that much of it is recycled but his honesty and admission of the book's faults can't paper over the cracks although it does make you like him just as much as ever.
March 1, 2016
Difficult to rate: I found some of the historical fiction sections quite trying (and ended up skimming over the initial part on Socrates), though I found those on the 19th century religious cult engrossing). I really enjoyed the sections following the main character, John Tunnock, which built up vivid pictures of old and new Glasgow. The drawings and production of the book is, of course, beautiful. I liked it and am glad to have read it, but perhaps only recommended to those who are, like me, already Gray fans.
July 9, 2013
At times Gray seemed to recognised the issue with this book: the framing narrative is fascinating and Tunnock is a character worth exploring. However, these sections are too few and instead we delve into Tunnock's writing which is overdrawn and mundane. I can't help feeling there is an enjoyable book here, just the focus needs to be taken away from historical dramas.
June 24, 2013
My first encounter with the work of Alasdair Gray and I really enjoyed it! Switching from one story to another was pretty entertaining, plus it encouraged me to take an interest in Socrates and his fellows, which earned this book one more star :)
October 11, 2011
Whew!
May 23, 2012
May pull off the "At Swim Two Birds" concept better than O'Brien's original. Not Gray's best, but enjoyable.
March 31, 2013
Awful. Abandoned.
April 1, 2010
This wasn't really my cup of tea at all.
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