The Wasp Factory and Consider Phlebas

The first novel from Scottish writer Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory stands as a bit of an outlier when compared with the rest of his output. Known best for his stories of The Culture in which people have been freed from scarcity and the limits of human frailty, Iain's first book shows -- at least on first blush -- no signs of presaging the tone of his latter works (though see below, for some highly speculative and self-indulgent thoughts on that).

The Wasp Factory is truly a horror novel, though even calling it that is a bit misleading, as it contains none of the normal beats associated with the genre horror, such as fear, estrangement and otherworldliness. This book is horror in the sense that it intends to get very close to the reader and make him or her feel the awful horror of the landscape that the author has constructed. It delivers on this intention by employing an almost Brechtian onslaught against its reader, drowning them in unpleasant brutality presented in a shockingly frank and unflinching manner. Horror is brought about as the result of banality; though the people in this book are so trapped in their little lives and lacking agency that it's not even brought about through the traditional banality of evil; it's instead a book about the banality of suffering. We suffer. Those around us suffer. Sometimes we add to the suffering as a result of trying to give our own suffering meaning. In the end, there's no truth or meaning to be derived as a result of that suffering.

As you might imagine, this book is very hard to get through. I'm normally unflinching in the face of horror literature, but in this case I had to put down The Wasp Factory several times to recover my centre before once more plunging forward with my reading. The nastiness of it lingers with me even after I've finished the novel and set it down; in this way, I know that it has truly and effectively delivered on its promise of horror.

Now I haven't read much of Banks' work beyond his Culture novels and The Wasp Factory, so the following comments are based entirely on a very limited experience with his writings. Now that you've been properly warned, prepare for the self-indulgence ahead!

The Wasp Factory is, as intimated above, largely about the powerlessness we experience as the result of living in an uncaring and fundamentally meaningless world. Its main character grasps for power like a child might grasp for the sun, instinctively coveting it and yet having no real appreciation of how far out of its reach lies the star. The book's protagonist turns instead to empty and meaningless ritual in a fetishistic attempt to control a world that's completely out of his grasp. On the other hand, The Culture novels are about a world in which the hungry needs of the body and the slings and arrows of the universe have been conquered, leaving man, woman and machine free to pursue one's personal growth in whatever direction is desired. They serve as a utopian ideal in which the spirit is free to find meaning and power from within the self, rather than struggling to forge false meaning from the world without. The two seem almost completely at odds philosophically; but after a bit of thought I'm starting to warm to the idea that the Culture is actually an unintended answer to the question posed by The Wasp Factory. To understand where I'm coming from with this, I need to turn to Banks' first Culture novel, the much ballyhooed Consider Phlebas.

Consider Phlebas is actually told from the perspective of a man named Bora who exists outside the influence of the culture, serving as he does with the philosophical enemies of the Culture's utopian ideal, the Idiran. Throughout the book, Bora attempts to act upon the universe, to try to bring about in it great changes that will tip the war in favour of the Idiran. But despite this pretext of agency, nearly everything that drives forward the book's plot happens as a result of outside forces acting on him, forcing him to react and accept his powerlessness. Tellingly, the book opens with Bora preparing for death by being shat upon by unknown and uncaring agents above him, which is a slightly bit crude but also very vivid statement of the theme of this novel. Later on in the book, mirroring this theme, he encounters a vast and uncaring cannibal king who seems to exist for no other reason than to consume others at his own whim; in a sense, acting as a proxy for the universe which will eat voraciously without concern for the suffering or needs of others, discarding whatever's left over as meaningless offal.

Indeed, unlike the Culture where individuality and personal meaning are prized, the Idirans are a race of beings whose society works almost entirely in terms of ritual. They're a highly religious society who believe that the path to a perfected universe lies in putting everything into its right place, by force if necessary. This attitude came about as a result of their world's harsh and unforgiving conditions which acted upon them and forced them into the path that they follow throughout the book, causing them to seek power in ritual and to seek meaning from the meaningless. Further, their transition from peaceful creatures to warlike arbiters of the universe's proper shape came about as the result of an outside agency -- an alien race of which little is revealed -- acting upon them and nearly driving them to extinction. Bora serves as a microscopic retelling of the Idiran history as he serves them in his quest to grasp power from the hungry maw of a nihilistic universe.

As you have likely surmised from the above, the Culture serves as the answer to the question posed by the Idirans: 'why?'. And the Culture's answer is quite literally 'beats me'. The Culture is eminently flexible and most of its power comes from the fact that no real meaning is ascribed to the universe outside of one's self. One seeks for what's important to the individual, one finds fellowship in the places where meaning intersects with others', and one attempts to answer the question of 'why?' only for one's self. Indeed, one of the best books of the series (The Player of Games) has as its core the answering of that question as the turning point in a vast conflict, and the question is answered through what at first seems like meaningless diversion disguising deep philosophy and understanding, rather than outright use of force.

In fact the bulk of the conflicts that take place in the universe of the Culture take place in metaphorical or societal arenas, rather than on the plane of physical conflict. This underscores that the Culture's personal and individual freedom to discover one's self isn't a philosophy of hedonistic excess, but is instead a means of creating power from the self. In this way, it feels as though there's a natural transition from The Wasp Factory (where the question of 'why?' is posed and is answered only by resounding silence) to Consider Phlebas (where the question is asked again, and answered by a distant voice that's too soft to be heard by the book's protagonist) to the rest of the Culture, where 'why' is answered again and again, in as many ways are there are actors on the books' stages.

For this reason, if for no other, I'm very happy to have finally had the opportunity to read Factory, even if I don't think I'm ever going to read it again. It's given me a lot to mull over and has opened new avenues of thought about some of my favourite books. It was thus truly a success.