“It was all for them. It revolved around them, only really made sense if they were here—and that itself was a kind of power.” This is a powerful statement made in a book that discusses one’s purpose in life through mind-blowing storytelling. I’m talking about Walking on Glass by Iain Banks.
Let’s get this book undone.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Books Undone. I’m your host, Livia J. Elliot, and today we are discussing Walking on Glass by Iain Banks. This is a standalone, literary fiction novel, and was recommended to me by fellow author, Karl Forshaw—and truth be told, I found this book enthralling. It may not be strictly sci-fi, but it was so cerebral it had me mulling over it for weeks.
For those who don’t know him, Iain Banks (1954-2013) was a Scottish author who wrote both literary fiction and science fiction. His first published book was The Wasp Factory, released in 1984, which won several awards. Banks became renown for his sci-fi series Culture, which he published under the pen name Iain M. Banks; his first book in the series, Consider Phlebas was published in 1987. Unfortunately, Banks passed quite abruptly in 2013, and his last book, The Quarry was published posthumously.
Walking on Glass was Iain Banks’ second published novel, and released in 1985. Jowever, it seems to have been written first in 19791, so two years before The Wasp Factory—which was written in 1981 and published in 1984. Iain Banks won several awards, and it is considered to be one of Scotland’s most prolific and ground-breaking authors2. But most importantly, his books are so cerebral, so structurally complex and allegorical that Banks attracted (and continues to attract) the attention of researchers; there are many peer-reviewed, academic papers about Banks’ work, including PhD and Master thesis. I will leave several links to a few papers3 about him in my blog at liviajelliot.com.
That said, and before we move forward, let me make some disclaimers. First, there are spoilers in this episode; I found it very hard to explain the theme of the book without diving into its plot, so we will start with a quirky plot summary (and rough structural analysis) before diving into the thematic analysis. I gauge that you can enjoy this episode even if you haven’t read the book. Second, what you will hear is my subjective interpretation of Walking on Glass, particularly focused around the themes of meaning and purpose; you may disagree, and you may also find the other themes more relevant to you. That’s okay, we all have different opinions.
We will begin with a brief summary of the plot-line of Walking on Glass.
The book is divided into six sections, with each—except the final one—containing three chapters. The chapters alternate between three seemingly unrelated storylines:
Graham’s story happens in the real world, in London 1983 near Islington. Graham is an art student from a low-income background; he is travelling from his university to the house of a love interest, Sara. Each chapter is named as the street he’s traversing at that moment… which means the plot is, time-wise, quite short. As Graham walks, he notices things in those streets and remembers everything that happened between Sara and him so far; these bits are told as flashbacks. Something to note is that Graham is not really paying attention to the present as he walks—he’s caught up in those memories, living the dream of them if you will, his life purpose seemingly built around courting Sara.
Steven’s story also happens in the real world, in London 1983 near Islington. He is a paranoid 38-years-old who believes he is an exile from The Wars, and has plenty of conspiracy theories that rule his life—these create some sort of illusion in which he lives. Steven’s plot begins when he resigns at work, and through each chapter we follow his path towards the pub; the chapters are named with the names of the people he meets on his way. Just like Graham, Steven mulls a lot about the fiction he’s created due to his paranoia; it gives him purpose and shapes his reality.
Quiss and Ajayi’s story is different. The point-of-view alternates loosely between them, but basically this is a fantasy-ish story. Quiss and Ajayi are veterans of the Therapeutic Wars who were exiled into the very odd Castle of Bequest (aka, Castle Doors) as punishment for having killed an innocent person. In that Castle, they are attended by strange goblin-like individuals, and live by specific rules: there is a table that gives them board games, and they have to guess their rules and successfully complete one match; after that match, they’ll get a chance to answer a riddle: “What happens when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object”. If their answer is incorrect, they are given another game; if the answer is correct, they will be returned to their normal lives. Each chapter is named as the board game they’re playing. Curiously, they’re both quite bored and so, between movements of their games, Ajayi reads the many books scattered in the Castle while Quiss ventures downstairs to uncover secrets.
The book begins with Graham looking at the clock; it signals: 3:33pm, to which Graham thinks: “Three three three. A good omen. Today [is] a day things would come together, a day events would coalesce”. This is interesting, because: (a) the novel’s structure is always shaped around the three storylines we just presented, (b) three is a numbered favoured in creative writing (three parts of a journey, three volumes in a series, three stages of growth or decay in a character’s arc, and so on), and (c) the stories do coalesce, coming together to form a whole in a very convoluted way.
Let’s tackle those similarities one by one, starting with the last one: how do these stories coalesce or connect? It is a sensible question since most books with seemingly isolated protagonists converge towards the second half of the book. However, Walking on Glass is considerably more complex than the average book, and these three storylines link at five different levels; namely: by plot, by metaphor, by structure, by character arcs, and by theme.
Let’s break that down, shall we?
One, they are weakly linked by plot. Ultimately, some of Steven’s actions affect a few characters in Graham’s story, and vice-versa. Steven also believes to come from the same Wars that Quiss and Ajayi actually come from—the Therapeutic Wars; at some point, a detail in Steven’s story answers the riddle the couple is trying to solve while also hinting that their setting may not be truly a fantasy one.
Two, the three stories are linked metaphorically—and here comes a massive spoiler. Towards the end, each character is revealed to have been metaphorically walking on glass, thus having their motivation shattered upon finding out the truth. In particular:
Graham was actually just a toy for Sara; she was actually using him as a decoy to misdirect the private investigators sent by her ex-husband. She does not spare his feelings, instead resorting to cruel and explicit comments that thoroughly demonstrate how insignificant he was to her. Up to here, Graham was walking on glass over Sara’s fiction; all the motivation and purpose that carried him to this point in life is destroyed when she reveals her truth.
Steven’s story ends similarly. Throughout the entire book, Steven’s purpose had been to escape the Torturers and return to The Wars; he was walking on glass over his paranoid delusion. However, at the end of the book he’s severely injured in a traffic accident, suffers temporal amnesia, and now walks on glass again: with a mind that can barely remember the present, having forgotten the past.
Quiss and Ajayi are literally walking on glass (because the Castle’s floors are made of glass) but also metaphorically walking on glass—because the rules (play the games and guess the riddle for a chance to escape) are incomplete and blurry. This fictional reality is shattered when their motivation to keep solving the riddles thins out and Quiss finds the truth about the Castle.
This connection is quite interesting, since—if you put the title’s metaphor aside—we can also think of these similarities as part of a quote-on-quote ‘play’ with a stage, a clueless main character, and deceiving actors. Curiously, there are a few linguistic echoes across the three storylines that play around this new metaphor.
For example, shortly after mentioning the time of the day—aka, that fated 3:33pm—Graham thinks that:
“Everything seemed fresher, brighter, more real today, as though all his quite normal, perfectly standard surroundings had until this point been actors fumbling behind some thin stage curtain, struggling to get out […]"
Although (at first glance) that extract seems to be the flourished thoughts of an art student (or perhaps the author’s purple prose), there is actually so much more going on. This is actually part of that ‘omen’ Graham thought after looking at his clock—he is literally hinting that everyone is acting, or that life is a theatre scene, and that the truth is “fumbling behind some thin stage curtain, struggling to get out”.
Likewise, Ajayi (in the third story) describes the Castle’s attendants in a way that reminds of the comedy and tragedy masks often used to represent the performing arts. She thinks: “The attendant’s face was hidden by a papier-mâché mask, as worn by all the attendants and waiters. The mask was set in an expression of abject sadness.”
This, quite subtly, points that the metaphor of life as a theatre may not be just a mere embellishment but an overarching part of Walking on Glass’ metaphor. There are two points to be made:
As readers, we are actually meant to discover why these characters are clueless and what the true reality (hidden under the theatre curtain’s) actually is for them, while
Knowing that life is a stage, a play, comedy and tragedy, and we never know when the latter will hit us. More importantly, we never know who can be an actor deceiving us.
This metaphorical connection, especially the use of the number three for plot structuring leads us to the next way of linking Graham’s, Steven’s, Quiss and Ajayi’s storylines.
Three, these stories are linked structurally. We can use Steven’s paranoid beliefs to discover the shape every storyline follows. In particular, Steven believes that he needs to find a Key to unlock the Way Out. In his first chapter, he thinks that:
“They were trying to wear him down, but they would fail. He would find the Key, he would find the Way Out and escape from this… joke, this awful solitary confinement for Heroes. […] [H]e wasn’t going to end up like one of those poor bastards. He would see it through, he would find the Way Out."
From here, we can see the three narratives as quote-on-quote ‘quests’ where the protagonists must find the Way Out of their respective glass-floored fiction to return to their realities. In this case:
Graham is trapped in Sara’s deception, and his Way Out is returning to be the polite art student he was. His Key is Sara’s revelation.
Steven is trapped in his paranoia, and his Way Out is dealing with his issues and finding help. The Key, sad as it is, is the accident that leaves him amnesiac.
Quiss and Ajayi are trapped in the Castle of Bequest. Their Way Out is complex: they can either kill themselves by jumping off the Castle’s balcony, successfully solving the riddle, or—and this is what Quiss finds—lock themselves in a past life. We would look at that third Way Out later on; for now, keep it in mind.
In a way, all these characters are trapped (knowingly or not) and struggling to break free. Therefore, the three milestones of each one’s plot are similar, even though how they get there is different.
To me, it is pretty interesting that all the covers of Walking on Glass I have seen reflect this specific relationship—portraying mazes of different shapes to convey the idea of characters trapped in a fictional reality. If you are keen on seeing the covers, I have an image in my blog at liviajelliot.com alongside the transcript for this episode; once there, you can subscribe to my newsletter to get bite-size discussions (just like my podcast episodes!) delivered fortnightly and into your email.
Four, and complementing the point we just discussed, the characters are also linked because of their personal growth journey. In terms of mindset, they start with a shared mentality, experience a common breaking point, and reach a familiar destination—which is just another instance of number three applied in storytelling. Allow me to exemplify this with excerpts from the book.
When Quiss arrives at the Castle of Bequest, he believes that the entire operation is there only for he and Ajayi, the only two inhabitants. Quiss thinks:
“He—along with [Ajayi]—was the most important person in the place, he was sure. It was all for them, it revolved around them, only made sense if they were here, and that itself was a kind of power."
That is where everyone is at the beginning: feeling that everything happens around them and because of them. Graham doesn’t explicitly think of it in these terms, but his narration is only about him; he never ponders what his friends are doing, what happened to them, or why they are acting in a specific way; we get even some clues that Sara may be lying to him but Graham only focuses on his own feelings.
Steven thinks of this in similar terms as part of his delusion:
“He had been betrayed […] and ejected from the real battleground to languish here, in this cesspit they called ’life’. It was part punishment, part test. He could fail entirely, and be demoted entirely […] That was what they wanted, the […] Tormentors."
So, yes, Steven is not neurotypical but he clearly believes that everything that happens to him (or around him) is because these Tormentors are trying to torture him.
After that initial state, all characters have a breaking point in which that belief of thinking that everything happens because (or to) them is shattered. That’s the metaphorical link we mentioned not long ago—the fact that, one way or another, the glass floor is shattered, and they fall into a new reality.
More importantly, there is something else they share in this stage—they believed a lie (the fictional reality) because they lacked information. In particular:
Graham didn’t know about Sara’s plans, and so he believed her.
Quiss didn’t know the Castle’s true purpose and what had happened to the prior exiles—namely, the third Way Out.
Ajayi didn’t know what Quiss eventually found, and so couldn’t understand him.
Steven didn’t know how to prove the Tormentors were real and so kept an Evidence Box; he didn’t know how to find the help he needed, and so didn’t consider it.
When that lack of information delivers them into the shattering moment (the second point of the tripartite journey of character growth), they all end up with another similar mindset: there is no purpose or meaning to life. Let’s tackle some examples.
After finding the third Way Out of the castle—namely, locking themselves in a past life—Quiss thinks: “So many people, so many failed hopes, lost games, surrendered dreams; and the castle, a single island of warped chance in a frozen ocean of missed opportunities.” He is literally thinking of people as ‘failed hopes’ and ‘surrendered dreams’ (namely, a motivation that was squandered and thus left them empty) and life as ‘an ocean of missed opportunities’ (a grim world where there is only failure, and any sort of achievement is impossible).
Granted, the guy was deeply depressed at this point, but after Sara grotesquely destroyed Graham’s feelings, he was even bleaker, thinking that:
“Here it was; this was what it all really meant; here was your civilisation, your billion years of evolution, right here; […] It swelled him them, […] a rapid disgust […] directed at everything around him; at the filthy, eviscerated mundanity of it all, the sheer crawling awfulness of existence; all the lies and the pain, […] all the life-defying squalor of the cities and the camps."
The both share the same idea: life is meaningless, there is no hope (neither for them n or humanity), and life is a cesspit that will only deliver pain and misery. That mindset to which all characters arrive is the last point into which all stories connect.
Fifth, at the end, the storylines coalesce through their themes. What begins as a literal walk compelled by a motivation (to the Way Out of their situation), leads them to the Key which opens the door to an allegorical Way Out—out of their innocent, hopeful selves and into their weary, hopeless ones. Purpose and motivation are fundamental to the overall message of Walking on Glass.
As I see it, Banks approached this thematic discussion on life’s meaning and purpose with a nihilist lens. But what is existential nihilism?
Existential nihilism is a philosophical theory positing that life has no objective meaning or purpose. It is mostly associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who often argued about the extreme pessimism and radical skepticism that condemns existence. This theory is particularly relevant to Walking on Glass for a number of things:
First, the word ’nihilism’ comes from the Latin nihil which means ’that which does not exist’; it also appears in the verb ‘annihilate’, meaning to ’to bring to nothing’ or ’to destroy completely’4. This is what we see in the characters—a purpose that is annihilated, a world-view that is completely destroyed.
Second, Albert Camus—a famous philosopher—was convinced that nihilism was the most important problem of the twentieth century society… and that is somehow reflected in Walking on Glass. In this book life’s meaning and immediate purpose literally guide the plot while defining the characters’ arc; the whole point of their storylines is to show how they cross the Way Out of hopeful purpose into meaningless hopelessness. This lead us to the next point.
Third, nihilism is a “common thread in the literature of the existentialists”, often focused on “coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness” including “[…] responding the question of whether surviving [the nothingness] was possible”4. This basically refers to how each character deals with life after having their individual purpose rendered pointless.
In Walking on Glass Graham gets incredibly angry and bitter, Ajayi detaches entirely, and Quiss falls into suicidal depression. There is not much plot left after this, the book ends shortly after, but these reactions are still incredibly important for the thematic work Banks was aiming for.
Let me elaborate on each character’s reaction.
Graham, after that grim quote I read not long ago, reacts with anger and severe disgust for humanity as a whole—especially because Sara not only shattered his love for her, but also Graham’s view of the world. He thinks:
”[…] all the hollow, ringing, bullshitting words used to justify and explain the utter howling grief of our own cruelty and stupidity; it piled on him, in him, like a weight of atmosphere […] so that he felt at once crushed, smashed inside, but swollen too; bursting with the sickening burden of a cheap and tumid realisation."
That realisation is the nihilist understanding that life has no purpose, that things happen without meaning, that is pointless to have hopes and dreams because other people will hurt, cheat, deceive, use, and abuse you. The understanding that living in an illusion is kinder and gentler.
On the other hand, Ajayi’s reaction is that of quiet acceptance—impersonal and narrated without adjectives; as if stating facts instead of someone’s thoughts about a deeply distressing situation: “Well, they had played their last game; they had been left in no doubt about that. No table, no valid games. So they had just their one, unused answer left.” Ajayi is utterly emotionless, wholly detaching from the dramatic, hopeless situation she’s in because perhaps this type of non-feeling is easier to deal with than the bleakness of her state—likely trapped forever in the Castle of Bequest. From there, she finds meaning externally and through books. She thinks:
“She looked at the other books she held. This was interesting. She had been looking for a couple of them, having read about them in some of the literary guides. […] She decided she would read this nameless book first. […] After all, what else was there to do?"
What else was there to do? It is quite a sad question, don’t you think? Ajayi is so devoid of feelings, so empty of purpose, and so deprived of hope (that there is more, that she can find new purpose) that she simply sees no reason to even worry about her situation! She takes the escapist approach and makes reading books her sole purpose.
The saddest example, though, is Quiss himself. At the start of their journey, when Ajayi surmised they could successfully solve the riddle, Quiss thought that “[…] her smug positivism sounded too soulless and logical to be much use in the real world”; in short, that having hope was pointless and useless for life.
Overall, Quiss is a person that exists in a constant state of hopelessness—as if he were adrift in life, only completing the task at hand simply because he had to, and not because there was a goal to it. He was already depressed at the start of the book, feeling trapped and left without a choice. Let me read you how Ajayi described his way of thinking as quite nihilistic:
“Know your strengths; don’t attack where you’re weak. That was [Quiss’] sort of philosophy; military. That and an acceptance that life was basically absurd, unfair and—ultimately—pointless."
However, at that point, Quiss’ nihilist understanding was just an educated guess; like that of the sensible pessimist who rather waits for the worst in hopes of being surprised when something nice happens. The problem with that depressive mindset is what happens after finding quote-on-quote ’evidence’ that supports that negative outlook.
Closer to the end of the book, Quiss finds one window where the glass melted due to the pass of time. He thinks that:
”[…] that glass—ordinary glass, made from sand—[…]gradually gave in to the incessant pull of gravity. […] The glass had flowed—was still flowing—from the frame, over the sill, down the wall, to the floor."
Basically, Quiss saw that window as the unequivocal evidence supporting his bleak understanding of life: to him, it didn’t matter how hard the glass tried to keep its shape, gravity (aka, another metaphor for life and existence) eventually won since the glass slowly surrendered to it and melted down; the glass had tried to resist only to eventually be crushed down.
It may seem a bland piece of evidence, perhaps not even physically possible, but to a depressed person anything can be a quote-on-quote ‘a sign’. Quiss’ reaction is only described as body beats, but the effects on his mind are clear:
“He knelt, realised this, and after a little while, to his own astonishment, he started to cry. […] His hope, his determination—once so fierce, so furious and powerful and energetic—had ground to a halt, rusted up; seized."
That’s the reaction of a broken man, someone who has nothing left to live for, whose last ounce of motivation has been irrevocably destroyed… and it is no surprise that shortly after that discovery Quiss tries to kill himself.
So, how are these reactions important to the theme? Remember the third way in which nihilism appears in Walking on Glass: it is “[…] responding the question of whether surviving [the nothingness] was possible”4.
Therefore, can the characters survive without a life purpose? We only see the short-term answer:
Quiss clearly cannot live without purpose and attempts to kill himself.
Graham sees it as possible, since he’s fulled by anger and bitterness, something that’s going to effectively change his personality completely.
Ajayi has no concerns about it either, choosing to live through the books and finding meaning there.
But what about Steven? I’ve left him purposefully out of the equation!
After the traffic accident, Steven is left amnesiac, which means that his life purpose—to find the Key and the Way Out, to escape the Torturers and return to his real life—is literally stolen from him, but also fulfilled for him. It sounds baffling, but I can assure you there is a reason to this duality.
Steven’s purpose is stolen from him because after the accident and the subsequent amnesia, he cannot remember what motivated him before; the goals and motivations he had, are no longer there, not even in his memory. It is curious, because refers to that time—of those paranoid motivations he had—as unhappy times; he thinks: “He used to be happy, then unhappy (he seemed to recall) and looking for things. […] [The doctors] had given him these things… he couldn’t remember when, not at the moment…”
But his life goal is also fulfilled for him… after all, the accident gave him a Way Out. Steven is no longer tortured by the Tormentors (a metaphor for his paranoid thoughts, perhaps?), he no longer feels the Microwave Gun (a metaphor for traumatic distress, maybe?). The Key was amnesia, a way to cover up his disability with something perhaps even worse. Is it a horrible and sad interpretation? Yes, totally! It is as grim as nihilism is—an accident thwarted Steven so thoroughly, that now he is simply content with being, as-is; namely, existing without any other reason than existing.
After discussing all of this, it is very easy to think that, well, Banks wrote an entire book to demonstrate: how awful humanity is, how purposeless our existence is, and how easily life can hit back at you and thwart your entire existence. That is, certainly, one way of interpreting the central theme of Walking on Glass.
I beg to differ; I think there is more to this, but presented in an even subtler way.
To me, Banks was trying to point out to two things: (a) life’s meaning is temporal and malleable, and (b) we better find our meaning within ourselves and not in others. What do I mean by this?
Well, think of yourself as a child, say seven or eight years-old. What motivated you back then? Perhaps it was getting out of school, playing a specific game, spending time with friends. Fast-forward a decade, what motivated you when you were about to finish high school? Perhaps it was making it to uni and pursuing a career, or perhaps it was learning a trade or starting your own business. Now fast-forward again, what motivates you now? Perhaps it’s purchasing a house, or maybe it is chasing a promotion, becoming your own boss, or saving enough for your kids to attend university.
What that simple example shows us is that life’s meaning is temporal and malleable because we humans are temporal and malleable. Who we were ten or twenty years ago (and sometimes, even a week ago) is not who we are anymore, and so the purpose and motivation of our past-selves may not be the same purpose and motivation of our current-self. The fact that one purpose or motivation ends—either naturally due to ageing, or being shattered abruptly by external factors—does not mean that life is meaningless: it means that ‘purpose’ is cyclic! New goals appear every now and then, becoming incredibly important, but eventually fading away to give room to a new goal.
This cycle is pretty subtle for all characters. Ajayi’s goal of solving the riddle and getting out of the Castle has died, but her new motivation is to read books and find out the true history of the world where the Castle is. Perhaps once his anger depletes, Graham’s purpose is simply to pour himself into his art, and maybe Steve now can find a healthier purpose.
That is why every story ends up in a tunnel—the narrow, dark impasse that leads a person from their past (now dead) motivation into the new one. It’s the period of mourning what was, before hope and purpose can raise anew. The tunnel itself is another Way Out of the hopeless situation in which that shattering moment threw the characters into. In turn, the new Key (into hopefulness) is finding a new meaning and purpose.
But that only covers point (a): that life’s meaning is temporal and malleable. What about point (b), that we better find the meaning in ourselves and not in others?
Let me go back to the book and revisit the third Way Out that Quiss finds.
Within the Castle of Bequest (also called Castle Doors) there are literal doors in the ceilings of the basement; if you put your head through it, you get connected to the body of and mind of a past-human. The problem is that the thousands of prior exiles are now trapped with their heads stuck into someone else’s; they are literally zombies, and have to be fed by the masked attendants only to be returned to the holes.
Upon finding this, Quiss goes to the Castle’s seneschal who says the following:
”[…] Once you are in one of those things properly you don’t come out of your own free will; too beguiling. If somebody doesn’t come to get you out, you stay there, tapping every form of human excitement. By the time your belly rumbles you’re hooked. You come out for food, and it’s just a grey dream compared to what you have just left."
There is a lot to unpack there, but let me reduce it to a psychological concept: enmeshment.
Enmeshment is a concept introduced by Salvador Minuchin to describe families where personal boundaries are diffused, sub-systems undifferentiated, and over-concern for others leads to a loss of autonomous development5. We can apply it here: the ceiling-port gave someone the ability to guide someone else’s life by basically blurring the boundaries of the self (namely, when the seneschal says “too beguiling”).
This can be applied in the real-world in a more straightforward way: making someone else’s our life meaning gives us nothing but a load of problems. This may sound cruel, but you cannot make ‘caring for your parents’ your life’s sole goal; they are bound to die as we all are… and what will come after? What would you do? You cannot make your kids your whole purpose either; they will grow and develop their own lives, and thus leave your nest and perhaps never be in touch. You cannot make your partner or spouse your whole purpose, they may also leave, die, or outright abuse you.
There is a considerable difference between someone being important to you and making someone the whole purpose of your life. While the former is laudable and normal, the latter is problematic—it is enmeshment, and it can lead to an inability to set boundaries, and to struggle with forming healthy relationships due to excessive emotional dependence on others. Enmeshment is a sign of a dysfunctional relationship, often leading to emotional trauma; I’ll leave some research papers about this in my blog6.
What I think the book points to, with regards to someone’s purpose in life is that each of us is an autonomous individual with likes and dislikes, fears, desires, and plenty of other preferences. We need to understand that as our inner selves evolve our purpose is going to shift and change, what once interested us may not be relevant now or in the future. However, as those changes happen, we cannot burden others with giving us (or becoming) the purpose of our lives; we have to find it by ourselves and within ourselves. That is the only way we can find true, honest, and continuous fulfillment.
As I see it, Walking on Glass is a cautionary tale:
Graham’s tale advises not to make a lover or person the whole purpose of your existence; they are independent people and may have different goals. This is similar to Quiss’, who extends this warning to any relevant person.
Ajayi’s tale advises to not make ‘returning to the past’ your sole goal. The past is past, and will not come back. You have a new set of rules to live now, find a purpose to this new board game of life.
Finally, Steven’s story advises to not live an illusion simply because it’s easier. Your life circumstances may be awful, but you’re better off finding a purpose within the circumstances you are in.
After all, the meaning of our life is something deeply personal, shaped by our own experiences, passions, and values. When we seek meaning within ourselves, we build a foundation that is resilient, authentic, and uniquely ours—one that no external force can take away. Only by looking inward can we stop walking on glass and be truly ourselves.
So, Iain Banks’ Walking on Glass is probably one of the most cerebral books I’ve read, and it will likely live rent-free in my mind for years to come. I plan to re-read it again in the future, and perhaps discuss it again since there are many more topics that I have not covered. For example:
Someone’s life can become someone else’s entertainment. The nameless book Ajayi picks at the end begins with the exact first sentence of Graham’s first chapter. So… is she reading his story? Was Graham’s life just a fiction all together? Is something so meaningful to him just entertainment for her? There is much to explore there, especially if we think how the lives of past people, especially historically relevant figures, are turned into TV Shows and novelisations just for shallow entertainment.
There is much more to be said about the escapism through books, which is a theme relevant both to Ajayi and Steven’s stories.
There are just so many references to Douglas Adams’ The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The problem is that I have not read Adams’ work (yes, a literary crime, I know) and so most of it probably glided right through me. I’m hoping to get back to Walking on Glass after reading Hitch-Hiker’s, to be honest.
I barely scratched the surface of the ceiling-ports Quiss finds. There is so much more to say about this that I could write an entire episode just on this detail.
And finally, life as a literal maze: are we going to let ourselves be trapped by our circumstances? Or are we going to work—to the best of our abilities—to forge a solution and path forward on our own?
That said, if you liked this episode, please like and subscribe, review the podcast if possible and let’s continue the discussion in the comments.
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Thanks for listening, and happy reading~
“Iain Banks: Getting Used to Being God” by Chris Mitchell, in Spike Magazine: https://spikemagazine.com/0996bank/ ↩︎
“Iain Banks and the Fiction Factory” by Thom Nairn, Chapter 9 in The Scottish Novel since the Seventies (1993). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474473392-011 ↩︎
There are several papers which I found interesting. I’m listing some of them here, but there are many more:
“Coalescence and the fiction of Iain Bank” by David Leishman (2009). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesecossaises.208
“Evading the dominant ‘reality’ – the case of Iain Banks’s Walking on Glass” by Katherina Dodou, published in Studia Neophilologica (2006). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00393270500355148
“Utopian Processes in Iain M. Banks’ Space Opera Series” by Joseph S. Norman (PhD Thesis).
[Not Research] “Reading Double, Writing Double: The Fiction of Iain (M.) Banks” by Martyn Colebrook in The Bottle Imp: Scottish Science Fiction (2010). URL: https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/reading-double-writing-double-the-fiction-of-iain-m-banks/
You can read more about existential nihilism in the “Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy”, which is a peer-reviewed resource; far better than Wikipedia for your philosophical needs. About Nihilism: https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/
“Family Therapy: An Overview” by Herbert Goldenberg and Irene Goldenberg (2011). You can also read “The Enmeshed Family System: What It Is and How to Break Free”, medically reviewed by Janet Brito.
“A pilot study on childhood trauma and love addiction: Exploring the mediation of unbalanced family functioning” by Alessio Gori, Eleanora Topino, Sara Russo, and Mark D. Griffiths; published in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001669
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