Alasdair Gray by Rodge Glass | Book review

How to draw a linguistic portrait of the wildly experimental, politically fearless artistic polymath that is Alasdair Gray? In A Secretary's Biography, the winner of this year's Somerset Maugham award, Glass models his biography on Boswell's portrait of Johnson. Every chapter marks a decade of Gray's life, interspersed with banter about Glass's day-to-day dealings with the "fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian" (as Gray likes to describe himself). The result is both an accessible introduction for the uninitiated and an exciting opening-up of new vistas for anyone ever shaken and stirred by Lanark, Poor Things or 1982 Janine. What emerges most clearly is the sheer scale of Gray's inventiveness, as A Secretary's Biography discusses his lesser known paintings, plays and poetry alongside the novels (and what Gray was also doing while he wrote them). As big-hearted and unstintingly critical as Gray's own work, it is a fittingly entertaining tribute to this prodigious and vastly influential man of images and letters.