The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers, by Alasdair Gray
reviewed by Stephen Bernstein

Untitled document

Bloomsbury, 2007. 312 pp. Cloth: £20.00.

Alasdair Gray’s eighth novel is his first since A History Maker (1994); like its predecessor Poor Things (1992), it is ostensibly a collection of manuscripts. These are the work of John Tunnock, a retired Glasgow schoolteacher and headmaster with epic literary aspirations. Tunnock dies under suspicious circumstances in early 2007, and his sole heir appoints Gray editor of Tunnock’s papers. Gray also provides marginal glosses, illustrations, and decorations to the material, which includes diary entries, fragments of narratives (concerning Socrates, Fra Lippo Lippi, and the Victorian clergyman Henry Prince), an account of Tunnock’s boyhood and adolescence in a now thoroughly bygone Glasgow, and a brief history of the earth, from Big Bang to the Roman conquest of Britain. What unites this disparate body of material is debatable, though the novel’s title suggests one way to think about it. Other possible titles are mentioned in the text: Who Paid for all This? and Money at Play. Taken together the three are reminders of Gray’s long-standing interest in the way that the complex structures of nations and cultures find telling expression in the most intimate personal relationships. In an “Epilogue” purportedly written by critic Sidney Workman, Gray reveals the novel’s contents as largely a compendium of unfinished work he had at hand. Such candor is unnecessary in the face of the collection’s finest accomplishment, its incremental evocation of Tunnock himself. With his lengthy meditations on the work he longs to write, Tunnock is an intriguing author figure, alternately inspired and frustrated by the varying forms of encouragement and criticism he receives from those who comment on his project. He reflects on the disparity between his responsibility to society and to his own desires, though death infinitely forestalls any conclusion to this ancient dilemma. This is fine work by Gray, and one can only hope that American publication is soon to come.


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers, by Alasdair Gray reviewed by Stephen Bernstein Untitled document Bloomsbury, 2007. 312 pp. Cloth: £20.00. Alasdair Gray’s eighth novel is his first since A History Maker (1994); like its predecessor Poor Things (1992), it is ostensibly a collection of manuscripts. These are the work of John Tunnock, a retired Glasgow schoolteacher and headmaster with epic literary aspirations. Tunnock dies under suspicious circumstances in early 2007, and his sole heir appoints Gray editor of Tunnock’s papers. Gray also provides marginal glosses, illustrations, and decorations to the material, which includes diary entries, fragments of narratives (concerning Socrates, Fra Lippo Lippi, and the Victorian clergyman Henry Prince), an account of Tunnock’s boyhood and adolescence in a now thoroughly bygone Glasgow, and a brief history of the earth, from Big Bang to the Roman conquest of Britain. What unites this disparate body of material is debatable, though the novel’s title suggests one way to think about it. Other possible titles are mentioned in the text: Who Paid for all This? and Money at Play. Taken together the three are reminders of Gray’s long-standing interest in the way that the complex structures of nations and cultures find telling expression in the most intimate personal relationships. In an “Epilogue” purportedly written by critic Sidney Workman, Gray reveals the novel’s contents as largely a compendium of unfinished work he had at hand. Such candor is unnecessary in the face of the collection’s finest accomplishment, its incremental evocation of Tunnock himself. With his lengthy meditations on the work he longs to write, Tunnock is an intriguing author figure, alternately inspired and frustrated by the varying forms of encouragement and criticism he receives from those who comment on his project. He reflects on the disparity between his responsibility to society and to his own desires, though death infinitely forestalls any conclusion to this ancient dilemma. This is fine work by Gray, and one can only hope that American publication is soon to come.

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