The man in the camel coat

Last year, in April, I was coming out of Waterstone's in Edinburgh's west end and a smiling man opened the door for me with a flourish, he seemed familiar, I knew I knew him but I couldn't place him. He had a kind face. I remember he was wearing a camel coat, though  memory is fragile so I can't be sure. When I got home I looked up Waterstone's and Iain Banks was doing an event that evening and of course it was him who had held open the door. Like many, I was gutted to learn of his diagnosis of terminal cancer  a couple of months ago  and yesterday's news left me with a lump in my throat, it was too soon, it could not be true, he surely had a few more months left. Although I'd only read a couple of his novels, I knew he was a huge presence. I remember reading The Wasp Factory in a freezing flat in Aberdeen in the 80s and we all devoured The Crow Road in the 90s, glued to the TV dramatisation too. I remember him tearing up his passport in protest over the Iraq war. Last night, I watched this interview with him from 2010 that has been put up as a tribute, he is funny and warm. I did not know the M stood for Menzies. And I love that his ashes will be scattered in Scotland and Paris and Venice. And this, a touching piece from Stuart Kelly, former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday: 'The universe has less Wonder in it today'. Iain M. Banks RIP.

*Five days left to watch this wonderful documentary Raw Spirit, a BBC Scotland  interview with Iain Banks shortly before he died.

Why do we read fiction?

Can reading literature make doctors better doctors was one of the questions posed at a 'Dissecting Edinburgh' event last month. It made me think of James Wood's How Fiction Works where he describes how in 2006 a Mexican municipal president decided that his police force should be prescribed reading certain novels - One Hundred Years of Solitude was on the list -  to make them 'better citizens'. And psychologist Keith Oatley speaks of fiction as a 'kind of simulation that runs on minds', and argues that novels can help us understand the world better. I'm not sure if  doctors *can* 'learn' empathy from fiction (I tend to think you've got empathy or you haven't) but  it's certainly  interesting to think of why we read rather than the more often discussed why we write. Both questions are answered by Portugese writer Fernando Pessoa: 'Literature is proof that life is not enough'. (I came across this gorgeous quote a couple of months ago in Pascal Garnier author's note in The Panda Theory. It is often in my head now.)

I happened the day before yesterday to be reading the quaint and bizarre short story 'Rab and His Friends' (1859) by Scottish doctor John Brown  featured at the Dissecting Edinburgh event - Rab is the name of a dog belonging to a man whose wife has incurable cancer - when I learned that Iain Banks is terminally ill. I had a lump in my throat. I remember reading The Wasp Factory in a friend's flat in Aberdeen in eighties. And how crazy we all were for The Crow Road in the nineties. I recall it was dramatised too. Such sad, sad news.