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extent that I can get away with it. The good thing about
writing is that you can do this in a non-invasive, nonpenetrative
way, you’re not telling people this is what
they should do, you’re just presenting ideas.”
Whit also differs from Banks’ previous novels
because it’s written through the eyes of its female
protagonist. It’s a common complaint about many
male novelists (Martin Amis springs to mind) that
their female characters always remain lifeless stereotypes.
Banks however ignores gender preconceptions
as some sort of prohibition to his imagination:
“I just think of the person in that situation, I don’t try
and think as a female character per se … In a sense
it’s easy to be blind to the sexism that’s still around
and somehow manage to ignore the other elements of
society that still are unequitable in terms of gender
or whatever,” Banks pauses and then laughs, “but it’s
only stupid or ignorant people who do that.”
“If you’re a writer you’re supposed to have some ability
to spot what’s going on and to empathise – it should
be relatively easy to write a female character because
you spend your time in the same society – I think I’d
find it hard to write from the point of view from someone
who was particularly gay – there’s a small element
of it in Complicity, but it’s very marginal, a childhood
dalliance sort of thing – and I think that’s because the
gay community is quite separate in many ways. To the
same extent writing about a black person or someone
BUY Iain Banks books online from and
in the Indian community would be difficult – so writing
about an 18-year-old female virgin is quite easy!”
Whit was a conscious attempt by Banks to write
something quieter and more reflective after the polemical
rage of his previous mainstream novel, Complicity.
Even though Banks has had a reputation for the macabre
ever since the gothic horror of The Wasp Factory,
Complicity’s graphic descriptions of corrupt politicians
being killed off in particularly inventive and horrible
ways reached new stomach-churning extremes.
Banks has no qualms about the violence in his writing:
“In principle, anything’s OK, as long as I’ve got
an excuse to put it in – which is a more honest way of
saying, ‘Is it artistically justified?’ You shouldn’t selfcensor
yourself just because you have a gut reaction
that an idea is too horrible. If there’s a reason for it, it
has to be done. There’s a moral point to that ghastliness,
pain and anguish. Which is why I would absolutely
defend Complicity’s extreme violence, because it was
supposed to be a metaphor for what the Tories have
done to this country.”
Banks rejects the idea that his science fiction writing
is a way for him to cut loose in contrast to the
tight stricture of his contemporary novels: “The scifi
isn’t really a way of letting off steam. In a sense,
Complicity was letting off steam, a way of getting out
all the anger and bitterness I felt about the 80s and the
Thatcher years. It kind of varies, there’s no set pat-
055
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