Stirling Postgrad Conference, 29-30 May, 2010 [Archive]

Tangendentalism

31-05-2010, 06:17 PM

Just got back from the conference. It was awesome, and so of course was TMH. Chatting with him before he took to the stage I mentioned that half of the reason I had gone was because the Gothic team at Stirling always throw really wild parties - an expectation they entirely lived up to - the other half being him, of course. His response: 'Well, I'm a bit surprised to find myself the respectable half of anything!' <3

He read the first murder scene from The Wasp Factory before taking a few questions. I did ask him (only slightly petulantly) why he wasn't reading from Surface Detail and he said that he didn't think it was transgressive enough - the theme of the conference was transgression.

The questions were 'Do you set out to write things that shock people?', 'Do you see yourself as a Scottish writer?', 'Have you considered writing graphic novels and do you think the novel has a future?', 'What is your writing process?', 'Do you set out to transgress the formal conventions of novel-writing?', 'How do you deal with reviews of your books?'. Iain's answers were, as ever, full and generous and far too long to do justice to here, but in short:

'Do you set out to write things that shock people?' He didn't with The Wasp Factory - it was meant to be black humour - but when he did set out to shock (with Complicity) nobody noticed. He suggested a literary theory of antibodies - by the time he wrote Complicity, readers had become immune to that level of shock as a consequence of books like The Wasp Factory.

'Do you see yourself as a Scottish writer?' He is clearly both Scottish and a writer, so yes, but he does not consider himself to be a Scottish Writer with a capital S and W. It's a continuum with very Scottish writers at one end and those who aren't at all on the other. He thinks he's probably somewhere between the middle and the not at all end, but if you take out his SF it's probably closer to the other end as they are mostly set in Scotland.

'Have you considered writing graphic novels and do you think the novel has a future?' He likes graphic novels, but hasn't ever really got into them. He is more interested in the changes that will occur to the novel with the development of electronic readers like Kindle and with the storytelling that is taking place in computer games writing. He also mentioned Alan Moore, saying that he likes Moore's work and didn't go to see The Watchmen movie because he knows him a bit and would feel like he was betraying him by going to see it - Moore is on record as saying he hates all the Hollywood movies of his graphic novels.

'What is your writing process?' As discussed in detail at OdysseyCon (and numerous interviews) it's three months thinking, three months planning, three months writing, three months off.

'Do you set out to transgress the formal conventions of novel-writing?' He wouldn't want to call it anything as grand as transgression, but he likes playing around. 'It's like the best trainset in the world.' He mentioned the structure for Use of Weapons - much documented as being Ken McLeod's idea - and said he really loves surprise endings.

'How do you deal with reviews of your books?' He doesn't read any of them. They all get sent to him via a cuttings service and get neatly filed away in his study, but he never looks at them. He said that they're not for writers; they're for readers to help them decide if they want to read a book or not. He reads reviews of other people's books for precisely that purpose, but he fears his own reviews would either make him lose a sense of proportion 'I never need editing again! Which is death for an author' if they were good or would crush him and make him stop writing (he actually said commit suicide, but it was clearly hyperbolic) 'Which is also death!' if they were bad. And after the baptism of fire of the reviews for The Wasp Factory he decided not to read them.

There was one other question I think, but I can't remember what it was. Afterwards, he signed a few books (including my very battered and held together with sticky tape copy of Player of Games!) and I asked him if there is any news on A Gift from the Culture. There isn't, although he did suggest that DaveH might know more. :p Apparently his publishers got a bit of an earbashing from Mic Cheetham (his agent) about changing the release date for Surface Detail without telling him (and it has been firmly changed back - they wanted to release it in the new year, but Iain will be writing the next next book by then!). He did add that there has been new interest in optioning The Wasp Factory, although of course he's hesitant about that now, and also Whit.

He also said that the ceremony in Glasgow on Saturday went well, although his hands were stinging from all the clapping and he accidentally forgot his certificate (it's being sent to him): Iain 'I'm now Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Banks!'

So, crush firmly renewed, I'm now exhausted and back home. Incidentally, I gave a paper on cannibalism and transgression in Consider Phlebas and State of the Art. Seemed to go down well. I'm considering sending it to him. :)