Lanark: a life in 4 books (74 page)

Wire monkeys are all
elbows, knees and teeth.

Cloth monkeys can be leant
upon.

Wire monkeys endure,
repel invaders.

Cloth monkeys welcome all
comers.

They set up wire monkeys to
test the youngsters’ hunger,
Cloth monkeys their loneliness.

Wire monkeys suckle, give food.
Cloth monkeys are barren.

You will see the youngster
turn to the wire monkey

For sustenance merely

Then go back and embrace
the cloth monkey

Who affords nothing.

When frightened the youngster
will bury its head in
the soft

Warm protruding bosom of the
cloth.

The wire monkey stands
against the blast.

Everyone prefers cloth monkeys.

HUME, DAVID

Chap. 16, para. 9. Blockplag from treatise:
An Enquiry Concerning Human Under standing
.

IBSEN, HENRIK

Books 3 and 4. These owe much to the verse drama
Peer Gynt
, which presents an interplay between a petit-bourgeois universe and supernatural regions which parody and criticise it. (
See also
kafka.)

IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF SCOTLAND, 1871

Chap. 25, para. 1. This is not the simple Blockplag it seems. It unites extracts from the
Monkland Canal
entry and the
Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway
entry which preceeds that.

JOYCE, JAMES

Chap. 22, para. 5. This monologue by a would-be artist to a tolerant student friend is a crude Difplag of similar monologues in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
.

JUNG, CARL

Nearly every chapter of the book is a Difplag of the mythic “Night Journey of the Hero” described in that charming but practically useless treatise
Psychology and Alchemy
. This is most obvious in the purification by swallowing at the end of chapter 6. (
See also
disney, god and freud.) But the hero, Lanark, gains an unJungian political dimension by being swallowed by Hobbes’s Leviathan. (
See
hobbes.)

KAFKA, FRANZ

Chap. 39, last paragraph. The silhouette in the window is from the last paragraph of
The Trial
.

KELMAN, JIM

Chap 47. God’s conduct and apology for it is an extended Difplag of the short story
Acid:

In this factory in the north of England acid was essential. It was contained in large vats.

Gangways were laid above them. Before these gangways were made completely safe a young man fell into a vat feet first. His screams of agony were heard all over the department. Except for one old fellow the large body of men was so horrified that for a time not one of them could move. In an instant this old fellow who was also the young man s father had clambered up and along the gangway carrying a big pole. Sorry Hughie, he said. And then ducked the young man below the surface. Obviously the old fellow had had to do this because only the head and shoulders … in fact, that which had been seen above the acid was all that remained of the young man.

KINGSLEY,
REVEREND CHARLES

Most of Lanark is an extended Difplag of
The Water Babies
, a Victorian children’s novel thought unreadable nowadays except in abridged versions.
The Water Babies
is a dual book. The first half is a semi-realistic, highly sentimental account of an encounter between a young chimney sweep from an industrial slum and an upper-class girl who makes him aware of his inadequacies. Emotionally shattered, in a semi-delirious condition, he climbs a moorland, descends a cliff and drowns himself, in a chapter which recalls the conclusion of Book 2. He is then reborn with no memory of the past in a vaguely Darwinian purgatory with Buddhist undertones. At one point the hero, having stolen sweets, grows suspicious, sulky and prickly all over like a seaurchin! The connection with dragon-hide is obvious. He is morally redeemed by another encounter with the upper-class girl, who has died of a bad cold, and then sets out on a pilgrimage through a grotesque region filled with the social villainies of Victorian Britain. (
See also
M
ac
DONALD
.)

KOESTLER, ARTHUR

See
footnote 6.

LAWRENCE, D. H.

See
footnote 12.

LEONARD, TOM

Chap. 50, para. 3. “In a wee while, dearie” is an Implag of the poem “The Voyeur.”

Chap. 49. General Alexander’s requiem for Rima is a Blockplag of the poem “Placenta.”

LOCHHEAD, LIZ

Chap. 48, para. 25. The android’s discovery by the Goddess is a Difplag of
The Hickie
.

I mouth
sorry in the mirror when I see
the mark I must have
made just now

loving you.

Easy to say it’s alright
adultery
like blasphemy is for
believers but
even in our
situation simple etiquette
says
love should leave us
both unmarked.

You are on loan to me
like a library book
and we both know it.

Fine if you love both of us
but neither of us
must too much show it.

In my misted mirror
you trace two toothprints
on the skin of your
shoulder and sure
you’re almost quick enough
to smile out bright and
clear for me
as if it was O.K.

Friends again, together in
this bathroom
we finish washing love away.

McCABE, BRIAN

Chap. 48, para. 2. The Martian headmaster is from the short story
Feathered Choristers
.

MacCAIG, NORMAN

Chap. 48, para. 22. The cursive adder is from the poem
Movements
.

MacDIARMID, HUGH

Chap. 47, para. 22. Major Alexander’s remark that “Inadequate maps are better than no maps; at least they show that the land exists” is stolen from
The Kind of Poetry I Want
.

MacDONALD,
REVEREND GEORGE

Chap. 17,
The Key
, is a Difplag of the Victorian children’s story
The Golden Key
. The journey of Lanark and Rima across the misty plain of Chap. 33 also comes from this story, as does the death and rebirth of the hero halfway through (
see also
KINGSLEY
) and the device of casually ageing people with spectacular rapidity in a short space of print.

MacDOUGALL, CARL

Chap. 41, para. 1.
Poxy nungs
is the favourite expletive of the oakumteaser in the colloquial verse drama
A View from the Rooftops
.

McGRATH, TOM

Chap. 48, para. 22. The android’s circuitous seduction of God is from the play,
The Android Circuit
.

MacNEACAIL, AONGHAS

See Nicolson, Angus.

MANN, THOMAS

Chap. 34, para. 5. “Screeching, shrieking, yowling, growling, grinding, whining, yammering, stammering, trilling, chirping” etc. contains Implag of the devil’s account of Hellnoise in the novel.
Doktor Faustus
, translated by ?. ?. Lowe-Porter.

MAILER, NORMAN

See
footnote 6.

MARX, KARL

Chap. 36, paras. 3 and 4. Grant’s long harangue is a Difplag of the pernicious theory of history as class warfare embodied in
Das Kapital
.

MELVILLE, HERMAN

See
footnote 12.

MILTON, JOHN

See
footnote 6.

MONBODDO, LORD

Chap. 32, para. 3. The reference to James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, demonstrates the weakness of the fabulous and allegorical part of
Lanark
. The “institute” seems to represent that official body of learning which began with the ancient priesthoods and Athenian academies, was monopolized by the Catholic Church and later dispersed among universities and research foundations. But if the “council” represents government, then the most striking union of “council” and “institute” occurred in 1662 when Charles II chartered the Royal Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. James Burnett of Monboddo belonged to an Edinburgh Corresponding Society which advanced the cause of science quite unofficially until granted a royal charter in 1782. He was a court of session judge, a friend of King George and an erudite metaphysician with a faith in satyrs and mermaids, but has only been saved from oblivion by the animadversions against his theory of human descent from the ape in Boswell’s
Life of Johnson
. By plagiarizing and annexing his name to a dynasty of scientific Caesars the author can only be motivated by Scottish chauvinism or a penchant for resounding nomenclature. A more fitting embodiment of government, science, trade and religion would have been Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork and father of modern chemistry. He was founder of the Royal Society, and his strong religious principles also led him to procure a charter for the East India Company, which he expected to propagate Christianity in the Orient.

NicGUMARAID, CATRIONA

Like all lowland Scottish litera-teurs, the “conjuror” lacks all understanding of his native Gaelic culture. The character and surroundings of the Rev. McPhedron in Chap. 13, the least convincing chapter in the book, seem to be an effort to supply that lack. As a touchstone of his failure I print these verses by a real Gael. See also MacNeacail, Aonghas.

Nan robh agam sgian ghearrainn as an ubhal an grodadh donn a th’ann a leòn’s a shàraich mise.

Ach mo chreach-s’ mar thà chan eil mo sgian-sa biorach ’s cha dheoghail mi ás nas mò an loibht’ a sgapas annad.

NICOLSON, ANGUS

See Black Angus.

O’BRIEN, FLANN

See
footnote 6.

ORWELL, GEORGE

Chap. 38. The poster slogans and the social stability centre are Difplags of the Ingsoc posters and Ministry of Love in
1984
.

PENG, LI

Books 3 and 4. These owe much to
Monkey
, the Chinese comic classic eclectic novel, first Englished by Arthur Waley, which shows the interplay between an earthly pilgrimage and heavenly and hellish supernatural worlds which parody it. (
See also
KAFKA
.)

PLATH, SYLVIA

Chap. 10, para. 10. “I will rise with my flaming hair and eat men like air” is an Implag of the last couplet of “Lady Lazarus,” with “flaming” substituted for “red.”

POE, EDGAR ALLAN

Chap. 8, para. 7. The “large and lofty apartment” is an Implag from the story
The Fall of the House of Usher
. Chap. 38, para. 16. The three long first sentences are Implag from
The Domain of Arnheim
. The substitution of “pearly” pebbles for “alabaster” pebbles comes from Poe’s other description of water with a pebbly bottom in
Eleonora
.

POPE, ALEXANDER

Chap. 41, para. 6. Timon Kodac’s statement “Order is heaven’s first law” is from the poetic
Essay on Man
.

PRINCE, REV. HENRY JAMES

Chap. 43, Monboddo’s speech. “Stand with me on the sun” is from
Letters addressed by H. J. Prince to his Christian Brethren at St. David’s College, Lampeter
.

PROPPER, DAN

Chap. 28, para. 7. McAlpin’s statement of Propper’s law is a distorted Implag from
The Fable of the Final Hour:
“In the 34th minute of the final hour the Law of Inverse Enclosure was rediscovered and a matchbox was declared the prison of the universe, with two fleas placed inside as warders.”

QUINTILIANUS
MARCUS FABRICIUS

Chap. 45, para. 5. Grant’s “form of self-expression second only to the sneeze” is an Implag from Book 11 of the
Institutio Oratoria
translated by John Bulwer in his Chironomia.

REICH, WILHELM

Book 3. The dragonhide which infects the first six chapters is a Difplag of the muscular constriction Reich calls “armouring.”

REID, TINA

Chap. 48, para. 15. The android’s method of cleaning the bed is a Difplag of
Jill the Gripper
from
Licking the Bed Clean
.

SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL

Chap. 18, para. 6. Chap. 21, para. 12. These are Difplags of the negative epiphanies experienced by the hero of
Nausea
.

SAUNDERS, DONALD GOODBRAND

Chap. 46. The peace-force led by Sergeant Alexander is blocked by God in a land whose shapes and colours come from
Ascent:

The white shape is Loch Fionn,
Intimate with corners.
From here, the foothills
of Suilven,
The white shape is Loch Fionn.

The green shape is Glencanisp,
Detailed with rocks,
From here, the shoulder
of Suilven,
The green shape is Glencanisp.

The blue shape is the seas.
The blue shape is the skies.
From here, the summit
of Suilven,
My net returns glittering.

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM

Books 1 and 2 owe much to the play
Hamlet
in which heavy paternalism forces a weak-minded youth into dread of existence, hallucinations and crime.

SITWELL, EDITH

Chap. 41, para. 12. “Speaking purely as a private person,” and much of the religious sentiment, are Im-and Difplag from the section of
Facade
which starts “Don’t go bathing in the Jordan, Gordon.”

SMITH, W. C.

Chap. 28. Blockplag from hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” with distorted final line.

SPENCE, ALAN

Chap. 45, para. 9. The fine colours are taken from the anthology
Its Colours They Are Fine
.

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

Chap. 11, para. 5. The bag and listed contents are a Plag, Block- and Dif-, from the Fairy Blackstick’s bag in
The Rose and the Ring
.