Alasdair Gray

‘A Life in Pictures’ (Canongate Books) by Alasdair Gray and ‘Postwar American Art: The Novak/ O’Doherty Collection’ (Irish Museum of Modern Art). The 76-year-old Gray recalls his life so far in a near-hallucinogenic rush of words, paintings, photographs, decorative embellishments, book covers, newspaper clippings and fake reviews (‘bibliophiles will esteem it as highly as ‘Hypnoertomachia Poliphilli’ and similar incunabula’). Reading is usually apeaceful activity; this is more like being bombarded by a brilliant drunk with a photographic memory – and all the better for it.