Literary Significance & Criticism
The author has said that of the novels he has written, this is his personal favourite. "Definitely the intellectual of the family, it's the one that went away to University and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books."
Kafkaesque and multi-layered, it is probably the non-SF Banks novel with most in common with his Culture books. There is even mention of a knife missile late in the book. Banks has said that after this book, he felt his SF and non-SF work diverged.
Read more about this topic: The Bridge (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“In literary circles, the men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, editors, university deans and professors, bishops, too, were by no means men of the largest literary talent, but usually of a low and ordinary intellectuality, with a sort of mercantile activity and working talent. Indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces to a lucrative point, or by working power, over multitudes of superior men, in Old as in New England.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)