ما سر "الروعة" في افضل مائة رواية عالمية؟ دراسة بحثية - الصفحة 28

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جي. إم. كويتزي

John Maxwell Coetzee (born 9 February 1940) is an author and academic from South Africa. He is now an Australian citizen and lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
ولد كويتزي عاك 194- مؤلف واستاذ جامعي من جنوب افريقا وهو الان استرالي الجنسية يعيش في جنوب استراليا

A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee has won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.
South-African novelist, critic, and translator, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
فاز بجائزة نوبل عام 2003
The violent history and politics of his native country, especially apartheid, has provided Coetzee much raw material for his work, but none of his books have been censored by the authorities.
التاريخ العنيف لبلادة وخاصة التمييز العنصري وفر له مادة خصبة للكتابة ورغم ذلك لم يتم منع اي من كتبه
Often he has examined the effects of oppression within frameworks derived from postmodernist thought. Coetzee's reflective, unaffected and precise style cannot be characterized as experimental, but in his novels he has methodically broken the conventions of narration.
"He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing." (from Disgrace, 1999)
John Maxwell Coetzee, a descendant from 17th-century Dutch settlers, was born in Cape Town. His father was a lawyer and his mother a schoolteacher.
كان والده محاميا وامه مدرسة
In his memoir, Boyhood (1997), Coetzee portrayed himself as a sickly, bookish boys, who adored his freedom-loving mother: "I will not be a prisoner in this house, she says. I will be free."
في مذكراه والت يصدرت عام 1997 كتب كويتزي انه كان طفلا يمرض كثيرا وانه كان يحب الدته المحبة للحرية
At home Cotzee spoke English and with other relatives Afrikaans – his parents wanted to be English. Coetzee studied both mathematics and literature at the University of Cape Town.
درس الرياضيات والادب في جامعة كيبتاون
After graduating, he moved to England, where he worked as an applications programmer (1962-63) in London.
سافر الى لندن بعد تخرجه وعمل في برمجة الطلبات من العام 1962-63
His evening Coetzee spent in the British Museum, "reading Ford Madox Ford, and the rest of the time tramping the cold streets of London seeking the meaning of life," as he later said.
خلال المدة التي قضاها في لندن كان يقرأ فورد مادوكس ويجوب شوارع لندن يحال فهم معنى الحياة
From London he moved to Bracknell, Berkshire, where he worked as a systems programmer for a computer company.
In 1969 Coetzee received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas with a dissertation on Beckett.
في العام 1969 حصل على الدكتوراه من جامعة تكساس حيث كتب رسالتة للدكتواره عن الكاتب الامريكي بكيت
From 1968 to 1971 he taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
من عام 1968 وحتى عام 1971 عمل في التدريس في جامعة بافول في نيويورك
While in Buffalo, Coetzee started to Write his first book, Dusklands (1974), which consists of two closely related novellas, one about America and Vietnam, the other, 'The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee', set in the 1760s.
خلال عمله في بافولو بدأ كتابة روايته الاولى والتي طبعت عام 1974
In 1972 he became a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, at that time an institution for whites, and was later appointed professor of literature.
عام 1972 بدأ العمل كمدرس في جامعة كيبتاون في جنوب افريقيا
From 2002 Coetzee has lived in Australia with his partner, Professor Dorothy Driver. In an interview he said, that "leaving a country is, in some respects, like the break-up of a marriage. It is an intimate matter."
من عام 2002 سافر الى استراليا ليعيش هناك وقد وصف مغادرة مكان مولده بقوله " ان مغادرة البلد الذي يولد فيه الانسان مثل الطلاق فهو مؤثر جدا
Coetzee's works cannot be classified as belonging to any specific postmodernist intellectual current. His essays reveal interest in linguistics, generative grammar, stylistics, structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction. The dilemmas of his novels are based on South African reality, but often presented in a timeless, metafictional form and carrying a plurality of meanings. In the Heart of the Country (1977), in which the central character is a rebellious, sexually deprived daughter of a sheepfarmer, Coetzee examined the conventions of the South African plaasroman, or farm novel.
The calmly written torture scenes of Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) questioned the voyeuristic nature of fiction. The title of the novel referred to a poem by Constantin Cavafy: "and now, what will become of us without / barbarians? / These people were a kind of solution."
Life and Times of Michael K (1983) won the Booker Prize, but Coetzee did not attend the ceremonies. (In some sources, Coetzee's second name is Michael, or Marie.) The protagonist of the story, set in a future Cape Town and Karoo, is a descendant of Franz Kafka's characters, who never find out the meaning of their suffering, like the victim of the execution machine in the short story 'In der Strafkolonie' (1919). Michael K eventually ends up in a concentration camp. Cynthia Ozick wrote of the book: "Mr. Coetzee's subdued yet urgent lament is for the sadness of South Africa that has made dependents and parasites and prisoners of its own children, black and white."
Foe (1986) played with Defoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe. In the story a woman, Susan Barton, shares the island with Robinson Cruso and Friday. "I am cast away. I am all alone," she says without getting any sympathy from Cruso, the cruel tyrant of his small empire. After they are rescued, Susan meets Daniel Foe and becomes his muse, whom he forgets. Friday remains mute, his tongue is cut, and he is never allowed to tell his own tale. In The Master of Petersburg (1994) the protagonist is the famous Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who tries to understand the death of his stepson, Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev. In his sorrow he takes the role of Orpheus: "He thinks of Orpheus walking backwards step by step, whispering the dead woman's name, coaxing her out of the entrails of hell; of the wife in graveclothes with he blind, dead eyes following him, holding out limp hands before her like a sleepwalker. No flute, no lyre, just the word, the one word, over and over." Coetzee himself has lost his son. He died in a mysterious fall from a high balcony.
Before producing Age of Iron (1990) Coetzee also suffered from a personal tragedy - his ex-wife died of cancer.
قبل كتابة عصر الحديد عام 1990 فقد كويتزي زوجته والتي ماتت بالسرطان
Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) started Coetzee's semi-autobiographical series, which continued in Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002). Both works are written in the third person. "Boyhood and Youth, after all, aren't an objective record of Coetzee's young life," William Deresiewicz wrote in The New York Times (July 7, 2002), "they are the 50-something Coetzee's reconstruction, seven or eight novels later, of that life." The third volume of the autobiography, Summertime (2009), introduces a fictional character, Vincent, who serves as a biographer of the author – already dead. In Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003) Coetzee invented his female alter ego, a famous writer, who travels all over the world and gives speeches and academic lectures. In the United States she discusses and analyzes Kafka's monkey story 'A Report to the Academy' (lesson 1), in England at the fictional Appleton College she drew a parallel between gas chambers and the breeding of animals for slaughter (lesson 3), and in Amsterdam her subject is the problem of evil (lesson 6). As a material Coetzee used his own academic lectures, but at the same time he strips bare Costello's intellectual lifestyle – although her arguments are always fresh and seductive, the result of all her theoretizing is that she starts resemble more and more the copy of Kafka's primate, whose basic predicletions and moral ideas are contrary to the real world. Costello resurfaced in Slow Man (2005), about a misanthropic photographer, who has lost his leg in an accident and who falls in love with a married Croat woman. In this story the protagonist is perhaps a figure imagined by Costello
Early life and education
Coetzee was born in Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa, on 9 February 1940 to parents of Afrikaner descent.
ولد في كيبتاون لوالدين من اصل من سكان جنوب افريقيا ومن اصل هولندي وكانت لغتهم الافريكان وهي من اللغة الالمانية
His father was an occasional lawyer, government employee and sheep farmer, and his mother a schoolteacher.
كان والده محامي وموظف حكومي وكان لديه مزاع لتربية الاغنام
The family spoke English at home, but Coetzee spoke Afrikaans with other relatives.
كانت العائلة تتكلم الانجليزية في المنزل لكن الروائي كان يتحدث اللغة الاصلية مع السكان من اصول هولندية
The family were descended from early Dutch immigrants dating to the 17th century, although his maternal grand-grandfather - Baltazar Dubiel - was Polish.
Coetzee spent most of his early life in Cape Town and in Worcester in Cape Province (modern-day Western Cape) as recounted in his fictionalized memoir, Boyhood (1997).
قضى معظم طفولتة في مدينة كيبتاون والاقليم المجاور ورستر كما ذكر في مذكراته الصادرة عام 1997
The family moved to Worcester when Coetzee was eight after his father lost his government job due to disagreements over the state's apartheid policy.
انتقلت العائلة الى اقليم ورسستر بعد ان فقد الوالد وظيفته مع الحكومة بسبب الخلاف حول السياسات العنصرية وكان عمر كويتزي حينها 8 اعوام
Coetzee attended St. Joseph's College, a Catholic school in the Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch, and later studied mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town, receiving his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English in 1960 and his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Mathematics in 1961.
Coetzee married Philippa Jubber in 1963 and divorced in 1980.
تزوج عام 1963 وطلق زوجته عام 1980
He had a daughter, Gisela (born 1968), and a son, Nicolas (born 1966), from the marriage. Nicolas died in 1989 at the age of 23 in an accident.
انجب طفلة اسمها جسلي عام 1968 وطفل نيكولاس عام 1966 وقد مات نيكولاس عام 1989 وعمره 23 بسبب حادث

12-08-2011, 10:05 PM

المشاركة 272

ايوب صابر

مراقب عام سابقا

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Academic and literary career
Coetzee relocated to the United Kingdom in 1962, where he worked as a computer programmer, staying until 1965. He worked for IBM in London. In 1963, while working in the UK, he was awarded a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cape Town for a dissertation on the novels of Ford Madox Ford. His experiences in England were later recounted in Youth (2002), his second volume of fictionalized memoirs.
Personality and reputation
Coetzee is known as reclusive and eschews publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person. Author Rian Malan has said that:
Coetzee is a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word.
يصفه بعض الاصدقاء بانه خجول ولا يحب الظهور ولم يستلم الجوائز التي فاز بها ويقول احد اصدقاؤه انه لا يدخن ولا يشرب الخمر ولا يأكل لحم كما انه رأه يضحك مرة واحدة طول معرفته به كما قال آخر انه كان يحضر مآدب عشاء لا يتحدث فيها ابدا
As a result of his reclusive nature, signed copies of Coetzee's fiction are highly sought after. Recognising this, he was a key figure in the establishment of Oak Tree Press's First Chapter Series, a series of limited edition signed works by literary greats to raise money for the child victims and orphans of the African HIV/AIDS crisis.
Political orientation
Writing about his past in the third person, Coetzee states in Doubling the Point that:
Politically, the raznochinets can go either way. But during his student years he, this person, this subject, my subject, steers clear of the right. As a child in Worcester he has seen enough of the Afrikaner right, enough of its rant, to last him a lifetime. In fact, even before Worcester he has perhaps seen more of cruelty and violence than should have been allowed to a child.
يقول في مذكراته عن طفولته انه شاهد في طفولته الكثير من اعمال اليمنين الافركانين ( البيض ) العنيفة ويقول انه رأى من العنف والقساوة ما لم يكن يجب السماح به لطفل ان يشاهده
So as a student he moves on the fringes of the left without being part of the left. Sympathetic to the human concerns of the left, he is alienated, when the crunch comes, by its language – by all political language, in fact.
Asked about the latter part of this quote in an interview, Coetzee said:
There is no longer a left worth speaking of, and a language of the left. The language of politics, with its new economistic bent, is even more repellent than it was fifteen years ago
Views on South Africa
Along with André Brink and Breyten Breytenbach, Coetzee was, according to Fred Pfeil, at "the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement within Afrikaner literature and letters".
كان طليعيا في المعارضة من بين ابناء الجنس الابيض ضد ساسية الفصل العنصري
On accepting the Jerusalem Prize in 1987, Coetzee spoke of the limitations of art in South African society, whose structures had resulted in "deformed and stunted relations between human beings" and "a deformed and stunted inner life".
He went on to say that "South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less than fully human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison".
وصف الادب الجنوب افريقي بأنه الادب الذي تتوقع ان يكتبه الانسان من السجن
He called on the South African government to abandon its apartheid policy. Scholar Isidore Diala states that J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and André Brink are "three of South Africa's most distinguished white writers, all with definite anti-apartheid commitment".
It has been argued that Coetzee's 1999 novel Disgrace allegorises South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Asked about his views on the TRC, Coetzee has stated: "In a state with no official religion, the TRC was somewhat anomalous: a court of a certain kind based to a large degree on Christian teaching and on a strand of Christian teaching accepted in their hearts by only a tiny proportion of the citizenry. Only the future will tell what the TRC managed to achieve".
Following his Australian citizenship ceremony, Coetzee said that "I did not so much leave South Africa, a country with which I retain strong emotional ties, but come to Australia. I came because from the time of my first visit in 1991, I was attracted by the free and generous spirit of the people, by the beauty of the land itself and – when I first saw Adelaide – by the grace of the city that I now have the honour of calling my home."[15] When he initially moved to Australia, he had cited the South African government's lax attitude to crime in that country as a reason for the move, leading to a spat with Thabo Mbeki, who, speaking of Coetzee's novel Disgrace stated that "South Africa is not only a place of rape".[19] In 1999, the African National Congress submission to an investigation into racism in the media by the South African Human Rights Commission named Disgrace as a novel exploiting racist stereotypes.[49] However, when Coetzee won his Nobel Prize, Mbeki congratulated him "on behalf of the South African nation and indeed the continent of Africa".[50]
Bibliography
Coetzee's published work consists of fiction, fictionalised autobiographies (which he terms "autrebiography"),[58] and non-fiction.
Fiction
· Dusklands (1974) ISBN 0-14-024177-9
· In the Heart of the Country (1977) ISBN 0-14-006228-9
· Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) ISBN 0-14-006110-X
· Life & Times of Michael K (1983) ISBN 0-14-007448-1
· Foe (1986) ISBN 0-14-009623-X
· Age of Iron (1990) ISBN 0-14-027565-7
· The Master of Petersburg (1994) ISBN 0-14-023810-7
· The Lives of Animals (1999) ISBN 0-691-07089-X
· Disgrace (1999) ISBN 978-0143115281
· Elizabeth Costello (2003) ISBN 0-670-03130-5
· Slow Man (2005) ISBN 0-670-03459-2
· Diary of a Bad Year (2007) ISBN 1-846-55120-X
Fictionalised autobiography
· Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) ISBN 0-14-026566-X
· Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002) ISBN 0-670-03102-X
· Summertime (2009) ISBN 1-846-55318-0
· Scenes from Provincial Life (2011) ISBN 1-846-55485-3. An edited single volume of Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II, and Summertime.
However, Coetzee's solitude has not allowed him to go unnoticed in any way. His books have become worldwide bestsellers and he is the only author to have ever won the Booker Prize twice.

- على الرغم ان يعيش في استراليا حاليا حياة النساك لكنه اصبح كاتبا مشهورا واصبحت كتبه على قائمة اكثر الكتب مبيعا.

12-08-2011, 10:06 PM

المشاركة 273

ايوب صابر

مراقب عام سابقا

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جي. إم. كويتزي

- ولد كويتزي عاك 194- مؤلف واستاذ جامعي من جنوب افريقا وهو الان استرالي الجنسية يعيش في جنوب استراليا
- فاز بجائزة نوبل عام 2003
- التاريخ العنيف لبلادة وخاصة التمييز العنصري وفر له مادة خصبة للكتابة ورغم ذلك لم يتم منع اي من كتبه
- كان والده محاميا وامه مدرسة
- في مذكراه والت يصدرت عام 1997 كتب كويتزي انه كان طفلا يمرض كثيرا وانه كان يحب الدته المحبة للحرية
- درس الرياضيات والادب في جامعة كيبتاون
- سافر الى لندن بعد تخرجه وعمل في برمجة الطلبات من العام 1962-63
- خلال المدة التي قضاها في لندن كان يقرأ فورد مادوكس ويجوب شوارع لندن يحال فهم معنى الحياة
- في العام 1969 حصل على الدكتوراه من جامعة تكساس حيث كتب رسالتة للدكتواره عن الكاتب الامريكي بكيت
- من عام 1968 وحتى عام 1971 عمل في التدريس في جامعة بافول في نيويورك
- خلال عمله في بافولو بدأ كتابة روايته الاولى والتي طبعت عام 1974
- عام 1972 بدأ العمل كمدرس في جامعة كيبتاون في جنوب افريقيا
- من عام 2002 سافر الى استراليا ليعيش هناك وقد وصف مغادرة مكان مولده بقوله " ان مغادرة البلد الذي يولد فيه الانسان مثل الطلاق فهو مؤثر جدا
- قبل كتابة عصر الحديد عام 1990 فقد كويتزي زوجته والتي ماتت بالسرطان
- ولد في كيبتاون لوالدين من اصل من سكان جنوب افريقيا ومن اصل هولندي وكانت لغتهم الافريكان وهي من اللغة الالمانية
- كان والده محامي وموظف حكومي وكان لديه مزاع لتربية الاغنام
- كانت العائلة تتكلم الانجليزية في المنزل لكن الروائي كان يتحدث اللغة الاصلية مع السكان من اصول هولندية
- قضى معظم طفولتة في مدينة كيبتاون والاقليم المجاور ورستر كما ذكر في مذكراته الصادرة عام 1997
- انتقلت العائلة الى اقليم ورسستر بعد ان فقد الوالد وظيفته مع الحكومة بسبب الخلاف حول السياسات العنصرية وكان عمر كويتزي حينها 8 اعوام
- تزوج عام 1963 وطلق زوجته عام 1980
- انجب طفلة اسمها جسلي عام 1968 وطفل نيكولاس عام 1966 وقد مات نيكولاس عام 1989 وعمره 23 بسبب حادث
- يصفه بعض الاصدقاء بانه خجول ولا يحب الظهور ولم يستلم الجوائز التي فاز بها ويقول احد اصدقاؤه انه لا يدخن ولا يشرب الخمر ولا يأكل لحم كما انه رأه يضحك مرة واحدة طول معرفته به كما قال آخر انه كان يحضر مآدب عشاء لا يتحدث فيها ابدا
- يقول في مذكراته عن طفولته انه شاهد في طفولته الكثير من اعمال اليمنين الافركانين ( البيض ) العنيفة ويقول انه رأى من العنف والقساوة ما لم يكن يجب السماح به لطفل ان يشاهده
- كان طليعيا في المعارضة من بين ابناء الجنس الابيض ضد ساسية الفصل العنصري
- وصف الادب الجنوب افريقي بأنه الادب الذي تتوقع ان يكتبه الانسان من السجن
- على الرغم ان يعيش في استراليا حاليا حياة النساك لكنه اصبح كاتبا مشهورا واصبحت كتبه على قائمة اكثر الكتب مبيعا.

حسب كلامه انه شاهد من العنف والقسوة في طفولته المبكرة ما لم يكن يجب ان يسمح لطفل بالمشاهدة وهو العنف الذي كان يرتكبه ابناء جلدته من البيض في جنوب افريقا فهو شاهد على عنف سياسة الفصل العنصري . لا نعرف ان كان قد تيتم مبكرا او متى فقد اين ما والديه لكن واضح انه عاش حياة ازمة الى حد انه اصبح ناسكا كما يصفه البعض.

مأزوم.

12-09-2011, 10:06 AM

المشاركة 274

ايوب صابر

مراقب عام سابقا

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والان مع سر الروعة في رواية
85 ـ إدارة المنزل، للمؤلفةمارلينروبنسون.

Housekeeping is a novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson. It was published in 1980, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (which Robinson would eventually win for her second novel, Gilead), and given the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel.

In 2003, the Guardian Unlimited named Housekeeping one of the 100 greatest novels of all time. Time magazine also included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005., describing the book thus: "Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women."

Plot summary

Ruth narrates the story of how she and her younger sister Lucille are raised by a succession of relatives in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho (some details are similar to Robinson's hometown, Sandpoint, Idaho).

روث بطلة القصة تروي كيف عاشت هي واختها الصغيرة طفلتهن حيث تم الاعتناء بهن من قبل عدد من الاقارب في قرية متخيلة رغم التشابه الكبير في بعض التفاصيل بينها وبين القرية التي عاشت فيها الكاتبة

Eventually their aunt Sylvie (who has been living as a transient) comes to take care of them. Initially they become a close knit group, but as Lucille grows up she comes to dislike their eccentric lifestyle and she moves out. Then when Ruth's well-being is being questioned by the courts, Sylvie returns to living on the road and takes Ruth with her.

وفي النهاية تأتي الخالة سيلفي (البوهيمية) للاعتناء بهما ولاحقا تغادر البنت الصغرى وعندما تمرض الكبيرة تعود سيلفي لتعيش حياة البوهيمين وتأخذها معها

The novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for one's self and family in the face of loss, for the girls experience a series of abandonments as they come of age.

تعالج الرواية كيفية ادارة المنزل في حالة الفقد حيث ان الفتاتان تمران في عدة تجارب من الفقد

The events take place in an uncertain time, in that no dates are mentioned; however, Ruth refers to her grandfather living in a sod dugout in the Midwest, before his journey to Fingerbone, while she herself traverses adolescence sometime in the latter half of the 20th century, as Ruth reads the novel Not as a Stranger, a bestseller from 1954.

Characters

Ruth the narrator of the story. Ruth narrates from the perspective of the Transparent eyeball. This narration style was used by the trancendentalist authors that influenced Marilynne Robinson, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.[3]

Lucille Ruth's younger sister.

Helen the mother of Ruth and Lucille who in the novel commits suicide.

هلن احدى الشخصيات في الرواية هي الوالده وهي تنتحر

Sylvie Helen's younger sister who comes to Fingerbone to take care of Ruth and Lucille.

سيلفي هي اخت هلن الصغرى

Molly Helen's older sister. Molly left Fingerbone to do missionary work as a bookkeeper in the Honan Province of China.

Sylvia Foster Ruth's Grandmother. Sylvia lived her entire life in Fingerbone, accepted the basic religious dogma of an afterlife, and lived her life accordingly.

Edmund Foster Ruth's Grandfather and Sylvia's husband. He was raised in a house, dug out of the ground, in the Middle West. He is consumed with wanderlust and a desire to paint mountains. This desire leads to his job on a train and the related events form the foundation of the novel. Working on the train, he is killed in its crash into the lake of Fingerbone.

Lily Foster Sylvia Foster's sister-in-law, one of two who came from Spokane to care for Ruth.

Nona Foster Sylvia Foster's other sister-in-law.

Bernice is a friend of Helen's who lived below Ruth and her mom, Helen, when they lived in a tall grey building. Bernice urged Helen to visit her estranged mother and lent Helen her car so she could travel to see her. (the same car Helen used to drive herself off the bridge)

Ettie is a friend of Ruth's Grandmother, Sylvia Foster. A tiny old lady, whose skin was the color of toadstools

==
Named by The Observer one of the 100 greatest novels of all time and Time Magazine’s s TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. From Wikipedia’s plot summary: “Ruth narrates the story of how she and her younger sister Lucille are raised by a succession of relatives in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho . . . Eventually their aunt Sylvie (who has been living as a transient) comes to take care of them. Initially they become a close knit group, but as Lucille grows up she comes to dislike their eccentric lifestyle and she moves out. Then when Ruth’s well-being is being questioned by the courts, Sylvie returns to living on the road and takes Ruth with her. The novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for one’s self and family in the face of loss, for the girls experience a series of abandonments as they come of age

12-11-2011, 12:11 AM

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مارلين روبنسون

Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist.
ولدت مارلين عام 1943 وهي روائية امريكية وكاتبة مقال
Biography
Robinson (née Summers) was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and did her undergraduate work at Pembroke College, the former women's college at Brown University, receiving her B.A., magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977.
ولت وترعرت في ايداهو وحصلت على الشهادة الاولى كما حصلت على الدكتوراه في اللغة الانجليزية من جامعة واشنطن عام 1977
Robinson has written three highly acclaimed novels: Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004) and Home (2008). Housekeeping was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (US), Gilead was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer, and Home received the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction (UK). Home is a companion to Gilead and focuses on the Boughton family during the same time period.
She is also the author of non fiction works including Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998) and Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010). She has written articles, essays and reviews for Harper’s, The Paris Review and The New York Times Book Review.
She has been writer-in-residence or visiting professor at many universities, including the University of Kent, Amherst, and the University of Massachusetts' MFA Program for Poets & Writers. In 2009, she held a Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale University, giving a series of talks entitled Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. On April 19, 2010, she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In May 2011 Robinson delivered Oxford University's annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters at the university's Rothermere American Institute. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Iowa City.
Robinson was raised as a Presbyterian and later became a Congregationalist, worshipping and sometimes preaching at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Iowa City. Her Congregationalism, and her interest in the ideas of John Calvin, have been important in her works, including Gilead, which centers on the life and theological concerns of a fictional Congregationalist minister.
Awards
· 1980: Housekeeping - Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel; nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
· 2004: Gilead - 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; 2005 Ambassador Book Award
· 2006: The recipient of the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
· 2008: Home - 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction; finalist for the 2008 National Book Award.
Collected Works
Novels
· Housekeeping (1980)
· Gilead (2004)
· Home (2008)

Nonfiction
· Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989)
· The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)
· Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010)
==
Dictionary of Literary Biography on Marilynne Robinson (page 2)

Born Marilynne Summers in the town of Sandpoint, Idaho, on 26 November 1943, Robinson was influenced by her family 's pioneer heritage, for her paternal great-grandparents had traveled in covered wagons to northern Idaho and had settled in the area.
Her parents, Ellen Harris Summers and John J. Summers, raised their daughter and her brother, David, in Sandpoint, Sagle, Coolin, and other towns and villages near the forests of northern Idaho and western Washington, where John Summers worked for various lumber companies.
كانت في طفولتها تعيش مع عائلتها قرب الغابات حيث عمل والدها مع عدد من شركات الاخشاب

Most of these towns are situated on or near the shores of beautiful, large lakes—Lake Pend Oreille, Priest Lake, and Lake Coeur d'Alene—surrounded by forested hills and mountains. Everywhere Robinson lived as a child, natural beauty beckoned almost at her doorstep. Several of the towns she grew up in also serve as switching yards or stopping points for railroads, and long railroad bridges cross the lakes near the towns.
In “My Western Roots,” an essay included in Old West—New West: Centennial Essays (1993), Robinson says of her reading as a child and her education at Coeur d'Alene High School: “I find that the hardest work in the world—it may in fact be impossible—is to persuade easterners that growing up in the West is not intellectually crippling.” She explains the probable reason for such misunderstanding:
Idaho society at that time at least seemed to lack the sense of social class which elsewhere makes culture a system of signs and passwords, more or less entirely without meaning except as it identifies group and subgroup.
==
Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.

Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.
==
A love letter to lost America
Marilynne Robinson made fans wait 24 years for her second novel. Talking
كتبت روايتها الثانية بعد 24 سنة

If there is a singular refutation of F Scott Fitzgerald's self-lacerating verdict that 'there are no second acts in American lives', it must be the career of Marilynne Robinson. In 1981, she made her debut with Housekeeping , a haunting, lyrical tale of two sisters set in the wilderness of the American north west, quite unlike anything else published at that time.
There's something rather English about Robinson when she utters such sentiments, but she was brought up in the woods of the far north west, Idaho and Montana, by a family who appear to have turned their backs on ranching to go into the lumber business.
Her parents were 'not very churchy people... but I had the feeling of growing up in a religious environment about which nothing was said'. If there was any explicit religion it came from her grandfather, who was an elder in the Presbyterian church. 'My grandparents both went about their lives with this sort of humming or singing.'
This childhood gave her a lifelong love of the Bible, and she speaks affectionately of Genesis, Exodus and the Book of Ruth, which has, she admits, 'influenced me inordinately. The Ruth-Boaz relationship seems to be what I wrote about in Gilead '.
That's not the whole story. Her childhood reading was steeped in British and American classics: The Little House on the Prairie, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, the collected works of Poe, Melville and Dickens. 'It was like some sort of flywheel in my brain as soon as I started reading Dickens: "I've got to write something!" And that was wonderful.'
She also learned Latin and is grateful for the way it grounded her sentences. 'I would have to count Cicero among my influences,' she says, laughing at her absurdity. Her prose flows from these classical sources, at once simple and rich, musical but unadorned. 'Writing has always felt like praying,' says one of her characters, expressing the book's mood.
She had a lot of encouragement to write from her family and found poetic inspiration in storms. 'I felt I had to write poetry if there was a thunderstorm. Then I got old enough to realise I was writing really bad poems. That made a prose writer out of me overnight.'
كانت تشعر انها تحتاج لكتتب اذا سمعت الرعد
Asked about the 24-year hiatus between first and second novels, Robinson explains that Gilead was written very quickly but still speaks of the need she felt to re-evaluate the assumptions of fiction. Out of the blue, I find myself asking: 'Do you think of yourself as a writer?'
'That's an interesting question I think maybe I don't in the way that other people I know do. I've always been creative, but you can't assume a role without falsification. Even if the role is indistinguishable from your identity, you can't do it. That frightening to me.'
Admirers of Robinson will be glad to know she's about to take a sabbatical from Iowa and 'can't wait' to get started on some new writing. She knows what it's to be about but, concludes, with more mischievous laughter: 'I'm not telling
==
Home" and "Gilead" both dealt with the spiritual graspings of fathers and sons. In "Housekeeping", about two lonely girls wading through a doomed adolescence, real maternal figures were absent as well. I ask if Robinson ever intended to write about mothers and sons (she has two, now grown-up). "One of the pleasures, for me at least, of writing fiction is that you can put things at a distance. If I'm writing too close to myself, I feel like something is about to go wrong. Like I'm defending myself. I prefer the idea--even if it's an illusion--that you can reach a level of objectivity, that it doesn't have your handprints all over it."

12-11-2011, 12:19 AM

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مارلين روبنسون

- روث بطلة القصة تروي كيف عاشت هي واختها الصغيرة طفلتهن حيث تم الاعتناء بهن من قبل عدد من الاقارب في قرية متخيلة رغم التشابه الكبير في بعض التفاصيل بينها وبين القرية التي عاشت فيها الكاتبة

- وفي النهاية تأتي الخالة سيلفي (البوهيمية) للاعتناء بهما ولاحقا تغادر البنت الصغرى وعندما تمرض الكبيرة تعود سيلفي لتعيش حياة البوهيمين وتأخذها معها

- تعالج الرواية كيفية ادارة المنزل في حالة الفقد حيث ان الفتاتان تمران في عدة تجارب من الفقد

- هلن احدى الشخصيات في الرواية ( الام ) تنتحر

- سيلفي هي اخت هلن الصغرى

- مواليد 26 نوفمبر 1943) روائية أمريكية.

- ولدت مارلين عام 1943 وهي روائية امريكية وكاتبة مقال

- ولت وترعرت في ايداهو وحصلت على الشهادة الاولى كما حصلت على الدكتوراه في اللغة الانجليزية من جامعة واشنطن عام 1977

- كانت في طفولتها تعيش مع عائلتها قرب الغابات حيث عمل والدها مع عدد من شركات الاخشاب

- كتبت روايتها الثانية بعد 24 سنة

- كانت تشعر انها تحتاج لكتتب اذا سمعت الرعد

ان محتوى روايات الروائية مارلين روبنسون يدور حول العلاقة بين الابناء والاباء، واليتم حيث تربت بطلات روايتها الرائعة من قبل الاقارب، وفيها الكثير من الحديث عن الخوف والموت والانتحار....اتخيل ان طفولة الروائية المذكورة كانت عاصفة وربما ان امها انتحرت وهو امر يصعب الحديث عنه في احيان كثيرة... ولكننا لا نملك اي دليل على ذلك ولا نملك تفاصيل عن حياتها المبكرة. وعليه سنعتبرها مجهولة الطفولة.

مجهولة الطفولة.

12-12-2011, 10:51 PM

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والان مع سر الروعة في رواية :
86 ـ لانارك، للمؤلف السادير جري.

Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian fantasy depictions of his home city of Glasgow.
Its publication in 1981 prompted Anthony Burgess to call Gray "the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott". The book, still his best known, has since won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and David Niven awards, and has become a cult classic. In 2008, The Guardian heralded Lanark as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction."
Plot summary
Lanark comprises four books, arranged in the order Three, One, Two, Four (there is also a Prologue before Book One, and an Epilogue four chapters before the end of the book). In the Epilogue, the author explains this by saying that "I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another", and that the epilogue itself is "too important" to go at the end (p. 483).
In Book Three, a young man awakes alone in a train carriage. He has no memory of his past and picks his name from a strangely familiar photograph on the wall. He soon arrives in Unthank, a strange Glasgow-like fantasy city in which there is no daylight and whose disappearing residents suffer from strange symbolic diseases. Lanark begins to associate with a group of twenty-somethings to whom he cannot fully relate and whose mores he cannot understand, and soon begins to suffer from Dragonhide, a disease which turns his skin into scales as an external manifestation of his emotional repression. Lanark is eventually swallowed by the earth, and awakes in The Institute, a sort of hospital which cures patients of their diseases but uses the hopeless cases for power and food. Upon learning this, Lanark is horrified and determines to leave.
Books One and Two constitute a realist Bildungsroman beginning in pre-War Glasgow, and tell the story of Duncan Thaw ("based on myself, he was tougher and more honest"), a difficult and precocious child born to impecunious and frustrated parents in the East End of Glasgow. The book follows Thaw's wartime evacuation, difficult secondary education and his scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art, where his inability to form relationships with women and his obsessive artistic vision lead to his descent into madness and eventual suicide by drowning.
Book Four sees Lanark begin a bizarre, dreamlike journey back to Unthank, which he finds on the point of total disintegration, wracked by political strife, avarice, paranoia and economic meltdown, all of which he is unable to prevent. During various stages of the journey, during which he meets his author, he rapidly ages. He finally finds himself old, sitting in a hilltop cemetery as Unthank breaks down in an apocalypse of fire and flood, and, his time of death having been revealed to him, he ends the book calmly awaiting it.
Interpretation
Lanark could be viewed as Thaw in a personal Hell (Thaw drowns in the sea; Lanark arrives in Unthank with the same belongings, and seashells and sand in his pockets). However, the connection between the two narratives is ambiguous. Gray has said that -
· "One is a highly exaggerated form of just about the everyday reality of the other" [2](for example, Thaw's eczema is mirrored by Lanark's skin disease 'dragonhide')
- and writes in the novel itself:
· "The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by [Lanark's] narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason" (page 484)
· (spoken to Lanark) "You are Thaw with the neurotic imagination trimmed off and built into the furniture of the world you occupy" (page 493)
· "The plots of the Thaw and Lanark sections are independent of each other and cemented by typographical contrivances rather than formal necessity. A possible explanation is that the author thinks a heavy book will make a bigger splash than two light ones" (page 493).
One of the most characteristically postmodern parts of the book is the Epilogue, in which Lanark meets the author in the guise of the character "Nastler". He makes the first two remarks about the book quoted above, and anticipates criticism of the work and of the Epilogue in particular, saying "The critics will accuse me of self-indulgence, but I don't care". An Index of Plagiarisms is printed in the margins of the discussion. For instance, Gray describes much of Lanark as an extended 'Difplag' (diffuse plagiarism) of Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies. However, some of the supposed plagiarisms refer to non-existent chapters of the book.
Gray added an appendix to the 2001 edition of the novel in which he included a brief biography and elaborated on some of the influences on and inspirations for the novel. He cited Kafka as a major influence on the atmosphere of the novel. He also referred to his own experiences in the media industry which he states is reflected in Lanark's numerous encounters in labyrinthine buildings with individuals talking in jargon. The Institute he describes as a combination of Wyndham Lewis's conception of Hell in Malign Fiesta along with three real-life structures: the London Underground, Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow and BBC Television Centre in London. More immediately evident inspiration can be seen in the cathedral and necropolis episodes in Unthank, whose proximity to an urban tangle of roads is mirrored in Glasgow's real-life Townhead area. Glasgow Cathedral is yards away from the Necropolis to the east and the M8 motorway (and aborted Inner Ring Road) to the north and west. Gray said Glasgow Cathedral was the only location he purposefully visited to make notes about during the writing of the novel; all other locations he wrote about from memory.[3] A hellish encounter in a decaying underpass not far from "New Cumbernauld" is redolent of the under-road pedestrian thoroughfares common in the 1960s New Town design of Cumbernauld and others.
Genesis
Gray began writing the novel as a student in 1954. Book one was written by 1963, but he was unsuccessful in getting it published. The whole work was finished in 1976, and published in 1981 by the small Scottish publisher Canongate Press. The novel was an immediate critical and commercial success.

12-13-2011, 11:10 PM

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السادير جري

Alasdair Gray (born 28 December 1934) is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years.
السادير جري كاتب وفنان اسكتلندي ولد عام 1934 اشهر رواياته لانارك والتي استغرف في كتابتها قرابة 30 عام
It is now regarded as a classic, and was described by The Guardian as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction." His novel Poor Things (1992) won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He is a Scottish civic nationalist and a republican.
Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision", and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today" and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".

He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature.
كتب في السياسة والاشتراكية والاستقلال لاسكتلندا وفي تاريخ الادب الانجليزي
Life
Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. His father had been wounded in the First World War and worked at the time in a factory, while his mother worked in a shop.
ولد في جلاسكو وكان والده قد جرح في الحرب العالمية الاولى وكان يعمل في مصنع وكانت امه تعمل في دكان
During the Second World War, Gray was evacuated to Perthshire and then Lanarkshire, experiences which he drew on in his later fiction.
خلال الحرب العالمةي الثانية تك ترحيلة اولا الى بيرثشير ومن ثم الى لانارك شير وهو ما انعكس لاحقا في ادبه
The family lived on a council scheme, and Gray received his education from a combination of state education, (at Whitehill Secondary School), public libraries, and public service broadcasting: "the kind of education British governments now consider useless, especially for British working class children", as he later commented.
عاشت العائلة على المخصصات التي منحت لوالده بسبب اصابته في الحرب وبعض المساعادات من رامج تعليمية كانت تمنح مجانا
He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957, and taught there from 1958 to 1962. It was as a student that he first began what would become the novel Lanark.
After his graduation, Gray worked as a scene and portrait painter, as well as an independent artist and writer. His first plays were broadcast on radio and television in 1968. Between 1972 and 1974, he participated in a writing group organised by Philip Hobsbaum, where he met James Kelman, Liz Lochhead, and Tom Leonard. From 1977 to 1979, he was Writer in Residence at Glasgow University. In 2001, he became, with Tom Leonard and James Kelman, joint Professor of the Creative Writing programme at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities.
Gray illustrates his books himself, and has produced many murals as well as paintings. One of his longest-lasting murals can be seen in the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant in the West End of Glasgow.
In 2001, he stood as the candidate of the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association for the post of Rector of the University of Glasgow, but was eventually narrowly defeated by Greg Hemphill. Formerly a supporter of the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Socialist Party, at the 2010 UK General Election he supported his local Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate, Katy Gordon. He is a civic nationalist, stating in his 1992 book Why Scots Should Rule Scotland: "The title of this book may sound threatening to those who live in Scotland but were born and educated elsewhere, so I had better explain that by Scots I mean everyone in Scotland who is eligible to vote".
He has been married twice: firstly to Inge Sorenson (1961–1970), and since 1991 to Morag McAlpine. He has one son, Andrew, born in 1964. He still lives in the West End of Glasgow.
تزوج مرتين مرة عام 1961- 1970 والثانية من 1991 ولديه ولد واحد ولد عام 1964 وما يزال يعيش في جلاسكو
He produced the ceiling mural for The Auditorium of the Oran Mor on Byres Road in Glasgow, one of the largest works of art in Scotland.
Gray frequently uses the quotation, "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation", which is engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament building. He attributes the quote to Canadian author Dennis Lee.

12-13-2011, 11:11 PM

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Gray

born
December 28, 1934 in Glasgow, Scotland, The United Kingdom

website
http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk

genre
Science Fiction & Fantasy

An Interview with Alasdair Gray
by Dee Sunshine (June 2005)
Dee - In the central part of your novel, 'Lanark' there are two books that appear to be largely autobiographical. How much of them is autobiography and how much is fiction? Are we going to see a significantly different story when your biography is published?

Alasdair - a) Books One and Two of 'Lanark' use the mainly miserable bits of my life up to the age of twenty with increasing fiction toward the end - I never was expelled from Art School, starved, consorted with a prostitute, went mad and committed suicide. b) Yes
في رد على سؤال ان كانت محتويات روايته تعكس احداث حياته اجاب بأنها في الجزء الاول وحتى العام 20 هي تسجل التعاسة التي واجهها في حياته المبكرة

Dee - Rodge Glass, your assistant and biographer, has made it clear to me that you will not read his biography until it is complete (and even then you may not read it). Are you at all nervous about someone else writing your life story? And are we ever likely to see an autobiography?

Alasdair - a) No. b) Yes, if I'm spared.

Dee - In the immediate post-war era it was unusual for someone from a working class background to go to art school. In your novel 'Lanark' your father is rather pragmatic in his approach to your artistic aspirations, and is only convinced by assurances that there will be a job at the end of it as a teacher. Is this an accurate picture? Assuming it is, it strikes me that there was no obvious nurturing of your creative tendencies as a boy. So, where would you say your creative drive came from?

Alasdair - Your first sentence is wrong. The Butler Acts passed in 1945 gave grants that allowed me to be one of several working class AND middle-class youths to go to universities, art schools etc. Nearly all of us became schoolteachers - even me for a while. Both parents nurtured my interest in art and literature by reading to me from picture books giving me pencils, crayons and paper before I could write and being pleased when I used them. During a spell of unemployment my Dad tried to paint landscapes in watercolour, though hillwalking was his favourite pastime. Both parents were singers - we had a piano my mother used - they took us to opera and the Citizen's Theatre. The working classes contain more literate, cultured folk than the other classes notice, just as many professional and business people prefer golf and horse-racing to classical music, literature etc.

Dee - Your generation was the first to benefit from grant-aided tertiary education, and my generation was the last to benefit from it. Considering the opportunities that student grants opened up, particularly for young people from poorer backgrounds, are you surprised that there wasn't more opposition when the Thatcher government phased out the student grant system? And what do you make of a Labour government that not only doesn't reverse this policy, but also makes students pay fees on top of all their other expenses?

Alasdair - I wasn't surprised because the students had hardly any responsible adults and no opposition politicians who announced they would restore the grants when returned to power. In other words, the Labour Party was conniving with the Tories even then.

Dee - In 'Lanark' there are many references to your Socialist beliefs, but none is more charming that the Billy Liar-esque fantasy utopia that Thaw dreamed up when he was young. Contrast that to the intellectual kicking that Lanark is given by Lord Monboddo towards the end of the book and there are few illusions left. Is this a reflection of your own journey? Are you totally disillusioned, or is there a sneaky wee optimist still whispering sweet nothings in your ear? Is there hope for the human race? Can we evolve into gentler, more caring beings, both individually and en-masse?

Alasdair - I know that nations can improve themselves through Socialism because the wartime coalition government did exactly that, and the National Health Service has not been totally dismantled yet. It may take another disaster on the World War Two scale to make many people co-operate socially to pull themselves out of the shit. Competitive exploitation is building up.

Dee - When you were a student, scribbling away in your notebooks, working on what would eventually be published as 'Lanark' twenty years later, did you ever imagine you would become a famous author, with your own personal assistant and biographer? And if you did imagine this, did you actually believe it would come about, or were you plagued with self-doubt?

Alasdair - No. I thought it likely that 'Lanark' would survive my death but was not sure of being economically comfortable before it. My parents were right to warn me that in Scotland it was almost impossible for someone without inherited money to concentrate on their art.

Dee - A friend of mine relates that the first time he saw your novel 'Lanark' in a bookstore he passed it by, as he thought it was probably a guide to the town, Lanark. It is quite a strange title for a novel, and a stranger name for a character. Why Lanark? Is it significant that you chose Lanark and not, say Bothwell or Larkhall?

Alasdair - I wanted a hero's out of the way Scottish name without Mac in it. At first I called him Cumbernauld but felt it too cumbersome.

Dee - Of all your novels, '1982 Janine' is probably the most controversial, with its prolonged sadomasochist fantasy sequences. What do you have to say to those who, at the time of its publication, accused you of being a misogynist? And do you feel vindicated by Laura Hird's declaration in The List (Issue 523, June 2005) that she became 'utterly obsessed with the book, reading it more than a dozen times in succession, convinced (she) would never read something so perfect again'?

Alasdair - I have nothing to say against what anybody says against my work. I don't want to silence them. I'm glad when my work is praised, especially by women.

Dee - Which of your novels do you consider to be the most accomplished?

Alasdair - '1982, Janine'

Dee - Can you tell me a little bit about your forthcoming books, 'A Life In Pictures' and 'Three Men In Love'?
Alasdair - No, it would take too long.

Dee - You recently celebrated your 70th birthday and you have had some problems with your health, but it sounds like you are busier than ever, from what Rodge Glass said in his interview with me. Will you still be scrambling up scaffolding, painting murals when you are 90? Do you think you'll be working until you draw your last breath?
Alasdair - I don't know but hope so.

Dee - Which novel do you consider to be the greatest ever written? And why?
Alasdair - 'War and Peace'. Ask anyone else who agrees with me. A lot do.

Dee - Have you got an all time favourite painting or painter?
Alasdair - No. But Blake taught me most.

Dee - And finally, what advice would you give to a young man or woman if they told you they wanted to be a writer?

Alasdair - They should acquire a place with one room where they could live and as many as possible that they could sub-let. Thus getting a small steady income