ALASDAIR Gray once famously – or notoriously – referred to incomers to Scotland as “settlers” or “colonists” and his biographer, the novelist Rodge Glass, might be seen in this light. Beyond the sensationalism that Alasdair’s words provoked, what did he mean? And what’s the balance between self-expression in art and the understanding of the world you come from, the new world you come into and inhabit, and share with others?
We’re immersed in celebrity culture, the cult of the ego, the politics of the usurper, but art is always about forms of communication between people of different dispositions and character. In the conversation arising from the Second International Alasdair Gray Conference, Alan Riach asks Rodge Glass about his own approach to “The Gray World” and his own writing … Alan Riach: Rodge, you said that when you first met Alasdair, you were young, in your early 20s, in a new country, far from family and friends, and desperate to be a writer but with no idea how.
