1982, Janine
The dust-jacket cover of the hardback edition
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| Author | Alasdair Gray |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Erotic novel |
| Publisher | Viking Adult |
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Publication date
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30 October 1984 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 345 pp (hardcover edition) & 352 pp (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | (hardcover edition) & (paperback edition) |
| OCLC | 10751727 |
| 823/.914 19 | |
| LC Class | PR6057.R3264 A616 1984 |
1982, Janine is a novel by the Scottish author Alasdair Gray. His second, it was published in 1984, and remains his most controversial work. Its use of pornography as a narrative device attracted much criticism, although others, including Gray himself, consider it his best work.
The novel is narrated by Jock McLeish, a supervisor of the installation of alarm systems. Divorced, alcoholic and approaching fifty, his problems coalesce in a long night of the soul in a hotel room in Greenock.
McLeish attempts to spend the night assembling an intricate pornographic fantasy. His cast of characters includes: Janine, based on a childhood memory of Jane Russell in The Outlaw; Superb (short for Superbitch); and Big Momma, an obese lesbian. All of these are submitted to sadomasochistic practices, parts of which are described at some length. However, McLeish constantly returns to reminiscences of his previous life and lovers. These prompt his attempted suicide. Chapter 11 of the novel is a typographical explosion, with the text splitting into several parallel voices on each page (including that of God). The crisis concludes with McLeish vomiting up the pills which he had hoped would kill him, and facing the truth of his actions as morning dawns.
On the first hardback and paperback editions, Gray wrote that "This already dated novel is set inside the head of an ageing, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations who is tippling in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel. Though full of depressing memories and propaganda for the Conservative Party it is mainly a sadomasochistic fetishistic fantasy. Even the arrival of God in the later chapters fails to elevate the tone. Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books, Lanark and Unlikely Stories, Mostly, is to be found here in concentrated form." In a 2000 interview, Gray said "When writing the pornographic parts of 1982, Janine I was deliberately shocking myself. Though I think it my best novel I cannot now reread it - I'm back to being as old fashioned as I was before imagining it."
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