Interview with Iain Banks Part 2 of 2

by Mike



















The View From Here Interview:
Iain Banks


Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels. He is now acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation: The Guardian has called him "the standard by which the rest of SF is judged". William Gibson, the New York Times-bestselling author of Spook Country describes Banks as a "phenomenon".
I caught up with him after he finished writing his latest book, due out later this year.

For part 1 of this interview click here.


Alban muses towards the end of The Steep Approach to Garbadale that "the trouble was that so many people seemed to feel a need for certainty, for clear paths leading to set objectives with tickable goal boxes." Are you someone who needs these or do you like to be more spontaneous and go with the flow and just "travel hopefully" as Alban puts it?

I am when I'm writing; I like to complete a certain number of words per week. In everything else I try to be a bit more relaxed. In the context Alban is talking about I try to be as different from that mentality as possible.

Alban asks himself "What do I really want?" Is this a question you've ever asked yourself in the context of your writing career?

No. The career itself is the answer to the questions I asked myself as far back as primary school.




The Guardian said of The Steep Approach to Garbadale, "one can't help concluding that his heart wasn't completely in the job." How do you cope with reviews of your books, do you let them effect you/do you read them at all? The Times for example said The Wasp Factory was "rubbish" but now have changed their minds!

I tend not to read them. Reviews are written for potential readers, not for writers. As a reader/potential reader, I read and use reviews all the time, but as a writer - well, bad reviews make you want to stop writing and good ones make you think you need never be edited again, and neither response is really useful for you as a writer or for your readers. Don't get me wrong; reviewers do an important job, it's just not the one everybody appears to assume they do, which is telling writers where they've gone horribly wrong.




Alban makes a cutting speech towards the end of the book about American foreign policy. Is this something that you feel passionately about yourself?

Darn! What gave it away? I'm with Alban here... actually I'm not, I'm with Verushka; Alban was a suspicious supporter of the war whereas I was against it before the start. Long before; I remember thinking What the fuck are these evil right-wing bastards up to now? back before September 11, just because of some of the briefings coming out of the White House. It was obvious they were angling to attack Iraq (at least - maybe Iran too). And I absolutely believe Verushka's line about trying to justify the war being like trying to justify rape; no matter how fancy you dress your arguments up you should just be ashamed of yourself.

You describe yourself as an "ideas" writer - Do you find those ideas harder to come by these days?

Yes. Luckily one gets better at exploiting the few one does have as one gets older. One also starts to use the impersonal first person more often, one does.

Can you give some advice to those writers who are trying to get published?

Yes, I can. It's all about the three "P"s: practice, practice, practice. Actually it's about practice, perseverance and pluck. Except take the "p" off "pluck" I just put that there for alliterative effect. I meant "luck."




What do you think are the common pitfalls and mistakes new writers make in learning their craft?

Not practicing enough. Also, not loving writing for its own sake but just treating it as a career prospect that will in time yield vast amounts of money. The poor fools! Plus, not sending publishers return postage with the manuscript. (I have yet to work out how one does this with this new outerweb thingy on the computer, but I'm sure it's possible.)

What is your view of the publishing industry at the moment? And is your approach to writing a novel different now to how you first started out?

I don't know enough about publishing to comment beyond saying it seems to have got a lot more corporate over the last twenty-five years, which, as an observation, is not exactly sock-knocking-off in its originality. Anyway, I just write the books, and do so now pretty much as I ever did.

Can you tell us something about your next book?

It's called Transition, it's published in early September and it's mainstream. About as mainstream as The Bridge, admittedly, but still mainstream. Though not in the States. There it's going to be published as SF. Confused yet?


For Iain's web site click here.

This interview is available in the printed edition of the magazine in May.

Photo Copyright(Modified): John Foley /Opale

Interview with Iain Banks Part 1 of 2

by Mike



















The View From Here Interview:
Iain Banks


Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels. He is now acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation: The Guardian has called him "the standard by which the rest of SF is judged". William Gibson, the New York Times-bestselling author of Spook Country describes Banks as a "phenomenon".
I caught up with him after he finished writing his latest book, due out later this year.


Can you tell me a bit about yourself.

55, married but separated and in the process of getting divorced, no children, living happily with partner in Fife. Merrily writing away to produce a book every eighteen months or so. Hobbies include music and hill walking. Driving a wee diesel hatchback these days after an attack of green guilt made me sell the fast cars. Gave up flying too, mostly for the same reason but also because I just got bored with the security rituals.




What's your ideal night?

No single template. Drinking and eating feature heavily as a rule, though.

What is your favourite book?

Sorry, I don't have one.

Fair enough! What book are you currently reading then?

The Gods That Failed by Larry Eliot & Dan Atkinson.




What was your first break into being a published author and how did that feel?

Getting a phone call from the late and much-missed James Hale of Macmillan while I was sitting at my desk pretending to be a costing clerk for a big firm of London lawyers in March 1983. James plucked The Wasp Factory and me from obscurity. The rest is modern studies.

Do you know anything about the plans to turn The Wasp Factory into a film and will you be involved with the screenplay and the music and lyrics to the soundtrack?

The film rights are mine again apparently, as of recently. So a film is a possibility - watch this space. I'll leave a proper screenwriter to get on with their job. Ditto the music - I have absurdly ambitious plans for my music but a soundtrack for Wasp Factory does not figure in them.

The Steep Approach to Garbadale, the family business is built around a game called Empire! Is this based on games like Risk and do you have a love of playing board games yourself?

Yes, it is. I was a Risk adept, I'll have you know. Well, I thought so at the time. At one point in the early Seventies I'd won 13 out of the 15 games my pals and I had played over the course of one summer (and, patently, remembered this statistic). I believed then that this was because I was a genius. In fact it was because I had a car. This kept me sober while my chums were all roaring drunk and often stoned as well and so not taking the game entirely seriously, while I was. I even designed a sort of super-Risk that featured a variable-geography board and lots of different types of units, plus different terrains and resources and so on. I never did persuade any of my pals to play it with me though I had a lot of geeky fun test-playing it. Anyway, Sid Meier did it a lot better.




In your book science fiction readers are described as anoraks in a conversation between Alban and Fielding. Do you think science fiction readers are seen like this and as a science fiction as well as a literary writer yourself how do you feel about the genre and its image?

Of course they are. And while there is a grain of truth here it's mostly just a patronising put-down, born partly out of a sort of technophobia. Only a culture that ever considered calling somebody 'too clever by half' and regarding this as a genuine criticism could be quite so self-defeatingly stupid about SF and its fans. On the other hand I have a sneaking respect for the keep-SF-in-the-gutter faction, too... Cripes! I'm jolly well conflicted.

Why do you put your middle initial in your name for your science fiction, was that your idea?

To keep certain of my uncles happy. There was a degree of avuncular disapproval that the good name of Menzies might somehow be seen as not good enough. Anyway, it helps distinguish the mainstream from the SF, though the debate over its usefulness is on-going.

Is there much cross over between the people that read your science fiction and those that read your literary work?

I wish I knew. Just going on the mix of people at events and so on, I think the Venn diagram concerned has a fairly generous middle bit, but obviously further market research is required.


For Iain's web site click here.

Photo Copyright(Modified): John Foley /Opale

For part 2 of this interview click here.

This interview is in May's printed edition of the magazine here.

The Steep Approach to Garbadale

by Mike

The Steep Approach to Garbadale
By Iain Banks
Publisher: Abacus

He is collecting her, scooping up the crumbs that fall from her mouth, clutching at them, cradling them.

One of Iain Bank’s main strengths comes from writing scenes that he is able to imprint on your mind with such force that they stay there like a branding. If you were to flip anyone’s head open that has ever read one of Iain’s books, I’m sure you would see some of his paragraphs stamped there, smouldering slightly.

The best of these in The Steep Approach to Garbadale is where a woman dies:

Her auburn hair sucked down at last like fine tendrils of seaweed.

The story revolves around Alban Wopuld who, after years of exile, is pulled back to his family’s highland estate, Garbadale. The family has amassed a fortune around their board game, Empire! and has to decide if they are going to sell out to the Americans who want to buy them out.

Which is okay – it’s not something that grabs you on the dust jacket, but beneath that is a tale of Alban finding, loosing and becoming obsessed by his first love Sophie who just happens, unfortunately for him, to be his cousin.

There is the need to be accepted, somehow, some time, by his girl in the garden, by his lost love, by Sophie.

Alban hasn’t seen Sophie for some time. Sophie is going to be at Garbadale. There lies the real story. And it is a story really well told. It’s moving, rings true to life and has a twist in the tale. Iain takes us with Alban as he wrestles with his forced separation from Sophie:

He’s getting another roaring in his head, and tunnel vision. Last time this happened he’d been smacked full in the face by a football.

How he has been left with only his memories of her that he collects like moths, all pinned and catalogued:

He just pictured her as the same girl she had always been, but stopped, frozen, paused, something caught in amber.

And towards the end he is left asking:

What do I really want? He thinks. This is, of course, an extremely good question. It was just such a pity that, life as it tended to be, it so rarely came as part of a matched pair, with an extremely good answer.

The whole thing hooks you in; you care about Alban and what lies before him as he scree runs down the steep approach to Garbadale to discover his fate.

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

For Iain's web site click here.

Coming soon The View From Here Interview with Iain.

Coming Soon: We Interview Iain Banks

by Mike



Well I'm half way through The Steep Approach to Garbadale which I'm reading to prepare for my interview with Iain Banks.

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

For Iain's web site click here.


Photo Copyright: John Foley /Opale

Week 10 Results of Hi Ho Books Away!

by The Lone Ranger

The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks

In at number 6
Time: 20 mins 51 secs

Return with me now to the thrilling day of last Friday ...

The last week. It is the end. I leave Iain Banks on the bench and wait.

20 mins 51 secs later:

A young couple approach the bench. They look like student types. She points the book out to him. He swoops, picks it up and they walk off towards the local tavern, book held high in his hands. The oldest partners in crime routine. "She made me eat the apple your honour."

So that's it. The finish. It's been a great 10 weeks. Here are some stats:

The winner: Tom McCarthy
The slowest book: Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

10 books given away to the value of £ 150.

10 lives impacted by a book that lay across their path? Who knows what effect those books had.

I ride now into the sunset. Thanks for following me on my journey.

There are no more words.