Iain Banks’s Walking On Glass and Canal Dreams

Last week, after beating Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow to submission for the third time (or it it the fourth time?) since I bought it at the end of 2004. I embarked on that massively entertaining and massively laborious task of going through the pile of book I bought at The Big Bad Wolf Sale on last November.

The first book on that pile was Canal Dreams and Walking On Glass by Iain Banks. Readers of science fiction know him more as Iain M. Banks. He lives in Scotland near Firth of Forth and tries to publish once a year (he has succeeded so far) alternating between science fiction and ’serious’ fiction.

he is among my favourite authors from the UK. Before this, I’ve read a few of his books (not all!) with and without the ‘M.’.  My favourite book of his without the ‘M.’ is Espedair Street and the favourite with the ‘M.” is The Player Of Games. No two of his books are ever the same although sometime a few themes and literary devices do crop up in his other books.

For readers in search in a more detailed look into his works click here.

First I read ‘Canal of dreams’. This story has a very different atmosphere. Did Mr. Banks went on an ocean cruise? Details of ocean travel are abundantly littered in the book. He nailed that sweaty skin in the sweltering heat of a damp day feeling and the cool relief of night. Very tropical.

Then in the telling of the life of the main character, a Japanese woman who has a fear of flying, professionally plays the cello and is 40-plus, Mr. Banks displays his knowledge of Japan in detail. Getting the customs, the mindset and the way of speaking just right. Though I would could never be sure how accurate, at times it felt like I was reading a Haruki Murami book.

Using dreams and memories of the main character’s to justify the whys and the hows, the book is a masterful display of story structuring. All the little details serves as pillars to support the ending that belongs more in a Hollywood action film. And what an ending it was, complete with RPG s,  Kalashnikovs, CIA agent provocateurs  and deaths by fire of crude oil so brilliantly realized that you could almost smell the naphtha, pitch and tar.

But on hindsight after finishing the book and starting on the next, it all seems too structured, I somehow got the feeling that the book was written to prop up the ending, but one really can not be sure, knowing writing as it is

In all it’s a page turner, a very good book, better than  ’A Song Of Stone’ (though that book is a special work because even though the the theme was repulsive, the narration was seductive and smart) but not as good as a fun book as ‘Espedair Street’.

Then I read ‘Walking On Glass’. This is a 3 in 1 book. It features, alternatingly, three separate stories seemingly unconnected to each other. But as always, all is not what it seems.

Mr.Banks perfectly captures the  breathless hope of a naive young lover who against an unseen, nay, not properly seen nemesis was getting the girl he is after.  I know, I’ve been that guy.

Then we are introduced to a character who’s not really has that knack of participating in the mass pretend game we call ‘Reality’, but we are made to understand and be sympathetic to this not so OK man. His irrationality feels to make sense.I know too, I’ve been that guy.

Next, (I’ve never been like them though) A old couple that spends their time playing absurd games like ‘Invisible Dominoes’, “Open-Ended Go” or ‘Chinese Scrabble while being kept in a castle that has stacks of books as walls,  glass ceilings and floor that have fishes that glow swimming  in the them providing the lighting. All very well and interesting but these are the parts that I feel were not in sync with the two

They were akin too speed bumps on the highway.  there no reason actually to slow down though, just to make you realize that the  scenery at the bumps are familiar to the scenery when you were going fast.

There was this feeling that i get after finishing the book. Smells like teenage existential crisis. Ha that’s it!. There were a few references to the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy in  the story and I think that must be it. He tried to make his story as daft and weird as possible but still maintain it’s adhesion to reality. Add that to that feeling of ‘why am all this happening? what’s tyhe meaning of it all?’ you got your self some kind of jumpstart to that all singing and all dancing existential show.

Well I could be wrong.

After finishing these two I picked up from the pile two sci-fiction books:
Radio Freefall by Matthew Jarpe and The Last Colony by John Scalzi. I’ll write about them later.

Just Finished Reading Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow

Hell! What a ride, jiving and dancing through the end of WW2 in Europe.

Mad rush and crazy leaps of imagination that could be or not an allegory of the state of the social weather of America’s 60’s youth.

It’s all here folks!The drug-taking-fear-of-getting-fucked-in-the-butt-paranoia and the homophobia is embraced fully. Butt raped in more than one sense of the word.

Stars Tyrone Slothrop as Rocketman which we follow as he launches into the zone. trei…zwei…ein HAUPSTUFE!!! Goes knocking on all the characters that typifies the Germany purged of all the auto-asphixiatic-fascistic. The cool technology-industrial-complex the real and utter terror of not knowing of where you next meal is coming because the madmen on top seized all the food to feed the soldiers and to feed the rocket. All the transport supposed to bring armaments to the fighting men and food for the people seized and used to transport the jews to be roasted in some oven near town where the inhabitants of those cities lived in utter denial of all that is happening.

Well enough about that didn’t meant to get you down there buddy. Just that it’s all compleat, yup I spelled it compleat though it was because I wrongly spelled it The First Time.

The author Thomas R. Pynchon (the R stands for Ruggles heheh) nicely deflects the uncoolness of having his work dissected by Phallus-Obsessed-Pop-Freud-Admirers by really making fun the connection of the rocket upright and virile ready to launch with the subplot of Slothrop’s Penis That Wasn’t His. Hohoho!

Mr Pynchon writing like a jazz musician. Those who get in the groove would not help but get the toe tapping feel and that fingers would snap away. There see see *snap snap*. The book is best enjoyed to some jazz. And of course with any good jazz piece it not really fair to judge the work as encyclopedic as this in pieces. You must really put everything in, cram, forced in with any sort of that lube to really get what so great about the book. That’s why it’s not really surprising when this book was selected for the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1974 the decision was overturned by the Pulitzer board who said the book was “unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene”.

Good luck to all those who intends to dive into the book. And if pictures help might I suggest sir the illustrations done by Zak Smith one for each page of this novel and this review published in Time magazine. Good Day.

Book Shopping Madness

My biceps are still stiff and stinging. The soles of my feet pleading mercy.

All because of books.

It all started with a colleague  of mine, O.W.L, he came back from Amcorp Mall on lunch and he told of the most interesting news that The Big Bad Wolf Sale is back!

I’d known that this company had a book sale sometime in mid May, but at that time I was actually preparing for something really big, and so I had given it a miss.

I went there on the evening of the second day of the sale, so I was not to witness the long lines at the payment reportedly a hundred metres long blogged by others who went on the first day

There was though, a line at the entrance about forty people before me. Seeing the crowds of people inside the place I was actually thankful for being made to wait.

Anyone who was there  would agree with me that  it was apparent that a Carnival atmosphere pervades. Chaos, out of control and fun.

I’m proud to say that everyone there was cooperative and civil to each other.

So with a box grabbed from under a table, I jostled with the crowds flooding the aisles rummaging through the piles of books put there.

Time passed unnoticed to me while I was there. By the time acid had accumulated enough to sting my biceps and the soles of my feet, I then realised that four hours had passed!

The damage came to about MYR150.

Then the next Monday i went again after work bought some more…

But theres more… I bought these before the sale at BookXces at Amcorp a few days before the Big Bad Wolf sale…

Eternal Mortality

The young will replace the old.

The old will then vanish.

The young becomes the old.

And the cycle repeats.

Currently Reading…

Laskar Pelangi by Andrea Hirata. Making my way through the tetralogy again. So far the first one is the best. Somehow his writing lost his charm when the first book was successful. Anyway, anything from Andrea Hirata better than nothing, beggars can’t be choosers.

Was planning to read Laskar Pelangi earlier but was distracted by two Arthur C. Clarke books: Rendezvous With Rama and Childhood’s End. Rendezvous was written after he did 2001: A Space Odyssey; his most famous work. I find it interesting and full with wonder. It’s only weakness is the dialogue. Somehow stilted and seems added upon the story, to somehow make a connection with the reader. So as not too lose the humanness of the people in the story.

I find Childhood’s End the better of the two even though it’s was written in the late fifties much more earlier than Rendezvous With Rama. The people in it seems much more human, they have frailties,they are sad, happy, curious. The late Sir Clarke seems to succeed making these characters human without trying to. Though who can tell what the rough drafts read like?

The story does have a weakness too though. I find the ending a bit underwhelming and there were some parts that seems disconnected to the whole. Though understandably the story is divided into parts of different time scopes so as to make it clear to the reader that the story is going on a much longer timeframe, much longer than that which is usually understood as a lifetime. several lifetimes in fact.

The point I’m getting at is that, there seems to be a lack of cohesion between the parts. The same plot, some recurring characters but when reflected upon, it feels that Sir Clarke combined a few stories together to make the whole. As a whole the book feels like a multiple storied building that have a different architectural style for each floor. The first floor a modernist reminder of the cold war, the second floor art deco, the third classical chinese and so on.

The ending and the view of the whole one would get after finishing the story, with it’s diversions into the ideas of utopia and the prediction that some of humanity would reject this utopia with a counter utopia; mentions of Jung’s racial memory; and the idea of a transcendent post humanity that would be unrecognisable to a normal human is a bit hope crushing.

Next, after the Laskar Pelangi tetralogy, I would be diving again into Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. WW2, psychedelics, Pavlovian conditioning, sexual pervesrsion, rockets and a dude killed while wearing a pig suit. Hell yeah!

Windstyle Dancing by Bishop

Epicurus’ Recipe for Happiness

1. Friends. Keep them near and see them often.
2. Freedom. Be your own boss in everything, at work, at play and in life.
3. Reflect. Take time to contemplate life, yours and others ’.

All is to be mixed in the pot of daily life simultaneously. Money is optional, need only enough to sustain life, too much is to add worry.

“Take your pleasure seriously” - Charles Eames.

but remember,

“Too much of a good thing is can always be bad” - Old English Proverb.

Character Sketch 30082009

She has a deep voice for a woman, smoky and a bit husky but calmingly soft. Her upbringing in a culture where to be soft-spoken is a virtue made her speak in a measured way, with word choices that have the right gravity to what she means to say.

Not too much nor too less, just right.

Hearing her speak is a relief to the whiny, uncouthness and general lack of care to what one says in these days.

Never a laugh out of place nor a stray pause.

She has her own beat , a rhythm of her choosing, a bit like raindrops.

She does overpronounce her ‘S’s though. Hissing them through her unseen teeth. Unseen while speaking but present when smiling.

He looks thirty but you would know he’s older than that. The manner of his movement through the world is smooth, unhurried and without waste of energy. It looks as if he practiced everything beforehand.

He would be unnoticed in a crowd, only those that pay attention to him moving would see his art.

He speaks clearly, so clearly that even the partially deaf could hear him. Never would anyone ask him to repeat what he was saying.

He does however, has a habit of using words that gone out of fashion, though not that often to humour or to come across as a snob.

Preferring one word if that is sufficient as a response or no word at all. when others speak to him, he would stay silent and the only thing one would see would be his eyes compelling you to not waste him time or tell falsehoods.

Her name is Fauziana and his name is Sani, and both are characters I’m using in my current writing project. Maybe I will trash this work as like the others, or I will complete it. Wait and see.

Reflections on ZaTAoMM and Anathem

As I’m reading Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZaTAoMM) after reading Anathema, I couldn’t help but draw some affinity between the two. both talks about the scientific method, it’s aesthetics and the aesthetics of the output derived from it.

The nature of Quality and it’s undefined aesthetics.

Anathema touches much on the multiplicity of cosmi, the question between of the universe and the consciousness of the observer. the realisation that if one observes one also alters what is being observed. all this while telling you of a riotous story of intrigue, adventure, comedy and ideas. set in a world in which the scientists,  philosophers and learned people lived in isolation to outside world. while also delving much into maths and philosophy. Sounds boring but the author throws in some martial arts action, sociology, a few love stories, science fiction goodness of space travel and mystery. The author himself said that his inspiration was the long now  foundation which aims to promote thinking in long terms as in in terms of century or in time-frames of millennium, this accounts for the grandeur of the setting of this book; Ancient metropolis buried under the slow march of glaciers, a train that goes over the polar region. Ancient religions that seems silly. A history, a culture.

While ZaTAoMM tells of it’s author search for a  philosophy of value, the question of what is Quality while telling you the story of a father son trip on a motorcycle across America. It’s philosophy seems a bit weak in the face of reason though but that is what the author argues, that reason isn’t much of a deal. The audacity of saying that the basis of western thought is corrupted by the works of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. The author pleads the case for humanity to return to the pursuit of ereté (excellence). all while telling you that the narrator actually goes mad while thinking of this matter. One suspects that the narrator is actually a recovering manic depressive on his down cycle missing his manic past but I think that is just because I saw Stephen Fry’s excellent documentary on  manic depression.

Delving into these two you cannot but connect the ideas laced in them.

Next I’m reading The Algebraist by Iain M Banks, I’ve read it before so I know I’m in for a ride that spans millions of years…