Of Me and Others [1952–2019] by Alasdair Gray

Author:Alasdair Gray [Gray, Alasdair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07G78LF4W
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2019-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

A Radio Talk on Allegory*

THERE IS NO SUCH TRAIN as that one in my play as I am sure you know. British railway carriages still have switches passengers can use to stop the train, the drivers stay in their cabins and are not equipped with guns. So why should a writer imagine such a carriage, fill it with imaginary people and contrive an ending which kills them? Many real people go on journeys by rail, ship or plane which end in unexpected and undeserved death. Why add an impossible imaginary accident to all these real ones?

The simple answer is, for fun. Most of us are pleasantly excited by disasters which don’t hurt us and the people we know. We are shocked, feel sympathy, are a bit worried to find such things can happen in this world, but a nasty wee selfish bit feels, for a while, a bit more safe and superior because it has not happened to us. That is why most of the world’s stories, films and plays deal with warfare, crime and the breaking up of homes and families. Those of you who read Judge Dredd comics are accustomed to tales of crime and disaster in an imaginary future twenty years from now, in a world which is a bit like ours but much, much worse. You may have heard my play as a thriller, perhaps a rather dull one because people kept talking about clocks and money and cups of coffee. If it bored you, I apologize. If you enjoyed it as a thriller, I’m glad. If some of you start remembering it because you feel it is worth thinking about, then you are the listeners I most want. And I would also like you to discuss it with each other, and disagree about it, because a good play or story always means different things to different people, and the better it is the more they sometimes disagree. The best and strangest story in the world is the story of Jesus which is told in four short books in the Bible. Wars have been fought between nations who found different meanings in that story.

However, my short radio play is a lot shallower than that. I am not going to tell you what it means to me, but I’ll tell you two stories which may be a clue. One is fact, the other fiction. I’II start with the factual.

Fifteen years ago a serious accident happened in the United States of America, an accident which that government – like all governments of countries with nuclear power stations – had said could never happen. A nuclear power station was found to be in a dangerous condition. A nearby town was quickly evacuated, and for two days an explosion was feared which might have destroyed the life of a whole state. The experts, however, got the thing under control. While this was happening, of course, government spokesmen throughout the world appeared on television to explain why this could never happen in their countries.

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