Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

A Large number of Books
Phoenixine Seventy-Six, January 1996
I have a friend who, when I meet him for drinks or dinner, always asks me "What have you been reading
lately?". Usually my mind goes completely blank and I gape at him like a worm in a tequila bottle. But now
I no longer have a problem. I simply hand him a copy of the latest Phoenixine and maintain an enigmatic
silence. As a diary of my reading it is remarkably illuminating. It wasn't until I started keeping notes for
these things that I realised exactly how many books I read, or how mixed they were. This month is no
exception.
I started off with the new novel by Iain Banks. It is called Whit. Since it is by Iain Banks rather than
Iain M. Banks, it probably isn't science fiction, although like virtually all of his books it has SF overtones. I
fell in love with Banks' writing many years ago when his first novel The Wasp Factory was published.
Though probably best described as a shaggy dog story with literary pretensions, it retained sufficient
verve and power to hold my undivided attention and I have followed his career with interest ever since.
His SF (as by Iain M. Banks) is generally mediocre-certainly not a patch on his magnificent mainstream
novels, and Whit is black and brilliant, shot through with sardonic Scottish humour. The first person
narrator is Isis Whit, the Elect of God of the Luskentyrian sect, a small religious community based near
Stirling. The cult was founded by her grandfather shortly after he was rescued from a shipwreck by two
lovely Pakistani sisters, with whom he lived in lust for many years. As a result of this cross-cultural
Scottish-Pakistani fertilisation, the Luskentyrians have a rather odd diet and on occasion Isis waxes
lyrical about the taste of haggis pakoras.
The novel takes Isis out of her closed community into the world of 1990s Britainand Banks uses her
odyssey as a mechanism to comment on what she sees. Stated thus it sounds boring (everybody has
done this, from Voltaire on downwards). But the novel is anything but boring. By turns hilarious, thrilling,
romantic and sad, it tells a rollicking good tale and makes serious social comments as well. The
dénouement, where Isis finds out exactly how and why the Luskentyre Sect was formed is wonderfully
ironic. I cannot recommend this book too highly (mind you, I say this about all the Iain Banks books).
On a high from this literary experience, I turned to Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem. I picked this
one up on the strength of his first novel, Gun With Occasional Music which was brilliant. The blurb on
Amnesia Moon was quite enticing (... with a fur covered girl named Melinda, Chaos sets out ... to the
Western edge of the American Nightmare...). Don't bother. It's terrible. So involutedly American as to be
almost incomprehensible to non-Americans and striving so hard for effect as to seem strained and
artificial. Read his first book instead, it's much better.
However there is always Jack Yeovil. Well actually there isn't since his real name is Kim Newman. I first
encountered Kim Newman when I read his novel Anno Dracula which is set shortly after the events of
the Bram Stoker novel The twist is that in this universe Dracula won, Van Helsing was beheaded and
Jonathan Harker killed. Dracula transformed Victorian England, becoming a pillar of the community and
marrying Victoria herself. As the novel opens, London is full of vampires (a very fashionable state to be
in) and a vicious murderer known as Silver Knife is embarked on campaign of terror as he slaughters
vampire prostitutes. In a letter to a newspaper he refers to himself as Jack the Ripper -- but the name
doesn't really catch on. Newman has recently written a sequel to this book called The Bloody Red
Baron, a World War I vampire novel, it would seem, and I look forward to reading it.
Anyway, I was most impressed by Kim Newman, particularly as I tracked down his other books. In the
introductions and afterwords I discovered that he also wrote novels set in the Warhammer universe
under the pseudonym of Jack Yeovil. You've probably seen these on the shelves -- novels set in trashy
role-playing universes. They have garish covers and revolting blurbs designed, it seems, to repel the
buyer. But what the hell, I'm not proud and so I bought Drachenfels and read it on an aeroplane trip to
Wellington. This was fun because I was sitting next to a staid businessman with a laptop computer he
didn't know how to use properly and he kept glancing disapprovingly at the trash I was immersed in.
(And I kept glancing disapprovingly at the trash he was immersed in as well).