i've been reading the end of our tethers by alasdair gray because i miss reading and analysing texts, so here's my fever induced think piece about the first story in it — big pockets with buttoned flaps.
to tell a story does not necessarily require "rules" in the traditional sense, but there is a careful technique involved that many nowadays are not able to properly articulate into text. alasdair gray is a storyteller who not only mastered such a craft, but redefined it in ways that i could only dream of comprehending fully.
told from a third person perspective, 2003's big pockets with buttoned flaps tells the story of "a man no longer young" as he strolls an abandoned rail line in glasgow on a september morning. we don't outwardly know much about this man, his appearance is vague (yet vivid) in description, but early on in the narrative we are able to pick up on certain traits and establish a character profile based on the way he moves and acts — ie: self deprecation (calling himself a "boring old fart"), yearning for yesteryear, and perceptive, as he can tell which horns and motors are going which way as he strolls.
gray does an excellent job at "show, don't tell", which i find refreshing. he's not an author from 1789, or any long dead writer, but alive and breathing and still manages to craft a story that has layered narratives that do not outwardly explain intentions or beliefs. this feels almost like a lost art in a world of colleen hoover and booktok virality.
as the story continues, our protagonist runs into two teenage girls hanging underneath a telegraph wire. he then laments on how technology has changed rapidly in recent years, to which one of the girls points out that it was "yonks" ago. (yonks is scottish lingo for ages, essentially. not exact but alas!) this is the second point of establishing the gap between main character and the girls, the first being how gray pointed out intentionally they were noticeably teenagers.
this exchange leads to one of the girls standing up and leaving, declaring the man weird, and he is left alone with her friend. she continues to ignore him outwardly, and he sets a newspaper on the grass and takes a seat beside her. his hand falls on her knee, which unravels another layer not previously shown to this man. to invade the space of a young girl, knowingly, and touching her without consent, the reader finds out that our unsuspecting protagonist may have a darker side than intentionally shown.
it is important to note that these subtle acts established by gray are to offer multiple sides to the protagonist, and he is intentionally given a rapid switch to reflect the sudden onset fear that the teenager may possess when a random old man, seemingly innocent, decides to touch her without warning. the reader is formally invited to go on this journey and experience it in real time with the girl.
the overt revealing of intentions comes from the man's question of if she would "like to 'eff'" with him in exchange for money, and then proceeds to scold her for swearing.
the dichotomy between his request and how he speaks to her is just another example of their generational gap and how uncomfortable the situation truly is. she is young enough he lectures her on the use of the word fuck, but still feels as if he has a right to her body.
going back to the concept of "show, don't tell", Gray's ability to portray this situation without outwardly telling us that it's bad is an art lost in many pieces of modern literature. there is this newfound ideal that characters must be overly sanitised for the masses and that nuance cannot exist — protagonist must be good, antagonist must be bad! let alone a foil be introduced! characters must have single layers, they must be black and white! there is no room for middle ground or analysis.
gray is not writing a pedophile to spread a secret agenda that promotes debouchery and abuse, but he is instead writing a character that is supposed to highlight the normalcy of such an awful act.
the story then progresses when the girl asks for ten pounds first, just to up and abandon the man by calling him weird and old. this leaves our main character to sulk alone on his newspaper, until the first girl returns. she introduces herself as davida, and reveals she was listening in from the bushes. he does not give his name, and davida asks why he was interested in her friend, who we now know as sharon. a bit of back and forth reveals that the man has a fetish for "big pockets with buttoned flaps", due to their military history in contrast to being worn by young, feminine people. (there's layers of misogyny that i can rant about on my own time).
davida laughs about this and tries to pry about his personal life, to no avail. after more conversing and teasing, the pair is interrupted by sharon and two boys. they aim to intimidate him, and one of the boys recognise the man as a former teacher, finally identifying our protagonist as mr mccorquodale.
there is an in text conversation about mccorquodale's attempt to molest two young girls in a short period of time, going so far as to threaten his life, though this is just the "all is lost" beat of this story. using his power over the boys as well as his own military background, he is able to intimidate the group of teens enough to pressure them into spending the night at his house, all of them happening to be wearing big pockets with buttoned flaps, noted by the final sentence in the story.
in an objective lens, this is a "good" ending. main character "won"/protagonist prevails! but, that's the point. gray made this ending to juxtapose the subjective truth that this is a very bleak ending for everyone else in the story.
literature is an art, telling stories is not as easy as "once upon a time, the end!". it takes use of skill to paint techniques and it is slowly being lost. characters are not black and white, narratives can and should be nuanced. complex reading comprehension takes practice, yes, but there is a tragedy in how people refuse to try and hone in their own skills on how to analyse and read media. alasdair gray is not just an author, but he signals as a hopeful source in an otherwise bleak future for media literacy.
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