If you’ve not subscribed to the Mindless Ones newsletter yet, I think you probably should. Comes out once a week, usually in time for you to read it with a coffee on Sunday morning. Dense articles on art, magic, and politics accompanied by fucked comics and the odd spectacular illustration. Collective vision: no one member gets to dominate an issue.

Obviously I’m biased because I contribute to it but I still wonder – who else is doing it like this?

We don’t sign our work in the newsletter but my contribution to the latest issue is pretty obvious if you know me – it’s the third in a series of posts about Scotland’s current state of exhaustion, with this entry being about my friend and yours, Alasdair Gray.

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Scottish Friction 3: 1982, Janine (Alasdair Gray, 1984)

This is me attempting to replicate Alasdair Gray at his most un-replicable, a doomed effort but still worth it, I think. As always, some beautiful synchronicities developed between this piece and the other articles as this issues was taking shape.

The text for this ITEM has been presented as an image because when you try to paste it into a text editor like this one, you’ll probably end up with something like this:

Like Mervyn Peake – another grand 20th century Put it another way: ¿ɹoɥʇnɐ ןɐnʇɔɐ ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ pǝʇɔǝuuoɔsı̣p ʎɐɹꓨ ɹı̣ɐpsɐןⱯ 

Alasdair Gray has largely been celebrated Is it possible for real people to ɐ ʎןddns ɹǝʇɐʍ ɔı̣ןqnd s,ʍoƃsɐןꓨ ɟo ǝɔɹnos

castle Gormenghast, a modern land-  undergo retroactive “Flanderization”? uoı̣sɹǝʌ ןʍoqɥsı̣ɟ ɐ oʇ (¡066Ɩ ǝɹnʇןnƆ ɟo

the old masters. For Gray, The Alasdair Gray archive do good work preserving ǝɥʇ ʇnq uoı̣ʇɐʇdɐpɐ ǝı̣ʌoɯ ǝɥʇ

mural depicting an  and continuing actual thought, but elsewhere we risk turning Gray  sı̣ sƃuı̣ɥꓕ ɹooԀ

get the gist.  into the nation’s cuddly socialist uncle, a hive of endearing anecdotes,  ǝnƃɹɐ pןnoɔ no⅄

a comforting story for our evermore beleaguered independence and trade union movements.

CHRIST,  IS THIS AWW WE’RE UP TO NOW? SO SCARED OF SHOWING SOME ARSE THAT WE DON’T DANCE AT AWW? ACH, THIS CUNTRY HINKS IT’S TOO SMALL TO DO HARM BUT IT’S MIBBY  JIST  SMALL ENOUGH TO BE USEFUL!

National energy Gray’s second novel 1982,  Janine               

nashnal security cannot   be  so  easily reduced or            To see oursels       

national energy reproduced. It  has  a  pedigree but        as others

security natural that  doesn’t  matter:  the  book still   see us!

en-ar-gee comes feels  like something broken rather             

free four me but than a traditional novel per se.       It wad frae

we’ve got three Contra some critics, Janine’s dual               monie  a 

bombs for those elements – the sadistic fantasy and        blunder free us

bairns in the the drunken confessional that runs     

masses! Oh god, through it – are ultimately two sides     An’ foolish

let me not love! of a mask worn by a shattered soul. notion…

One thing about shattered souls:         if you really look at them you can sometimes make out the shapes they might have taken, and the scale of the forces that made them what they are.

I enjoy the above, but it’s perhaps a little too incoherent to go out in a collective newsletter. Stay tuned for a JANINE VARIATIONS zine whenever the mood takes me though!

For now, here are two more version of the above text that I’m still reasonably proud of. First up we have an alternative take on the final format that’s a little bit easier on the eye and features some fun blether about mince along the way.

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Scottish Friction 3.1: 1982, Janine (Alasdair Gray, 1984)

Last but not least we have a version of the article I wrote “straight” in case I lost my nerve or my fellow Mindless decided they weren’t having my shite this week:

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Scottish Friction 3.2: 1982, Janine (Alasdair Gray, 1984); Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, Tony McNamarra, Emma Stone, 2023)

Like Mervyn Peake – another grand 20th century novelist/artist/poet/writer of plays for the BBC – Alasdair Gray has largely been celebrated for one fictional creation. For Peake, the castle Gormenghast, a modern landscape painted using the tools of the old masters. For Gray, the Unthank/Glasgow of Lanark, a classical mural depicting modern reality. Tune in here to get the gist. 

Now you could say that Poor Things is Gray’s most recognisable work following the movie adaptation, but the argument about the shift in setting from Glasgow (“European City of Culture 1990!”) to a fishbowl version of London provides a counterpoint. Is Poor Things (2023)’s disinterest in the source of Glasgow’s public water supply an absurd mirror of how our “Alasdair Gray” is disconnected from the actual author?    

Put it another way: Is it possible for real people to undergo posthumous “Flanderization”? The Alasdair Gray Archive does good work preserving and continuing real thought, but elsewhere we risk turning Gray into the nation’s cuddly socialist uncle, a hive of endearing anecdotes, a source of comfort for our beleaguered independence and trade union movements.  

Gray’s second novel 1982, Janine cannot be so easily reduced or reproduced. It has its antecedents – and as in Lanark, Gray is careful to explain them to you – but that doesn’t matter. Janine still feels like something broken than a traditional novel per se. Contra some of the harsher criticisms, its two duelling elements – the shifting sadomasochistic fantasy and the drunken confessional that runs through it – ultimately present two halves of the mask worn by a shattered individual. Here’s a thing about shattered individuals: if you really look at them, you might be able to see the shape of what they might have been, and of the forces that made them what they are.

Each paragraph above could go on for miles beyond itself, but the Mindless word counts are tight and the editor is merciless, which is one reason for doing it the hard way.