''Unlikely Stories, Mostly'' is the first collection of short stories by

Alasdair Gray Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and ...

, published in 1983.

Publishing history

''Unlikely Stories, Mostly'' was released as a Canongate hardback in 1983; an

erratum An erratum or corrigendum (plurals: errata, corrigenda) (comes from la, errata corrige) is a correction of a published text. As a general rule, publishers issue an erratum for a production error (i.e., an error introduced during the publishing pro ...

slip was inserted into the first edition that read "This slip has been inserted by mistake." A

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.postscript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

by Douglas Gifford, was released in 2010. "Logopandocy" is retitled "Sir Thomas's Logopandocy", and "Prometheus" as "M. Pollard's Prometheus" in this edition. In 2012 the entire work was included in Gray's collection ''Every Short Story 1951–2012''.

Summary

Like Gray's best-known work ''

Lanark Lanark (; gd, Lannraig ; sco, Lanrik) is a town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, located 20 kilometres to the south-east of Hamilton. The town lies on the River Clyde, at its confluence with Mouse Water. In 2016, the town had a population of 9 ...

'', the book was published in the 1980s but contains work going back thirty years. *"The Star" *:A fantasy in the style of

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

*"The Spread of Ian Nicol" *:A riveter who begins to undergo fission. *"The Problem" *:A man has an unsatisfactory conversation with the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. *"The Cause Of Some Recent Changes" *:Some bored art school students dig a tunnel with terrible consequences. *"The Comedy of the White Dog" *:A sexual comedy set in the 1950s, involving a woman and a dog. *"The Crank That Made The Revolution" *:Vague McMenamy invents an enhanced duck. *"The Great Bear Cult" *:

Pete Brown Peter Ronald Brown (born 25 December 1940) is an English performance poet, lyricist, and singer best known for his collaborations with Cream and Jack Bruce.Colin Larkin, ''Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music'', (Muze UK Ltd, 1997), , p. 80 Bro ...

features in a story, written as a television script, about a 1930s cult when people dressed up as bears. *"The Start of the Axletree" *:The two "Axletree" stories are inspired by

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

's telling of the

Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and mi ...

story. They satirise multinationalism and

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

. In this first part, an emperor ruling a vast circular swathe of territory conceives a building project which will be his tomb and symbol of power, and the building of which will provide a perpetual central focus for the empire. *"Five Letters From An Eastern Empire" *:The story examines the power of state artists Bohu and Tohu to make a political difference in a hierarchical society where whole sectors of the population are declared "unnecessary people". It was inspired by a line from

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

's ''

Cantos ''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...

'': "Moping around the Emperor's court, waiting for the order-to-write". *"Logopandocy" *:Written in the persona of Sir

Thomas Urquhart Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660) was a Scottish aristocrat, writer, and translator. He is best known for his translation of the works of French Renaissance writer François Rabelais to English. Biography Urquhart was born to Thomas Urquhart ...

of Cromarty, who is trying to create a "multiverbal logopandocy", or universal language. *"Prometheus" *:A radical intellectual discovers the limits on his ability to change how language is used. *"The End of the Axletree" *:The second part of the "Axletree" story begins two thousand years after the events of the first. Generations of work on the building culminate in reaching the sky, which is a physical object. Competing teams of scientists from different nations try to be the first to penetrate the sky to explore what lies beyond. When they succeed, an enormous flood washes away the building and the entire civilisation. *"A Likely Story in a Nonmarital Setting" *"A Likely Story in a Domestic Setting"

Critical responses

Writing in the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...

'', Daniel Eilon contrasted the variable quality and experimental nature of the first seven stories with the next five, which he called the "real achievement of this work", and the final two shorter pieces. While suggesting the collection could have benefited from some editing out of weaker material, he described "Logopandocy" as "an extraordinary feat of imaginative insight." Theo Tait, in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', wrote that ''Unlikely Stories, Mostly'' is Gray's best short-story collection, and is influenced by Kafka,

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...

, and

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

's '' Rasselas''. He considered "Five Letters From An Eastern Empire" to be the highlight of the collection. In the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

'', Angel Gurria-Quintana compared Gray's illustrations with those of

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

. Gray used his

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...

"Work as if you were living in the early days of a better nation" in the book.

Dave Langford David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for mos ...

reviewed ''Unlikely Stories, Mostly'' for ''

White Dwarf A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...

'' #55, calling it "an uneven but excellent collection of fantasies and parables, mostly." ''Unlikely Stories, Mostly'' won the

Cheltenham Prize for Literature The Cheltenham Prize is awarded at the English Cheltenham Literature Festival to the author of any book published in the relevant year which "has received less acclaim than it deserved". Past winners *1979: Angela Carter for '' The Bloody Chamb ...

in 1983.

References

{{Alasdair Gray 1983 short story collections Canongate Books books