“When I started writing, I was a
great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one
gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing:
you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and
memories. It's richer, in a way.”
– John Banville
Recognised for his precise, cold,
forensic prose style, and for the dark humor of his generally arch narrators,
Banville is considered to be both a contender for the Nobel Prize and one of
the most imaginative literary novelists writing today.
Born on this date in 1945, Banville,
who makes his home in Ireland, writes in two styles – one his highly developed
literary style and the second as crimewriter Benjamin Black. He said he likes crime fiction because he has
to be less artistic and can turn out work more quickly. Among his best-known crime stories is the
best-selling Christine Falls.
As himself, Banville has written several trilogies, including The
Revolutions Trilogy, focused on great men of science, and Frames,
consisting of his popular The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, and
“Sometimes, in the middle of the
afternoon if I'm feeling a little bit sleepy, Black will sort of lean in over
Banville's shoulder and start writing,” he said. “Or Banville will lean over Black's shoulder
and say, ‘Oh that's an interesting sentence, let's play with that.’ I can see sometimes, revising the work, the
points at which one crept in or the two sides seeped into each other.”
But, “With the crime novels, it's
delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's sort-of
like having a fictitious family.”
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