1982, Janine

Rating:
Summary: Wonders and terrors
Review: 1982 Janine is set in the consciousness of a middle-aged inspector of security systems, holed up in a small Scottish hotel with a bottle of whisky, trying to have sexual fantasies. So far, so unpromising. The trouble is, his memories of his (far from satisfying) life keep getting in the way. And so the book continues, with Jock's baroque and teeth-gratingly embarrassing fantasies (big-breasted women in leather skirts, behaving badly) displaced more and more frequently by the shabby and unflattering truth - Jock is aware that he is a small, not very brave man who has spent his life making bad decision after bad decision. Eventually he swallows a bottle of sleeping pills. And that's not even the third last chapter, so I'm not spoiling anything for you. This is a brilliant novel - Gray's style is (as ever) classical, measured and almost pedantically correct, but it fits Jock as well as the three-piece suits he's worn since his college days. There are some barkingly insane typographical maneuvres in the wake of the pill-swallowing episode, but that's all just to set up what comes next. The comedy is grim and the sadness is awful, but there's real catharsis there for those who can appreciate it. My favourite of Gray's novels - leaner and tougher (if not as wild and ambitious) than Lanark, and less whimsical than much of his later work. The paperback edition is completed with his now-characteristic inclusion of snippets from the book's worst reviews.

Rating:
Summary: Wonders and terrors
Review: 1982 Janine is set in the consciousness of a middle-aged inspector of security systems, holed up in a small Scottish hotel with a bottle of whisky, trying to have sexual fantasies. So far, so unpromising. The trouble is, his memories of his (far from satisfying) life keep getting in the way. And so the book continues, with Jock's baroque and teeth-gratingly embarrassing fantasies (big-breasted women in leather skirts, behaving badly) displaced more and more frequently by the shabby and unflattering truth - Jock is aware that he is a small, not very brave man who has spent his life making bad decision after bad decision. Eventually he swallows a bottle of sleeping pills. And that's not even the third last chapter, so I'm not spoiling anything for you. This is a brilliant novel - Gray's style is (as ever) classical, measured and almost pedantically correct, but it fits Jock as well as the three-piece suits he's worn since his college days. There are some barkingly insane typographical maneuvres in the wake of the pill-swallowing episode, but that's all just to set up what comes next. The comedy is grim and the sadness is awful, but there's real catharsis there for those who can appreciate it. My favourite of Gray's novels - leaner and tougher (if not as wild and ambitious) than Lanark, and less whimsical than much of his later work. The paperback edition is completed with his now-characteristic inclusion of snippets from the book's worst reviews.

Rating:
Summary: Demonstrably Demented
Review: I have a headache. This book was one of the most bittersweet reads I can remember: a page where I'm engrossed, followed by a page where I'm grossed out (by the author's style, not the content). I'm open to all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle literary devices, and Alasdair Gray's 1982 JANINE embarks on a journey of writing creativity with all the tenderness of a sledgehammer.

The premise of Gray's story is interesting: a burned-out, middle-aged businessman drowning his sorrows in a shabby motel room while concocting a series of farfetched sexual fantasies--all in an effort to smother the overwhelming dreariness of his actual life. A plot dripping with existentialism, to be sure, and Gray's furious (often unreadable) style creates a mood of despair and frustration that conjures up enough alcohol-induced pink elephants to fill the San Diego Zoo. Yet the style also works against the story, as it becomes redundant to the point where its impact is lost. And as an aside, Gray's (through his protagonist) preoccupation with white silk blouses and button-down denim skirts became downright annoying. I would have preferred to have seen a little spandex, myself.

This is no "light" read; the author's style requires the reader to pay close attention. Yet there is a literally unreadable chapter--when Jock, our protagonist, takes a bottle of sleeping pills on top of his fifth of whiskey--where my heart went out to the copy editor who had to tackle all the nonsensical and upside down prose. The author waits until the end of his story to tell us the intimate details of Jock's trials and tribulations, then gives us an anticlimactic ending in the form of a very weak epiphany that doesn't measure up to all of the madness running rampant through the preceding pages. So as I reach for the aspirin, I would like to believe that 1982 JANINE is a metaphorical Mae West: when it's good, it's very, very good--when it's bad, it's blathering nonsense.

--D. Mikels

Rating:
Summary: Demonstrably Demented
Review: I have a headache. This book was one of the most bittersweet reads I can remember: a page where I'm engrossed, followed by a page where I'm grossed out (by the author's style, not the content). I'm open to all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle literary devices, and Alasdair Gray's 1982 JANINE embarks on a journey of writing creativity with all the tenderness of a sledgehammer.

The premise of Gray's story is interesting: a burned-out, middle-aged businessman drowning his sorrows in a shabby motel room while concocting a series of farfetched sexual fantasies--all in an effort to smother the overwhelming dreariness of his actual life. A plot dripping with existentialism, to be sure, and Gray's furious (often unreadable) style creates a mood of despair and frustration that conjures up enough alcohol-induced pink elephants to fill the San Diego Zoo. Yet the style also works against the story, as it becomes redundant to the point where its impact is lost. And as an aside, Gray's (through his protagonist) preoccupation with white silk blouses and button-down denim skirts became downright annoying. I would have preferred to have seen a little spandex, myself.

This is no "light" read; the author's style requires the reader to pay close attention. Yet there is a literally unreadable chapter--when Jock, our protagonist, takes a bottle of sleeping pills on top of his fifth of whiskey--where my heart went out to the copy editor who had to tackle all the nonsensical and upside down prose. The author waits until the end of his story to tell us the intimate details of Jock's trials and tribulations, then gives us an anticlimactic ending in the form of a very weak epiphany that doesn't measure up to all of the madness running rampant through the preceding pages. So as I reach for the aspirin, I would like to believe that 1982 JANINE is a metaphorical Mae West: when it's good, it's very, very good--when it's bad, it's blathering nonsense.

--D. Mikels

Rating:
Summary: Bondage--the ultimate solution....
Review: In "1982 Janine," the protagonist, Jock McLeish, an alcoholic security installations supervisor, indulges in sado-masochistic fetishistic fantasies in his lonely hotel room. The fantasies--which have been refined since childhood--involve a regular cast of characters: "Superb," --" a ripe housewife in her early 40s" sometimes known as Joan or Terry--a married woman whose affair inevitably leads to bondage, Max--Superb's ineffectual and cuckolded husband, and of course, Janine--she's shorter and slighter than Superb--and much more pliable. Other minor characters invented by Jock include: Big Momma (she likes to wear leather) Helga, von Strudel, Stroud, and Charlie--Superb's lover--he acts as Superb's instructor, and he likes to discipline.

Jock Mcleish amuses and distracts himself with the fantasies which can be rewound and replayed until they are perfected. Interspersed with these fantasies are glimpses of Jock's real, far-from-perfect life. Jock desperately squashes these painful memories with more fantasies and alcohol. Unfortunately, for Jock, his fanstasy women bear rather uncanny resemblances to the real women in his life, and Jock's fantasies occasionally slip into reality as the fantasy women repeat phrases and incidents from his past.

Fantasy allows Jock to create a world in which he maintains control, but his real life is flawed, full of mistakes, and laced with regrets. In reality, his sexual experiences are rather sparse--and that's putting it mildly, but he does lead a rich fantasy life, and it is through this other life, that Jock attempts to work through his unhappiness by creating a world in which he controls the players.

I loved this book--it was original, and written with bold, brilliant style. "1982 Janine" is a serious commentary on human sexuality--its functions and importance in life, and Jock represents the millions of lonely people who lead unsatisfying and lonely lives while drowning their sorrows with alcohol and trying desperately not to think about life--the mistakes they've made, and the regrets they nurse. No doubt "1982 Janine" is offensive to some, but to me, it was fresh, brave and funny--in a rather odd way. It is not pornographic as some critics claim, and the style reminded me quite a bit of James Joyce's "Ulysses."--displacedhuman--Amazon Reviewer--

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Different
Review: The story behind 1982 Janine's publication is a suitably rabelasian fable in its own right. Upon original publication, the novel displeased critics who had previously praised Gray, as Anthony Burgess (though not as harshly as Gray's supporters would have you believe; see Homage to QWERTYUIOP for the proof) and led the terminally 'politcally correct' and others of their ilk to outrightly condemn it. The latter mob were fussing over nothing. Gray has described this as his favourite among his novels. It is certainly one of the 'big three' (together with, of course, Lanark and Poor Things) in Gray's oeuvre, and while it does not scale the heights that Lanark did (which Gray wrote over almost twenty years), it is still a great achievement in its own right.

It has all the typographical pyrotechnics Unlikely Stories, Mostly had, which are always to the point, and never mere exercises in chaotic artlessness certain types would have you believe they are. This is most true of the famous 'breakdown chapter', which Irvine Welsh has difplagged time and time again. Jock McLeish is the Holy Fool, living on fragments of memory, alcohol and sex fantasies, leading up to a confrontation with God and a decision to take his own life by the horns and work as if he was living in the early days of a better nation. Neither Jonathan Coe or the late B.S. Johnson (the latter was almost Gray's equal; the former tries to be) could match this novel's achievements, depth and honesty. The introduction by Will Self (in the new Canongate edition) is good reading, too. Buy.