Why the Waste Land?

[Vetch]

I am wondering about the reason Banks named two of his novels after lines from Eliot's Waste Land.

Any thoughts?

[Green]

I don't know the significance of the passage from the Waste Land (I was always terrible at looking for meaning in stuff)... but the reason they're both named for the same passage is because the two books are linked by the Idiran war. The first is set in it, the second is (partially) about how it affected one of the minds who fought in it.

The quote from Consider Phlebas is something to do with pride coming before a fall, or something, isn't it? I guess Banks just likes the Waste Land

[Vetch]

I guess you are right about the war that links both books and the Waste Land (yes? I'm also not too sure what the Waste Land is about -- but then, being poetry, it is about many things, and war, to me, seems to be one of them).
And yea, Banksie likes it, I think so too.

Still... I think there is more to it.
The lines come from the same paragraph in the Waste land:



_______________IV. DEATH BY WATER

PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss
_______________A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
_______________ Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.



I strongly feel that Horza (from Consider Phlebas is Phlebas; and his fear of the Culture might be symbolized by a fear of drowning.

Those are just ideas put in to words that might not totally grasp what I mean/feel...

So I'd love to read more thoughts by you people!




P.S.
Am just reading The State of the Art; there's another line from the poem:

I heard the remote drone behind me sigh to itself again. 'Ah, it's true what they say; April is the cruellest month ...'

[easygoingman]

Hi

here someone gives their insight into this poem and the relevance to the novel 'Consider Phelbas' :

Death by Water@Everything2.com

I'll confess though I love nearly all of Iain's sci fi, I don't bother with much literary analysis of it, + I'm not much of a fan of poetry.

I can only add that like the drowned Phoenician Sailor, Horza is flung off into space and picked up by pirates

this part Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

I see as meaning consider the tale of Horza and what befalls him (after all he doesn't have the nicest life or the happiest ending!)