Of Me and Others
1952–2019
Alasdair Gray
“I wanted to make stories and pictures. While writing or painting I forgot myself so completely that I did not want to be any different. I felt I was death’s equal.”
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The essential essay collection from one of Britain’s most fascinating and acclaimed writers and artists, Alasdair Gray
In this frank, playful and typically unorthodox collection of essays, Alasdair Gray tells how his early life experiences influenced his writing, including the creation of those landmarks of literature, Lanark and 1982, Janine. He details the inspirations behind his many acclaimed artworks and murals, and makes clear how his moral, social and political beliefs and his work are inextricably linked.
Incisive, funny and fired with passion, Of Me and Others is as much about people, place and politics as it is about Gray’s own life in art.
“Unbelievably inventive”
Ali Smith
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“Gray is a true original, a twentieth-century William Blake”
observer
“One of the most gifted writers to have put pen to paper in the English language”
Irvine Welsh
“An essential portrait of an artist emerging in the second half of the 20th century … Gray is an exceptionally generous writer”
herald
“A great writer, perhaps the greatest living in Britain today”
Will Self
Alasdair Gray
Born in 1934, Alasdair Gray graduated in design and mural painting from the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, he authored, designed and illustrated seven novels, several books of short stories, a collection of his stage, radio and TV plays and a book of his visual art, A Life in Pictures. In November 2019, he received a Lifetime Achievement award by the Saltire Society. He died in December 2019, aged eighty-five.