Losing Iain Banks

When I listed favorite books on my profile, I could easily single out some titles; others had to be grouped, like for Rankin and Stevenson; but there are two authors whose works I’d read any day of the week, or if they only composed copy for cereal boxes.

One is Thomas Pynchon, whose name I first encountered in the late ’60s as a blurber for his buddy Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. I used to foist copies of V, later Gravity’s Rainbow, onto unsuspecting friends who probably resented the hell out of it. I stopped keeping track of how many times I’ve reread his seven novels and am delighted that he’s still at it. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of Bleeding Edge from Amazon five months in advance.

The other is Iain Banks, whose work I chanced upon on a trip to the UK in the ’90s. He writes thrillers, Scottish family sagas, space operas, and experimental fantasies. He’s far more prolific than Pynchon and I’ve never been able to get enough of him. But I’m going to have to learn to be satisfied with what’s out there because he’s just announced to the world that he’s dying.

Banks has been praised as one of Scotland’s literary treasures but isn’t as well known in the US, except by a select cult of readers for the science fiction he publishes under the name Iain M. Banks. I haven’t been much of a sci-fi fan since I was a teenager, but something about Banks pushed my buttons. The particular universe he created, The Culture, is idyllic enough to give flight to fancy, but it’s his writing that got me hooked: galaxy-spanning plots, strange-looking aliens, wince-inducing torture, outlandish sex, and improbably huge spaceships with outrageous names. And he spins his yarns with enough of a wink that you can’t help but smile. He inspired me to pick up other contemporary sci-fi authors to see what I’ve been missing, but none of them have been able to grab me like Banks, they’re all far too serious and self-important. Banks has fun.

Now there will be one last novel, and then he will be gone.

I won’t be too surprised to one day read an obituary for the famously reclusive Pynchon; after all, he’s 75. I’m just happy there’s another book on its way and wonder if I dare hope for yet another after that. But Banks is only 59, and one would have expected a good many more years of spilling his incredible imagination onto the printed page. That, unfortunately, is the way it goes; one cannot make expectations of the universe.

But of Banks’ universe, I can always expect to have my mind blown and know I will return to it again and again.

Peaches

The cat perched atop my head is no longer with us.

She was suffering from a combination of kidney disease, arthritis, dementia, and most lately a urinary tract infection that had her peeing outside the box and forcing us to keep her in a separate room with plastic on the floor. We had hoped to nurse her back to some semblance of health — meds for the UTI and pain, subcutaneous fluids for her kidneys — but when she stopped eating and her breathing became labored, we knew it was time. She had been with us for 15 years.

Peaches came to us via a friend who had found her abandoned as a kitten at a private airfield outside of Tucson. The roar of planes and shouts of men left her fearful, and she was a timid cat all of her life. But when we first met her, she came up to us with such joy that I wanted to name her after the Zappa tune “Peaches En Regalia.”

Her timidity showed whenever she came upon a strange object, maybe just a crumpled bit of paper, and stuck a paw out to tap it in the most tentative way. And unlike our other cats, I don’t recall ever seeing her go after a lizard, much less trap one. She also had a peculiar habit of settling in on our heads, whether in chairs or in bed, and kneading while she purred.  She was a sweetie.

She was also a pacer, stalking the room and hardly ever settling down. Seven or eight years ago this turned out to be a manifestation of hyperthyroidism, and we had to take her for radiation treatment that lasted a couple of weeks and probably made her think we’d abandoned her. When we got her back, we had to keep her away from our heads for a while since she was still “hot.”

Some dental issues last summer led to what must have been pain while eating and a drastic loss of weight, so we hoped surgery would resolve that. Sad to say, she never seemed to have regained all of her cognitive faculties after the anesthesia; her pacing became more pronounced, and despite being more capable of eating she would wander away from her food so that we eventually had to keep her in a kennel at mealtime just so she would focus on her bowl. Unfortunately, the other issues just piled up.

When we knew yesterday it was time to take her in, Beth carried her in to say goodbye to our one remaining Tucson transplant, Dinah. When she brought them nose-to-nose, Peaches put a paw out and Dinah licked it. Then we took her to the vet. I only wish they’d come up with a way for humans to go as quickly and peacefully.

Peaches provided a title for this blog, which I more or less abandoned a year ago (not quite as pathetic as an abandoned cat, but just about). I’ve hemmed and hawed over its still being up; but now that it’s become a tribute, I see no reason to take it down.