Books: Complicity
OK, I’ll readily admit that I have been horrendously AWOL lately. I’m sorry. Life has been very busy, in good and bad ways. Good: one of my school friends is getting married in a month’s time. Bad: I have no money. Good: I got engaged. Bad: I’m struggling to see where I’m headed. And so forth.
But, in amongst all this, I’ve been reading. And I felt the urge to revisit a book I’ve read before, namely “Complicity” by Iain Banks. I don’t know what compelled me to pick it up again, but needless to say I couldn’t find my copy. Dagnabbit. So I bought it on my Kindle (you know, with the money I don’t have).
Anyway. I’ve mentioned Complicity before (back when I briefly reviewed The Bridge a couple of years ago) but I’ve never reviewed it before. I say “reviewed”: I mean rambled incoherently whilst giving across my sheer love of this book.
OK, it’s not a lovely book. I’ll be blunt: it’s the most vile and vicious book I’ve read. Ever. Those of you who have been exposed to Banks before have most likely read The Wasp Factory, and thought that was pretty heavy. Well, Banks himself said in interview that Complicity is ”[a] bit like The Wasp Factory except without the happy ending and redeeming air of cheerfulness”. So, try and think positive.
Complicity is based mainly in and around Edinburgh (a plus for me, already), following the strange and brutal murders of a series of capitalist, right-wing figures. But it’s not just as simple as all that, is it? No, the murders are ingenious, the murderer has the whole thing thoroughly planned out, and the reader is rapidly pulled into the depths of confusion and despair along with our narrator.
The majority of the plot of Complicity revolves around the life of Cameron Colley, a disillusioned left-wing journalist, who is a bit down on life. He is strangely lovable – I say strangely, because he is a bit sad, lonely, has many casual drug habits, has regular sex with a married woman, etc. One might say he is “a good man with bad habits”. My other half once described himself like this, so maybe that’s another reason I find Cameron strangely lovable.
The sections of plot involving Cameron are written in first person – some people call this the “unreliable narrator”, and yes, he probably is a bit, because he does ramble on. But it gives the reader a real sense of being WITH the action, in the thick of it. We feel his boredom, we sense his excitement, and finally, when he is arrested, falsely accused of the murders of those right-wing figures I mentioned, we sense his desperation, and we slip into the confusion and paranoia that interrogation and sleep deprivation brings.
There are a lot of moral questions in this book: questions about crime and punishment, war (huh, what is it good for), and the darker side of human nature. And of course, where do our loyalties lie? Would YOU be complicit?
The descriptions of the murders themselves are brutal and very uncomfortable to read in a public place. But to make matters worse (and even more effective) these sections of the novel are written in second person – yes, YOU, ”You hear the first faint distant screams just as you take the bike’s key from your pocket. You feel suddenly elated”. Shudder.
Like with all crime thrillers, I can’t divulge too much plot without spoiling the experience for you. But needless to say, this remains one of my favourite books of all time (so far). Even if I have to read some of it through my fingers. Seriously. It’s gruesome.
Oh, and a humorous tit-bit: Cameron is heavily into computer games, particularly a fictitious game called “Despot” which is curiously similar to Civilisation (which my dad used to play). Cameron loses many hours due to playing this game. In fact, he’s often playing the game when he should be writing. And you know what? So was Iain Banks. Happy sigh. Art mirrors life mirrors art.
READ IT.
Northumbria
I have had one busy week. One more to go.
I’m up in Northumberland, getting fresh air and pretending I have not a care in the world. I think it’s working, but I’m not 100% sure yet.
Some things I’ve done:
Been dragged up Humbleton hill nearly every morning. Ben is an avid mountain goat, but charging up a slope before breakfast is not exactly my idea of fun. Nevertheless, the view is marvellous. I am, however, hideously unfit.
Berwick upon Tweed. A bit of a crumbling town if I’m honest, but still good fun. Nice little curio shops, ancient fortifications, and one big gorgeous bridge.
Etal village fete. Etal is a cute little village mainly consisting of a ruined castle, a pub, a tea room and some fields. Their fete was equally adorable, with rare Hebridean sheep (that look like Darth Vader), much homemade jam, Clydesdales and locally made burgers.
Kielder water. Actually a fair old trek from where we’re staying, but worth it to see this marvel of engineering – a huge man made lake (dam!) and the UK’s largest man made forest. We took the Osprey pleasure cruiser to see the lake properly.
Local produce. Ok, getting meat from the town butcher is cool, but getting eggs (still warm) from the lady living next door is AWESOME.
Car acrobatics. Thursday was very rainy. My car’s tyres are pretty worn. I have been hassling Ben to help me get them replaced for some months. I think Thursday made the point. On a wet, and thankfully deserted country road, Ben lost control on a skid, and we did a beautiful 360 into a hedge. Surprisingly, there is only a very small dink in the back of my car, although I thought I was going to throw up after the event. But yes – suitably dramatic, could have been SO much worse, and yay, I wasn’t driving at the time. Needless to say, we are getting those tyres replaced today.
Pot-a-doodle-do. After the car incident, I needed some calm activity to soothe my nerves. So, pottery painting was a suitable rainy day activity. Ben has made me an apology plate, I have done a life-affirming pasta bowl. Pics when we get them.
Edinburgh. Yesterday, we drove across the border to my favourite city. A good 10 hours of wandering ensued, and we even took in a show at the Edinburgh Fringe (EastEnd Cabaret, venue 170, is free, hilarious and well worth a look if you’re at the fringe). Note: parking in Edinburgh has gotten considerably more expensive over the last couple of years, so be warned if you’re driving in.
Anyway, I have tyres to get done, and another week of adventuring to do. Cheerio!
Synaesthesia in Chinese
OK, first of the series of Synaesthesia Conference lectures that I’ll be writing up. Today, I’ll be talking about a four year study conducted by Julia Simner (of University of Edinburgh) and her team. In their study, Simner and her colleagues looked at grapheme-colour synaesthesia, comparing the experiences of English synaesthetes (which are hugely studied) to the experiences of Chinese synaesthetes (who are barely studied at all). 
Where to start? Some general factoids about grapheme-colour synaesthesia. About 1% of the population are estimated to have it. This phenomena is where letters and numbers illicit a colour experience in the synaesthete. These experiences follow non-random rules – the same letters seem to always illicit the same colour experience, like “A” always being green, for example.
As for words, many synaesthetes find that whole words are coloured as a whole, rather than each individual letter being coloured. The way words are coloured seems to vary in three main ways:
- Some synaesthetes simply see each letter coloured individually (as per their own internal consistencies) – for example, “CAT” would be seen as BLUE-GREEN-RED (or whatever)
- Some synaesthetes find words are coloured by their initial letter – e.g. “CAT” would be BLUE, as “C” is blue for them
- Some synaesthetes have their words coloured by their initial vowel – again, “CAT” would be GREEN, as the initial vowel is usually green
There are two main theories as to what influences the colours of different letters and words. One is the semantic influence – this is where the unconscious meaning pinned to words and therefore letters determines what colour the letters will be. For example, we might associate “D” with dogs (A is for apple, B is for bird… I’m sure you were taught the alphabet in a similar fashion). Well, dogs are brown (usually), so maybe this is why some synaesthetes experience D as being brown.
The other theory is the frequency effect – more common letters are more common colours. For example, A is often red or green, whereas X is often something exotic like purple or gold. This isn’t too much of a surprise, either.
Hmm, what next…? Maybe a bit of info about Chinese languages (assume we’re talking about Mandarin throughout, but the rules probably cross over to Cantonese). Bear with me – my knowledge of Chinese is not great.
Chinese languages are ideographic (well, almost. We won’t get into that argument here) - they don’t have alphabets, so no letter units. They consist of word unit characters. There are two phonetic spelling systems (Pinyin and Bopomo), which Chinese children may be taught, in order to help them to speak the language before learning to write the script (which is intensely complicated). Pinyin uses a combination of Westernised spellings (for pronunciation) and a number (that indicates tone – Chinese languages are tonal, which means, depending how you say a word, it can have multiple meanings. Phew.)
Simner and her team wondered if this Pinyin system could function in a similar way to English in terms of its effects on synaesthetes – does the initial “letter” (or sound) or vowel sound effect the overall consistency in colour experience?
Well, yes and no. Their study showed that if native Chinese speakers were given the Pinyin phonetic spelling of a word character, they would experience the colours in a consistent manner similar to English synaesthetes – words beginning with a “y” sound would all be green, etc. etc. However, if they were given just traditional Chinese characters to look at (with no Pinyin) these consistencies did not carry over. Hmm. Back to square one.
Chinese script itself is made up of morphemes called “radicals”. Each character contains a semantic radical (which conveys meaning) and a phonetic radical (which tells you how the word should be pronounced). These radicals can be on either side of the character, and again, location affects meaning (I think you’re beginning to understand why Chinese script is so hard to learn…)
So, does the semantic or phonetic radical colour the character overall? Or do neither of them do this?
Simner and her colleagues found three variables – hue, saturation and brightness of colour experience. It seems that Chinese synaesthetes have a more subtle colour experience than Western synaesthetes – the radical on the left accounts for the hue, the semantic radical accounts for saturation, and the radical on the right for brightness. Weird.
The frequency effect occurs in Chinese, too – common characters (and radicals) are more common colours.
And that… is about all that I can compute. If you want to know more, please head on over to Julia Simner‘s profile page on Edinburgh Uni’s website, and feel free to send her your questions! 
The Christmas haul, part 1
Yesterday’s post was a bit ranty, eh? So I’ll go back to what I promised, and ease you out of the rest of 2010 all gentle, like. By sharing some pictures of the Christmas presents I received! Friends and family alike have all been heartwarmingly generous this year, and I hope they all liked what I got for them. Of course, the best gift of all was being able to spend time with so many wonderful people (and eat until I felt sick – the rumours were true, Ben’s sister DOES cook an amazing roast!!). However, you can’t photograph the spirit of togetherness. So here are my material goods:
Lovely new red satin bedsheets are from my brother and his new wifey (Alec&Katie), whilst the St Andrew’s cushions are from my uncle and aunty. Mr Foxy was a little gift to myself – he has a heaty wheaty tummy
Not one set of headphones, but TWO! Ben made my music-related dreams come true, by buying me these lovely over-ear Skullcandy headphons (HESH in hot pink, and red Lowriders). I’m happy to report that they are awesome.
A squeaky clean and sleepy-looking Ben, standing in the kitchen doorway which has been adorned with all our Christmas cards. He’s also holding one of the four mugs we received this year – quite an achievement! However, I drink a LOT of tea, so this is no bad thing. We got two union jack mugs from my parents, an awesome Ford Capri mug from Alec&Katie, and…
Pac-Man mug!! From my friends Sas and Matt. This is brilliant – it’s plain black when it’s cold, but poor hot water into it and PAC-MAN APPEARS!! Also featured is the adorable sugar shaker Sas and Matt got for us. Oh, and both are sitting on top of the new chopping board Beth got for us Sas and Matt also got me some cute little cupcake-shaped lip balms.
I love love love Marmite. So I was tickled pink when I opened this gift from my mum. There seems to be a lot of Marmite merchandise around at the moment, but a lot of it is frankly quite naff. However, this serving dish (and ceramic spoon) is charming. Not suitable for actually cooking in, and I don’t exactly host dinner parties (no dining room, you see), so in a moment of drunken genius, I decanted my home-made dry porridge mix into it (and spilled a lot of oats all over the kitchen in the process). My parents also got me a bar of “Very Peculiar”, the marmite flavoured chocolate, but that is long gone: it is indeed very peculiar, but also strangely delicious.
And I think that’s about enough for one day! I have so much more to show you, but that can wait for another day.
What about you chaps? What were your favourite Christmas gifts?
Books: The Bridge
Man, I love Iain Banks. This is now the third of his novels I’ve read (excluding his sci fi) and he has yet to disappoint me, even slightly.
Whilst The Bridge still doesn’t top Complicity for me (man, THAT is a good book), it is still a truly great book. Banks is, as always, imaginative and involving, skirting the border between fluid prose and wild streams of consciousness. And again, as always, Banks covers some difficult ground, being quite explicit about violence and sex. Banks is not for the faint-hearted: you have been warned. This is far less aggressive than Complicity however, so might be a good way in for Banksian virgins.
The Bridge starts off with a car crash, and we see it from the POV of the victim – in the chaos and confusion, the “narrative” (if it is even that) is punctuated by fear and pain, and the stream of consciousness is a bit hard to follow. But stick with it: the fog lifts (a bit) very shortly.
What follows is our protagonist’s journey through his subsequent memory loss (he is given the name John Orr because he can’t remember his real one) and his recovery from the crash.
The main part of the novel follows Orr around the strange world of the Bridge, a society built on, you guessed it, a huge bridge. It’s a surreal mix of the otherworldly and the profoundly human. However, we do get glimmers of reality intermittently in Orr’s “dream” chapters, and it swiftly becomes very difficult to discern what is real from what is not.
I can’t say much more without divulging huge spoilers, so I will leave it there in the hopes that I have already whetted your appetite enough.
A final note to say that one “dream” mentions Peniel Heugh, or the Waterloo Monument, which I recognised by Banks’ description, before it is even named in the text. And that’s because I’ve been there. Here’s photographic evidence, taken on my mobile back in July this year:
Hope you get a chance to read this book. I stormed through it in a matter of days, despite my impending lab report deadline – it is simply that exciting and engaging. But then, Banks has a good track record in my books.
Yes, that’s me, reading in bed. Shush.
Back on the old warhorse!
Right. We’re almost back to 100% functionality.
HELLO! I’m back from holidays Sorry it took so long to getting around to writing this up (it’s been quite a few weeks since we got back…) but things have been rather busy.
As you can see from previous post, it could have gone a little smoother, but unfortunately, That’s Life. I’m not going to go off an a philosophical rant, because I don’t think I have the emotional stamina (not today, maybe later), but instead focus on the good that came of the holiday.
Northumberland. It is gorgeous.
I swear, I enjoy it more every time. It’s a bit tricky organising Jane’s kids, but then they are young, and quite, quite mad.
It sounds cruel, but much as I enjoy hanging out with them, I hope in August when we go again, we do more Kitten+Fox stuff on our own – when we go out and about with the kids, it’s fun, but we stay in quite a fixed 20 mile radius around the cottage, and often do the same sort of activities in the week. I’m still waiting to go cycling, kayaking, walk Hadrian’s Wall, see Kielder observatory, etc…
Must come up with a more focussed itinerary for summer. Then we should be ok
I am fairly certain I want to move up here within the next decade or so. I feel very… well. I feel at ease away from London. Maybe it’s being away from people? I do like my creature comforts though (I got myself into a real tizz when I was thwarted TWICE in the week in my efforts to have a decent bath), but I think I could put up with a little lack if it meant I didn’t have to deal with twats on the tube every day of the week.
I love London. Really, I do. I know we have our differences, but that’s what love boils down to in a way.
In London, I have access to culture and knowledge. Everything is on my doorstep here, and most of it is free. I could do something different every day of the week, and hardly break the bank. Just this Tuesday, Vin (an old uni mate) and I braved the National Gallery, St Martin-in-the-Fields, the National Portrait Gallery AND the British Library, all in one afternoon. Granted, we barely scratched the surface of each institution, but it was fantastic.
But in London… There is a lack of privacy. There is a lack of the sweet sense of solitude. In Northumberland, even in their bigger towns, it is quiet, and people smile at you. And nearly every town has it’s own ruined castle. Brilliant. Unfortunately, there is next to no industry, so unless you’re involved with tourism, run an internet business, or are filthy rich already, it’s difficult to forge a living there.
