John Mullan on readers' responses to 'The Wasp Factory'
July 21st, 2008 in Global, Reviews
Over at The Guardian Online John Mullan presents a summary of the recent Wasp Factory discussion panel, which was held in London and featured a live panel discussion with Iain Banks on the subject of the many and varied interpretations of and reactions to his debut novel.
The general conclusion was that the book isn't actually as shocking as its reputation tends to suggest. Iain said that it was written as a black comedy and that Complicity was actually written to be far more shocking, but tends to be written up as being far less so. Iain's suggestion was that the shock response to The Wasp Factory created "anti-bodies" that then defeated the shock value of the later novel.
Plenty more of interest from the session, over at books.guardian.co.uk.
Edit Dave H has pointed us in the direction of a podcast recording of the panel session on the Guardian website. Cheers Dave!
Further Discussion
Option One:
Discuss this item on the Iain Banks forum
You will need to register as a forum member before you can join or start a conversation thread.
Please see the Joining the Forum thread for more info.]
Option Two:
Submit a Comment
Please N.B. All comments are moderated (during UK office hours) so there may be a delay in your comment appearing live on the site. Please only submit comments that are relevant to the item you're currently viewing.
If you would prefer to participate in a more free-form conversation, please visit the Iain Banks Fan Forum. If you would like to get in touch privately, please see the Contact page for details.