What I will need to do:

1. --demonstrate the form of the novel as non-chronological (easy to do: it starts with book 3);

2. --consider Lacan's formulation of the schizophrenic (esp. in "On a Question Prior to Any Treatment of Psychoanalysis") as breakdown of the signifying chain -- briefly and reductively: inability to connect past w/present and future in any sort of unity, thus loss of identity, primacy of the material signifier, etc.

3. --demonstrate the novel's non-chronology as related to this conception; and discuss implications of this on Lanark/Thaw (many specific examples from the text available);

4. --further: through Deleuze/Guattari's interpretation of Lacan (particularly, in this case, I think, in Anti-Oedipus), show the psychosis of society itself (in bks. three and four -- Unthank in particular, but all of the others as well, really);

5. --and, on the side, if I get really ambitious, footnotes about this novel as "schizophrenic writing" as per Jameson's "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism";

6. --conclusion: the form of the text strongly reinforces themes discoverable therein. Also implications for contemporary society. Novel as political and "postmodern" (apres Jameson). Hooray!

Sources:

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. trans. Robert Hurly et al.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Gray, Alasdair. Lanark: A Life in Four Books. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2002.

Jameson, Fredric. "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. 1-54.

Lacan, Jacques. "On a Question Prior to Any Treatment of Psychoanalysis." Ecrits: A Selection. trans. Bruce Fink et al. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. 169-214.