Alasdair Gray’s editorial letter
Page 1 transcript
20 April 2002
Dear Ms Sullivan
I cannot talk about your scheme for the whole book, but today read and finished reading A Tale About A Boy and think it a very good novella in itself, the best about a teenage love-affair I have read: but then, I have never read any other. (Though I once wrote one, in chapter 2 of my book Something Leather.) What seems to me good about it is
The absence of condescension in presenting Her and Matt. They are obviously both as intelligent as each other, as intelligent as anyone in their (at first happy) situation can be.
The lesser characters - her mother, his mum and dad, the Pervert, Dave, Sunny, Kirsten, also The Girls and the lads in the group - seem effortlessly real also. folk too.
Settings - back garden with aviary, the cosmetic factory, decaying playpark, disco, down quarry, yes, these too work.
Your use of the play-convention for reporting dialogue is useful economy, not affectation.
[Note down side of page relating to above 4 points] I like it that everyone is interesting without being extraordinary.
When asked to say what I think of other folk's work I read it like early versions of my own, pencil in hand, scribbling (like any old English teacher) suggestions over words I think too many and sentence I find ambiguous.
P.T.O.
Page 2 transcript
You will find many such pencilled scribbles over your pages and would find many more if I had read it carefully again, which I did not, because my fascination with your tale kept me reading to the end, and because (alas) I have other work to do. But see pages 3, 5,6, 7. All that pedantic nit-picking is to -
Remove needless syllables 'arms round' instead of 'arms around', 'and' 'with' or 'beside' instead of 'as well as', 'on it' instead of 'on top of it'; also the elimination of 'the' and 'her' and other wee words where their existence can be taken for granted. Every needless syllable removed is a structural gain.
Remove repetitions: someone waving 'back' between opening a 'back' gate and a 'back' door: a supermarket assistant supervising, instead of 'overseeing', which means exactly the same.
Remove ambiguities - as when 'he' understands what 'he' laughs at but the reader ain't sure which he is which.
Simplify tenses. While mostly in the present tense you employ the 'had' for flashbacks, and sometimes use it when the past state persists in the narrative's present, so can be used to return there.
Most readers will enjoy what you've written without the improvement of clumsy sentences, but your story deserves the careful polish a close rereading allows. I don't expect you to copy my suggestions for improvement unless you you'd have come to them yourself. I try to make any changes I suggest to other folks writing as ordinary sounding as possible. But if you agree that some sentence-sequence can be improved you will find your own improvements. I have only scribbled on a few pages where I think improvements should…