Adele Hartley responds to inaccuracies circulating about the late author's final book
Iain Banks … 'Had he survived his cancer, he would have spent the rest of his life correcting the facts,' says Adele Hartley. Photograph: Ray Charles Redman/HO/EPA
Iain Banks's widow Adele Hartley has spoken out to correct assumptions that the late author chose to write his final novel about a man dying of cancer after being diagnosed with the disease himself.
"Had he known he had cancer, he would never have written about it," Hartley wrote on Banksophilia, the website set up for fans of the writer. The Quarry, Banks's last novel – which has just been published – is the story of a teenager, Kit, whose father, Guy, has terminal cancer.
"The inaccuracies appearing about why and when this book was written make me think of Guy in The Quarry, gleefully misquoting Dorothy Parker when he exclaims, 'What fresh bollockry is this?'" Hartley said. "Iain knew that had he survived his cancer, he would have spent the rest of his life correcting the facts at every event and in every interview!"
The novel, she said, was dreamed up by Banks in early summer 2012, "plotted through the autumn and was pretty much ready to go by December". The novelist was told about his diagnosis on 4 March this year, and went on to ask Hartley, the Dead by Dawn film festival director, to do him "the honour of becoming my widow".
"Iain was sitting on a corner bed of a Fife hospital ward waiting for a scan result, laptop open, working on the final few chapters of The Quarry," said Hartley of that day in March. "There were so many moments in our life together when we'd look at something or overhear something and say to each other, 'You could never put that in a book' – quite simply because no one would believe that it was likely or possible. Real life can be funny like that."
Banks died on 9 June, aged 59, two months after he told the world that he was "officially Very Poorly", and expected to live for just "several months".
In his final interview, he told the Guardian that he'd "nearly finished the book when I found out. It was bizarre.
"Guy was always going to be dying of cancer; the book was always going to be predicated on that, and nothing really changed because of my own bad news".
"On the morning of 4 March I thought everything was hunky dory except I had a sore back and my skin looked a bit funny. By the evening of the 4th I'd been told I had only a few months to live," he said. "By that time I'd written 90% of the novel; 87,000 words out of 97,000. Luckily, even though I'd done my words for the day, I'd taken a laptop into the hospital in Kirkcaldy, and once I'd been given the prognosis, I wrote the bit where Guy says, 'I shall not be disappointed to leave all you bastards behind.' It was an exaggeration of what I was feeling, but it was me thinking: 'How can I use this to positive effect?' Because I was feeling a bit kicked in the guts at this point. So I thought, 'OK, I'll just give Guy a good old rant'."
"At the end, Iain's story became something you could never put in a book," Hartley said, "certainly something he never would have. He was horrified at the idea of putting a person or event from his real life directly into any work of fiction as it would have been a slight on the power of his imagination."
The Quarry, which his publishers rushed out in order that he might see it on bookshelves, "is beautiful", said his widow. "It's a breathless read, laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking and fantastically sweary in a way that would definitely meet with Malcolm Tucker's approval – and all the more devastating because in the end Iain came to know his character's story just a little too well. The vicious irony of the situation wasn't lost on either one of us."
"Had he known he had cancer, he would never have written about it," Hartley wrote on Banksophilia, the website set up for fans of the writer. The Quarry, Banks's last novel – which has just been published – is the story of a teenager, Kit, whose father, Guy, has terminal cancer.
"The inaccuracies appearing about why and when this book was written make me think of Guy in The Quarry, gleefully misquoting Dorothy Parker when he exclaims, 'What fresh bollockry is this?'" Hartley said. "Iain knew that had he survived his cancer, he would have spent the rest of his life correcting the facts at every event and in every interview!"
The novel, she said, was dreamed up by Banks in early summer 2012, "plotted through the autumn and was pretty much ready to go by December". The novelist was told about his diagnosis on 4 March this year, and went on to ask Hartley, the Dead by Dawn film festival director, to do him "the honour of becoming my widow".
"Iain was sitting on a corner bed of a Fife hospital ward waiting for a scan result, laptop open, working on the final few chapters of The Quarry," said Hartley of that day in March. "There were so many moments in our life together when we'd look at something or overhear something and say to each other, 'You could never put that in a book' – quite simply because no one would believe that it was likely or possible. Real life can be funny like that."
Banks died on 9 June, aged 59, two months after he told the world that he was "officially Very Poorly", and expected to live for just "several months".
In his final interview, he told the Guardian that he'd "nearly finished the book when I found out. It was bizarre.
"Guy was always going to be dying of cancer; the book was always going to be predicated on that, and nothing really changed because of my own bad news".
"On the morning of 4 March I thought everything was hunky dory except I had a sore back and my skin looked a bit funny. By the evening of the 4th I'd been told I had only a few months to live," he said. "By that time I'd written 90% of the novel; 87,000 words out of 97,000. Luckily, even though I'd done my words for the day, I'd taken a laptop into the hospital in Kirkcaldy, and once I'd been given the prognosis, I wrote the bit where Guy says, 'I shall not be disappointed to leave all you bastards behind.' It was an exaggeration of what I was feeling, but it was me thinking: 'How can I use this to positive effect?' Because I was feeling a bit kicked in the guts at this point. So I thought, 'OK, I'll just give Guy a good old rant'."
"At the end, Iain's story became something you could never put in a book," Hartley said, "certainly something he never would have. He was horrified at the idea of putting a person or event from his real life directly into any work of fiction as it would have been a slight on the power of his imagination."
The Quarry, which his publishers rushed out in order that he might see it on bookshelves, "is beautiful", said his widow. "It's a breathless read, laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking and fantastically sweary in a way that would definitely meet with Malcolm Tucker's approval – and all the more devastating because in the end Iain came to know his character's story just a little too well. The vicious irony of the situation wasn't lost on either one of us."
No comments:
Post a Comment