John Banville
1945-
"All works of art are scar tissue."
Birthplace
Wexford, Ireland
Education
Christian Brothers school and St Peter's college, Wexford
Other jobs
On leaving school he worked for the Irish airline Aer Lingus as a clerk. He was subeditor on the Irish Press and Irish Times, then literary editor of the Irish Times. He remains a prolific reviewer.
Did you know?
Banville says that he started writing novels at the age of 12. His early attempts were "dreadful imitations" of Joyce's Dubliners; the opening line of one was, "The white May blossom swooned slowly into the open mouth of the grave".
Critical verdict
"If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?" grumbled Banville after being awarded the Booker for The Sea and discovering from media reaction that he was far from a populist choice. As a writer who values language above plot, suspense, pace and drama, Banville tends to divide critics. "Difficult", "heavyweight" and "tough-going" are common reactions to the Irishman's work, with its baroque, allusive style and complex stories which sometimes labour under the load of symbolism and philosophical digressions. His narrators are always unreliable and he specialises in baffled males of a certain age, from the murderer Freddie Montgomery in The Book of Evidence, the first of his "art trilogy", to The Sea's soliloquistic Max Morden. The reward, however, for persevering with Banville is stunning, lyrical prose. His writing is perfectly crafted, inventive and poetic. More surprising, given his reputation, is that he can also be extremely funny, with a dark humour and disparaging wit that echoes Beckett at his finest.
Recommended works
Banville has suggested that readers new to him begin with The Newton Letter ("It's pretty well all there. And it's short"). It's the third of his "scientific tetralogy", the series of novels featuring mathematical or astronomical structures that made his name as a writer. The Newton Letter (1982) compares scientist and writer by describing how Newton's biographer - a lonely, baffled man - tries to write about the scientist's crisis of faith. Banville's "art trilogy" which followed feature Freddie Montgomery, a murderer, as narrator, but an alternative starting point is The Untouchable (1997), the most humorous and, arguably, the most accessible of Banville's novels. It is an espionage-cum-existential novel based around the recollections of an art curator who is exposed as a double agent - a figure loosely based on Anthony Blount. Finally, there is the Booker duo - the Booker-shortlisted The Book of Evidence (1997) and 2005's winner, The Sea, Banville's 14th work. A novel about growing up and growing old, it tells of the return of a grieving man to the coastal town where he spent a traumatic holiday as a boy.
Influences
The novelist Tibor Fischer summed up the general view on Banville's influences when he said, "You can sense the volumes of Joyce, Beckett and Nabokov on Banville's shelves." Banville himself has acknowledged that all Irish writers are followers of either Joyce or Beckett - and he places himself in the Beckett camp. A less obvious influence, which comes through most particularly in Banville's defence of his work as art, would be the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter. Banville's memories of his childhood in Ireland are also a source of inspiration in his later work, particularly in The Sea. "Even though I am now on the brink of old age, childhood is still a source of material," he has commented.
Now read on
If you want to stay in the Irish camp then Joyce and Beckett are the obvious choices from the old school. For more recent Irish writing, try Banville's fellow Wexfordian Colm Toíbín (especially The Blackwater Lightship) and William Trevor (The Story of Lucy Gault). Away from the Emerald Isle, fans of Banville's stylistic prose might find Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis and Italo Calvino to their taste. For more pyrotechnics, try Jorge Luis Borges.
Adaptations
The Newton Letter was filmed by Channel 4 as a television drama called Reflections. It was scripted by the author and directed by Kevin Billington. Banville himself has adapted Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Last September, which was filmed for Scala Productions in 1997, directed by Deborah Warner, with a cast including Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Fiona Shaw and Jane Birkin.
Recommended biography
There have been no biographies of John Banville so far, but his work has attracted critical appraisals. John Banville: A Critical Study by Joseph McMinn (Gill and MacMillan) considers his writing up to and including The Body of Evidence, while McMinn's The Supreme Fictions of John Banville (Manchester University Press) is a commentary on Banville's fiction in the context of contemporary critical theory.
Useful links and work online
Work online
· Chapter one of The Sea
Background
· Interview on The Elegant Variation weblog
· Profile on British Council site
· Interview on Beatrice.com