James Kelman

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Gray, Alasdair (James) (1934– ), Scottish novelist, playwright, and painter, born in Glasgow, and educated at Glasgow School of Art. For several years he worked as an art teacher and then as a theatrical scene-painter.

His first novel, Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), a vast picaresque fable in which Glasgow is reinvented as the apocalyptic Unthank, immediately established him as a leading though unconventional figure in contemporary Scottish writing. Gray's fiction, in which fantasy is given a firmly realistic underpinning, is inventively unconventional both in style and structure and eclectic in its references. Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983) was followed by 1982, Janine (1984) and The Rise of Kelvin Walker (1985). In Something Leather (1990) Received Pronunciation is explicated as if it were a regional accent. McGrotty and Ludmilla (1990), is a political satire set in Whitehall; Poor Things (1992), a pastiche of the Victorian mystery novel, returns to the fantastic neo-Gothic mode of Lanark. A History Maker (1994) is a futuristic tale set in the border region of Scotland during the 23rd cent. Gray has also edited The Book of Prefaces (2000) and published volumes of poems and stories.

Kelman, James (1946– ), Scottish novelist, short- story writer, and dramatist, born in Glasgow. He left school at the age of 15, and after a brief period living in America, he returned to Scotland and a succession of temporary jobs. For a time he studied philosophy at the University of Strathclyde. In his collection of stories, Not Not While the Giro (1983), he depicts urban Scottish working-class life with terse touches of humour, using the authentic language of the streets. This uncompromising demotic style was further developed in his first novel, The Busconductor Hines (1984), A Chancer (1985), Greyhound for Breakfast (stories, 1987), A Disaffection (1989), and The Burn (stories, 1991). His fourth novel, How Late It Was, How Late (1994, Booker Prize), is the story of an unemployed Glaswegian construction worker and petty crook who, after a two-day drinking bout, finds himself blind and in police custody. Recent publications include The Good Times (1998), which consists of 20 first-person narratives; Hardie and Baird and Other Plays (1991); and Translated Accounts (2001), a novel.