The Business

Gurus and self-help books are fond of saying "However little time you have, however much stress you're under, the one thing you shouldn't cut down on is X." According to the perspective of the person giving the advice, X can be exercise, meditation, prayer, quality time with your kids, or breakfast. In my case, I've learnt that it's novels. I can happily give up strenuous exercise, although I have to admit that having done no martial arts (except a little t'ai chi) for two years, I have gone from punch to paunch. I can skip breakfast or indeed any meal, or survive on junk food (though see previous paunch comment). I can even, occasionally, eschew non-work-related computer activities, as the long hiatuses (hiati?) in this journal show. But if I don't have a good book on the go - no matter how little time I get to read it - I suffer.

Since I've been working like a dog for the past two weeks, I was careful to make sure I had a suitable novel for those rare moments (usually on buses) when I had time to read it, and was lucky enough to find a copy of Iain Banks' The Business which some kind person had donated to the library. I love Iain Banks (and Iain M. Banks, who is the same person but not the same author) not least because every book is completely different. Canal Dreams is a thriller about a hijacked ship. Espedair Street concerns the moral redemption of a washed up rock star. Complicity is a kind of anti-capitalist detective story. Whit is about an eccentric religious community. Feersum Endjin is science fiction written in a cross between l3375p34k and Riddley Walker. His debut, The Wasp Factory, was just icky. Even the Culture books, which at least share common themes, come in a range of flavours from tragedy to comedy.

The Business is about a business called the Business. The Business has been around since Roman times, operating under various names and intently making money for all its members. Given the popularity of conspiracy theories and the fact that Banks is a notorious lefty, we'd expect it to be extremely sinister, but so far (Chapter 4) it seems almost benign. On the other hand, unless Banks has suddenly abandoned his anarcho-communism for some theory of benevolent capitalism, I assume there will be a twist somewhere later in the book.

Anyway, it's an immensely enjoyable read: the one thing that is consistent throughout Banks' books is his playful and observant language. For example:

"Mushle? You mean like shum short of fucking henchman?" [this character has just lost half his teeth, for reasons yet to be explained]
"Henchman's a bit fifties B-movie-ish, don't you think? But I believe you could call him a person of hench."

"Come here, small girl."
"Whit?
"I said, come here."
"Whit fir?"
"What? What did you say?"
"Eh?"
"Are you actually talking English, child?"
"Ahm no Inglish, ahm Scoatish."

"If I didn't think Yeltsin was just an alcoholic clown I could believe he was secretly a Communist himself, supposed to appear to attempt capitalism but then make such a God-awful mess of it that the Brezhnev days look like a golden age in comparison."

[A rather dim and very rich character is describing his plan for a SF film] "There's this, like, thing that looks like a ship's funnel or something, right? In Mecca, right at the centre. Where the Muslims go on pilgrimage to, okay? It's like the thing they're going there to see; this rock, inside this big sort of black shrouded building thing, in the centre of this humungous square in Mecca."
"The Kaaba."
"Cool!" Dwight looked delighted. "You know the name!"
[It turns out that Dwight's scenario invoves the Kaaba actually being an escape pod from a UFO.]"But you do think it's a great idea?"
"Brilliant. It's a breathtakingly good idea. But if you really want to put it to good use, find somebody in the movie industry you hate and would like to see ruined or dead and suggest the idea to them in a way that would let them claim it as their own."