'Poor Things': Alasdair Gray's postmodern classic

'Poor Things' is an Oscar-winning film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Set in an alternate Victorian London, it follows the story of Bella Baxter. Her journey of exploration and self-discovery leads to unexpected twists. The film questions established norms, with themes including women’s subjugation, identity, and human connections. The film is based on the story by Alasdair Gray.

Gray is perhaps best known as the author of 'Lanark'. His 1981 novel is described as one of the most significant works of fiction in 20th-century Scottish literature. While his work sits partially within the tradition of urban realism, it also contains elements of fantasy. He has been described as a postmodernist, although he argued against this definition. Gray was also an artist, focussing on murals and portraits and his books contain his original illustrations, cover art, designs, and unique typography.

In 1984, Stanley Simpson (then curator at the Library) wrote to Gray to express interest in acquiring his archive. A couple of days later, Stanley noted in a memo that "Alasdair Gray called to see me yesterday, bringing a haversackful of papers, including manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs of '1982 Janine', which he wants to give to the Library". So began a relationship that lasted until Gray's death in late 2019.

Gray often described himself by saying "I am a maker of imagined objects". This imagination is on full display in the dystopian collision of realism and fantasy in 'Lanark' and the Gothic fabulism of 'Poor Things'.

But how did a few manuscript pages of a short-story fragment titled 'Poor Creatures', flourish to become an award-winning novel, and then an Oscar-winning film?

Fortunately, the Alasdair Gray archive at the National Library of Scotland provides clues and answers. It is made up of a huge collection of personal, literary, and visual materials. The archive is bursting with the seemingly constant flow of ideas that sprung from his ceaseless imagination. It contains the evidence of much of his creative process. This includes the notes, drafts, proofs, promotional materials, up to and beyond the final published edition of 'Poor Things'. It also includes Gray's subsequent screenplay adaptation of his book.

In March 1991, Gray began work on the initial draft of a short story titled 'Poor Creatures'. The pages reveal his familiar creative method and style. His easily identifiable handwriting in black and blue ink can be seen doing battle with plentiful helpings of Tipp-ex. Sections of the pages are almost three-dimensional, so thick are the pasted-on fragments of overlaid corrections and amendments. It's a wonderfully visual and tactile manuscript, as is the majority of the Gray archive.

Later in the same month, the second iteration of 'Poor Creatures' reveals an expansion of the story. By the third version, the tale is now 'The Poor Creature'. Still in March 1991, the next draft is different again. Written boldly in green ink is "Poor Things - a novella and three stories by Alasdair Gray". A pencil note has Gray exclaiming "I now see what I'm up to with this book!"

As the drafts expand in size, 'Poor Things' grows from novella to novel, with a draft completed in June of 1991. All the major characters, Bella Baxter, Godwin Baxter, Archibald McCandless, and Duncan Wedderburn, appear much as they will in the final version. However, the text is only half the length of the published novel. The full version, including the framing account by Gray at the beginning and end, and Bella's retrospective narrative, is completed by March of 1992.

'Poor Things' was an immediate success following publication on 3 September 1992. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and the book won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. If we are to believe Gray, most of the negative reviews are hilarious ones he excerpts in the errata page of the paperback edition (a list of errors in a printed work discovered after printing, and their corrections).

Following the success of the novel, Gray decided to adapt the story, first for radio and then for the big screen. Along with friend and co-writer Sandy Johnson, Gray worked on the screenplay from 1994 to 1996. A director (Brian Gibson) was involved, and in 1996 Gray wrote to Gibson to praise his suggestions which "make the script more true to the original book, and incline me to think you are a directorial genius".

It's quite the claim, given that this script did not make it to film. Despite favourable reactions from the Scottish and British film councils, funding that was "promised" failed to materialise. By 2005, Gray concedes that the option had expired, and no filming will occur.

By 2012, Greek film director Yorgos Lanthimos became interested in the book. He subsequently visited Alasdair in Glasgow, where they hit it off. After watching 'Dogtooth' (2009), Gray declares that Yorgos "is fit to be trusted with my 'Poor Things' script". So begins the final part of the story's journey that will culminate in acting awards, as well as victories for production design, costume design, and make-up and hairstyling. The Oscar-winning film is not based on Gray's screenplay adaptation, but on the adaptation written by the Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara, who received an Academy Award nomination. You can read Gray's version in his 2009 collection 'A Gray Playbook'.

Despite changes, it is undoubtedly still Gray's vision and imagination on screen. Indeed, Willem Dafoe, who plays Godwin Baxter, stated that he absorbed aspects of Gray's personality, voice, mannerisms, and idiosyncrasies into his performance. Dafoe states that he spent time researching for the Godwin Baxter part by:

"…looking at these videos of Alasdair Gray […] I think there's a lot of Alasdair Gray in that character. And he's quite an amusing guy. He's eccentric, he's intellectual, he's playful. He's a thinker; a free thinker. So I think that I was working from watching videos of him."

'Poor Things' clearly owes much to Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'. Baxter creates Bella by reanimating the dead body of a drowned woman and implanting in her the brain of her unborn baby (this is not the spoiler it may seem). The parallels with Victor Frankenstein's creation of his unnamed Monster are obvious.

Gray is also making a reference to Mary Shelley's father William Godwin in the naming of Godwin Baxter, whom Bella refers to as "God" throughout the novel. Early in 'Frankenstein', Mary Shelley writes, "supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator". On one hand, we can read this as relating to Victor Frankenstein's actions.

But we can also understand this as referring to the act of writing, of creating people, personalities, and characters in a work of fiction. It seems apt that Alasdair Gray, the creator of Godwin Baxter, Bella, and the characters in 'Poor Things', should himself be present in Dafoe's portrayal of the very character who 'creates' Bella.

All of these considerations on the nature of both literary and actual creation bring us back to the Alasdair Gray archive. This is where the manuscript sources of these narrative and philosophical deliberations are found. And not just those relating to 'Poor Things'. Gray's archive contains the notes, diaries, drafts, proofs, images, and artworks relating to almost every novel, short story, essay, and poem he ever published.

Gray has always been generous in crediting his influences, going as far as including an index of plagiarisms at the end of 'Lanark'. While there are clearly influences and precedents such as 'Frankenstein', and James Hogg's classic 'Justified Sinner', Alasdair Gray's creation of Bella Baxter was the beginning of the journey that culminated in Emma Stone's Oscar for her performance in 'Poor Things'.

How many more of Gray's characters will make it to the big screen? Whatever the answer, you'll find their beginnings, and their flourishings, in the Alasdair Gray archive here at the National Library of Scotland.

Top image copyright The Alasdair Gray Estate, used with kind permission.