Iain Banks and Christopher Whyte: Contemporary Scottish Gothic?
Posted by Kirsty MacDonald on February 22, 2009 in Dr Kirsty McDonald, Guest Blog tagged withPost 3 (suggested soundtrack – The Amphetameanies, ‘The Devil Lives Upstairs’)
To turn now to recent and contemporary examples of the Gothic from Scotland, the most renowned exponent must surely be Iain Banks. He is widely acknowledged as an important Gothic writer in general (for example he is included in the ‘contemporary Gothic’ chapter in the 2000 Companion to the Gothic, and takes his place on the core twentieth-century module of the M.Litt.).
Although there are Gothic elements in Banks’ science fiction (written as Iain M. Banks), I want to focus on his (slightly) more mainstream fiction to test the Scottish Gothic hypothesis. As well as featuring some of the other familiar trappings of the Gothic (castles/old mansion houses, ominous patriarchal figures and anxiety around the female, transgressions of various kinds, and so on), both The Wasp Factory (1984) and The Crow Road (1992) circumnavigate but ultimately centre on sinister family secrets. These might fruitfully be interpreted using Abraham and Torok’s notion of ‘the phantom’, but might also confirm the supposition that in Scottish Gothic there is a haunting that is historically and geographically specific. Both locate these secrets in the unheimlich North of Scotland – the uncanny location that is both home for and threat to the central protagonists.
However, his novel A Song of Stone (1997) is equally as self-conscious in its use of the Gothic mode, and yet is far from geographically or historically specific. It is set in a dystopian alternative world, featuring medieval-style feudalism alongside a futuristic military band led by a menacing matriarch. Given its lack of specificity and allegorical style, does this mean it isn’t ‘Scottish Gothic’ but rather Gothic by a Scottish writer?
To take another example, Christopher Whyte’s excellent 1997 novel The Warlock of Strathearn plays with Gothic motifs, and again locates the abject historically and geographically. The novel is presented as a story in a found manuscript with supernatural powers, thus self-consciously inserting itself into a tradition stretching back to The Castle of Otranto, and in a Scottish context via Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). In The Warlock, witchcraft, shape-shifting, and trans-sexuality are all situated in rural Scotland in the seventeenth century. However, some of his other fiction that features elements of the Gothic, such as The Cloud Machinery (2000) and his short story ‘Stifelio’ (2001)., are more concerned with continental European traditions, and are both set in Italy. Again, does this preclude them from being classified as ‘Scottish Gothic’?
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Is making this distinction rather like splitting hairs? Or is there a case to be made for particular and distinctive branches of Gothic, when the mode intersects with national literary traditions? Can writers consciously adopt such specific versions of the mode at certain times, and abandon them at others? I will look at examples in film in a further post, and at least attempt a conclusion. Your thoughts on the questions raised so far would be very much appreciated.
For more on the Gothic of Banks and Whyte, see my article ‘Anti-heroes and Androgynes: Gothic Masculinities in Contemporary Scottish Men’s Fiction’, in The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies: http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/ScottishGothicMasculinities.html
References:
Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory. Abacus. 1984.
————–The Crow Road. Scribners. 1992.
————–A Song of Stone. Abacus. 1997.
Christopher Whyte. The Warlock of Strathearn. Gollancz. 1997.
—————-The Cloud Machinery. Gollancz. 2000.
—————-‘Stifelio’, in Damage Land: New Scottish Gothic Fiction. Polygon. 2001.
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I must admit that i read The Crow Road and A Song of Stone before i was conscious of what the Gothic mode is – or perceived to be – but from memory they don’t jump out at me as being Gothic or at least focusing mainly on Gothic elements – apart from the modern castle in A Song of Stone. I think A Song of Stone is a beautifully written, poignant novel but Banks’ fans in the mainstream didn’t greet it very positively. The Wasp Factory is clearer Gothic territory I think. Again this is just from memory.
Hi Matt,
I think you’re right to question whether Crow Road is a Gothic novel at least. But what is it for you that makes The Wasp Factory firmly Gothic? What does it have that the other two don’t? I think this might be an interesting distinction to tease out.
Cheers,
Kirsty
Hi Kirsty,
I managed to get hold of a copy of the Wasp Factory and had a skim through the first 100 pages or so (about half the book) to refresh my memory. I think there are a few elements that – although not recreating exactly the classic Gothic – fits in with how contemporary works adapt and play with it. Obviously, and perhaps most strikingly, there is the pathology of Frank, the lack of emotional sympathy, that leads him to be an understated but nevertheless psychotic child serial killer. Alone this does not make the work Gothic but if we combine it with three other elements I think the evidence mounts for considering the novel as a Gothic text.
The first of these three elements is the way that Frank plays with abjected Real elements. The animal skull at the centre of The Wasp Factory being a striking example. Also, he rubs abjected fluids (snot, shit, other things) onto The Factory and of course has those horrific totems too with dead animals in the summits (on the beach I think) – the focus of the first chapter.
The second element is that the novel’s protagonists are freaks. We have Frank the castrated child psychotic, Eric the sectioned dog burner and Jamie the dwarf.
The third element is that Frank’s whole ethical base comes from an unreasonable macabre mysticisms that relies on the chance happenings in The Wasp Factory. The Gothic has a mode for challenging reason rings a bell here.
Basically, all these elements shock mainstream culture and attack it in a more profound way than The Crow Road or A Song Of Stone. And I think such an attack can be considered Gothic.
Hope this helps!
Matt
Me and my typos! “The Gothic as a mode”, I mean. Not “has a mode”!!!
Thanks Matt. I think you very precisely pinpoint the Gothic elements of The Wasp Factory. For more on The Crow Road as a Gothic novel, see Luce Armitt’s chapter in A Companion to the Gothic (2000).
Via your own definition, I would suggest that A Song of Stone is also written with a clear self-consciousness about the Gothic mode. The trappings of the original Gothic are alluded to (the castle, medieval feudalism, anxiety around the female and so on). The castle takes on a heightened symbolism as the novel progresses, as the ego ransacked by the id (or kept in check and contained by the super ego, depending on your perspective on this novel). In terms of shocking or challenging mainstream culture, there is a definite gender discourse – the Lieutenant, leader of the band of soldiers who take over the castle and director of torture and death, is a woman. Moreover, the relationship between the initially patriarchal Abel and the tellingly silent Morgan foregrounds what is surely one of the few taboos left for us – incest.
Cheers,
Kirsty
sounds interesting Kirsty. I’ll need to reread A Song of Stone again with my Gothic contact lenses in. The last Banks I read fully was The Business but that wasn’t his best I think. I really enjoy all three of the books you have singled out. thanks for the tip on the Crow Road too.