Jump to content

John Banville

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 86.40.102.53 (talk) at 23:48, 16 May 2013 (ref). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

John Banville
Banville in Sarzana (2010)
Banville in Sarzana (2010)
BornWilliam John Banville
(1945-12-08) 8 December 1945 (age 78)
Wexford, Ireland
Pen nameBenjamin Black
OccupationNovelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
NationalityIrish
Notable worksBirchwood,
Doctor Copernicus,
Kepler,
The Newton Letter,
Mefisto,
The Book of Evidence,
Ghosts,
Athena
The Untouchable,
Eclipse,
Shroud,
The Sea,
The Infinities,
Ancient Light
Notable awardsJames Tait Black Memorial Prize
1976
Man Booker Prize
2005
Franz Kafka Prize
2011
Irish PEN Award
2013
Austrian State Prize for European Literature
2013

William John Banville (born 8 December 1945), who writes as John Banville and sometimes as Benjamin Black, is an Irish novelist, adapter of dramas, and screenwriter.[4] He is recognised for his precise, cold, forensic prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. Indeed, he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov."[5] He is considered "one of the most imaginative literary novelists writing in the English language today."[6]

Banville's career has seen him presented with numerous awards. His novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award in 1989. His fourteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In 2011, Banville was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, while 2013 brought both the Irish PEN Award and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature,[7][8] Banville's stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".[9]

Biography

William John Banville was born to Agnes (née Doran) and Martin Banville, a garage clerk, in Wexford, Ireland. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Anne Veronica "Vonnie" Banville-Evans[10] has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence[11] of growing up in Wexford.

Banville was educated at CBS Primary, Wexford, a Christian Brothers school, and at St Peter's College, Wexford. Despite having intended to be a painter and an architect he did not attend university.[12] Banville has described this as "A great mistake. I should have gone. I regret not taking that four years of getting drunk and falling in love. But I wanted to get away from my family. I wanted to be free."[13] Alternately he has stated that college would have had little benefit for him - "I don't think I would have learned much more, and I don't think I would have had the nerve to tackle some of the things I tackled as a young writer if I had been to university — I would have been beaten into submission by my lecturers."[14] After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply discounted rates. He took advantage of this to travel in Greece and Italy. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at The Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor.

After The Irish Press collapsed in 1995,[15] he became a sub-editor at The Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left.

Writing

A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990, Banville's first book (a collection of short stories titled Long Lankin) was published in 1970. He has disowned his first published novel, Nightspawn, describing it as "crotchety, posturing, absurdly pretentious".[16]

Banville has since written three trilogies: the first, The Revolutions Trilogy, focused on great men of science and consisted of Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, and The Newton Letter. The second, an unnamed trilogy consisting of The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, and Athena, focused on the power of works of art. The third trilogy comprises Eclipse, Shroud and Ancient Light, all of which concern the characters Alexander and Cass Cleave.

Beginning with Christine Falls, published in 2006, Banville has written crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black. He writes his Benjamin Black crime fiction much more quickly than he composes his literary novels,[17] and he appreciates his work as Black as a craft, while as Banville he is an artist. He considers crime writing, in his own words, as being "cheap fiction".[citation needed] In a July 2008 interview with Juan José Delaney in Argentine paper La Nacíón, Banville was asked if his books had been translated into Irish. He replied that nobody would translate them and that he was often portrayed pejoratively as a West Brit.[18]

Banville is highly scathing of all of his work, stating of his books "I hate them all ... I loathe them. They're all a standing embarrassment."[12] Instead of dwelling on the past he is continually looking forward; "You have to crank yourself up every morning and think about all the awful stuff you did yesterday, and how you can compensate for that by doing better today."[13] He does not read reviews of his work as he already knows – "better than any reviewer" – the places in which its faults lie.[19]

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. 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.[20]

Style

Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of English, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling.[21] David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls him "one of the great stylists writing in English today", Don DeLillo describes his work "dangerous and clear-running prose", Val Nolan in The Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious";[22] The Observer described The Book of Evidence as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Banville himself has admitted that he is "trying to blend poetry and fiction into some new form".[13] He is known for his dark humour, and sharp, wintery wit.[1]

In four of Banville's novels (and one as Benjamin Black), he has used the trope of a character's eyes darting back and forth "like a spectator at a tennis match".[23]

Banville has a strong interest in animal rights, and is often featured in Irish media speaking out against vivisection in Irish university research.[citation needed]

In 2011, he offered to donate his brain to The Little Museum of Dublin "so visitors could marvel at how small it was".[24]

Influences

Banville said in an interview with The Paris Review that he liked Vladimir Nabokov's style, however he went on, "But I always thought there was something odd about it that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then I read an interview in which he admitted he was tone deaf."[14] He is highly influenced by Heinrich von Kleist,[citation needed] having written adaptations of three of his plays (including Amphitryon) and having again used Amphitryon as a basis for his novel The Infinities.[citation needed] Banville has reported that he imitated James Joyce as a boy: "After I'd read the Dubliners, and was struck at the way Joyce wrote about real life, I immediately started writing bad imitations of the Dubliners."[13] However, The Guardian reports that the early Joycean influence may not have persisted, quoting the writer again: "Banville himself has acknowledged that all Irish writers are followers of either Joyce or Beckett - and he places himself in the Beckett camp."[1] During an interview on The Charlie Rose Show in 2011, Rose asked him, "The guiding light has always been Henry James?" and Banville replied, "I think so, I mean people say, you know, I've been influenced by Beckett or Nabokov but it's always been Henry James [...] so I would follow him, I would be a Jamesian."[2]

Private life

Banville has two adult sons with his wife, the American textile artist Janet Dunham. They met during his visit to San Francisco in 1968 where she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Dunham described him during the writing process as being like "a murderer who's just come back from a particularly bloody killing".[25] Banville lives with Patricia Quinn, former head of the Arts Council of Ireland, with whom he has two daughters.

Awards and honours

In 2001, Banville resigned from the Irish arts association, Aosdána, having been elected in 1984.[26] He did so to allow some other artist to avail of the cnuas (annuity).

Banville was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.[27]

He received the 2013 Irish PEN Award at a ceremony in Dún Laoghaire on 22 February.[28]

Booker Prize, 2005

Banville won the Booker Prize in 2005, having previously been rejected by the committee on another occasion. He overcame such contenders as Salman Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee, Ali Smith, Sebastian Barry and Zadie Smith. Banville departed to the loo, overcome by a fit of nerves, before the announcement.[25] Chairman of Judges John Sutherland cast the winning vote. Sutherland's choice of Banville came after defending Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, which Banville wrote scathingly of in the The New York Review of Books. Banville's response to Sutherland's defence of Saturday began, "Summoned, one shuffles guiltily into the department of trivia." Banville later admitted that, upon reading Sutherland's letter, he had thought: "[W]ell, I can kiss the Booker goodbye. I have not been the most popular person in London literary circles over the past half year. And I think it was very large of Sutherland to cast the winning vote in my favour."[25]

Banville famously wrote a letter to The Guardian requesting that the 1981 Booker Prize, for which he was "runner-up to the shortlist of contenders", be given to him so that he could use the money to buy every copy of the longlisted books in Ireland and donate them to libraries, "thus ensuring that the books not only are bought but also read — surely a unique occurrence."[29][30]

When The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize, Banville said a friend whom he described as "a gentleman of the turf", instructed him "to bet on the other five shortlistees, saying it was a sure thing, since if I won the prize I would have the prize-money, and if I lost one of the others would win . . .But the thing baffled me and I never placed the bets. I doubt I'll be visiting Ladbrokes any time soon".[7]

Kafka Prize, 2011

In 2011, Banville was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize.[31] Marcel Reich-Ranicki and John Calder featured on the jury.[32] Banville described the award as "one of the ones one really wants to get. It's an old style prize and as an old codger it's perfect for me ... I've been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent" and said his bronze statuette trophy "will glare at me from the mantelpiece". Wondering while receiving congratulations from Roddy Doyle what sort of prize Kafka would have given had he been alive, Doyle said "It wouldn't have stayed still on the mantelpiece."[3]

Year Prize Work Ref(s)
1973 Allied Irish Banks' Prize Birchwood [33]
1973 Arts Council Macaulay Fellowship Birchwood [33]
1975 American Ireland Fund Literary Award Doctor Copernicus [33]
1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize Doctor Copernicus [33]
1981 Guardian Fiction Prize Kepler [33]
Allied Irish Bank Fiction Prize Kepler
American-Irish Foundation Award Birchwood
1989 Guinness Peat Aviation Award The Book of Evidence [33]
Booker Prize, shortlist The Book of Evidence [33]
1991 Premio Ennio Flaiano The Book of Evidence [34]
1997 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction The Untouchable [33][35]
2003 Premio Nonino [34]
2005 Booker Prize The Sea [33]
2006 Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year The Sea
2006 British Book Awards Author of the Year, shortlist The Sea [33]
2007 Royal Society of Literature Fellowship
Prix Madeleine Zepter
2009 Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society at TCD
2010 Irish Book Awards, Irish Book of the Decade, shortlist The Sea [33]
2011 Franz Kafka Prize [36]
2012 Irish Book Awards, Novel category Ancient Light [37]
2013 Irish PEN Award [38]
2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature [39]

List of works

Short story collection
  • Long Lankin (1970; revised ed.1984)
Novels
John Banville talks about The Infinities on Bookbits radio.
Plays
  • The Broken Jug: After Heinrich von Kleist (1994)
  • Seachange (performed 1994 in the Focus Theatre, Dublin; unpublished)
  • Dublin 1742 (performed 2002 in The Ark, Dublin; a play for 9–14 year olds; unpublished)
  • God's Gift: A Version of Amphitryon by Heinrich von Kleist (2000)
  • Love in the Wars (adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea, 2005)
  • Conversation in the Mountains (radio play, forthcoming 2008)
Non-fiction
  • Prague Pictures: Portrait of a City (2003)
Book reviews
As "Benjamin Black"
  • Christine Falls (2006)
  • The Silver Swan (2007)
  • The Lemur (2008, previously serialised in The New York Times)
  • Elegy for April (2010)
  • A Death in Summer (2011)[40]
  • Vengeance (2012)
  • Holy Orders (2013)
  • Untitled Phillip Marlowe novel (2013)
Screenwriter
Year Title Reference
1984 Reflections (Adaptation of The Newton Letter for TV) [41]
1994 Seascapes (TV Film) [42]
1999 The Last September [1]
2011 Albert Nobbs [43]
Forthcoming The Sea [44]

Further reading

  • John Banville by John Kenny; Irish Academic Press (2009); ISBN 978-0-7165-2901-9
  • John Banville, a critical study by Joseph McMinn; Gill and MacMillan; ISBN 0-7171-1803-7
  • The Supreme Fictions of John Banville by Joseph McMinn; (October 1999); Manchester University Press; ISBN 0-7190-5397-8
  • John Banville: A Critical Introduction by Rüdiger Imhoff (October 1998) Irish American Book Co; ISBN 0-86327-582-6
  • John Banville: Exploring Fictions by Derek Hand; (June 2002); Liffey Press; ISBN 1-904148-04-2
  • Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies: Special Issue John Banville Edited by Derek Hand; (June 2006)
  • Irish Writers on Writing featuring John Banville. Edited by Eavan Boland (Trinity University Press, 2007).

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "John Banville". The Guardian. 22 July 2008. Retrieved 22 July 2008.
  2. ^ a b "John Banville Full Interview on Charlie Rose". Public Broadcasting Service. 14 July 2011. Rose: "The guiding light has always been Henry James?" Banville: "I think so, I mean people say, you know, I've been influenced by Beckett or Nabokov but it's always been Henry James. I think that James was the great Modernist. You know there were two directions for Modernism to go – there was a Jamesian way or there was the way of the avante garde, with Joyce and so forth. Joyce was far more exciting than Henry James – and, in a way, easier to read. "Ulysses" is easier to read than Henry James's late novels but James was catching something, especially in those last three or four novels. He was catching, actually, what it feels like to be conscious – to be a conscious being in the world. That seemed to be an extraordinary step forward. He took the big Victorian novel – the novel of manners, the novel of ideas, the novel of social awareness – and he turned it into an extraordinarily fine art form, so I would follow him; I would be a Jamesian."
  3. ^ a b Flood, Alison (26 May 2011). "John Banville wins Kafka prize: Irish novelist given honour thought by some to be a Nobel prize augury". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
  4. ^ "John Banville." Dictionary of Irish Literature. Ed. Robert Hogan. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. ISBN 0-313-29172-1.
  5. ^ So, Jimmy (1 October 2012). "This Week's Hot Reads, Oct. 1, 2012". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  6. ^ Arana, Marie (19 September 2009). "John Banville: Ireland's Wordsmith". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 September 2009.
  7. ^ a b Spain, John (29 September 2011). "Well-fancied Banville plays down talk of Nobel Prize". Irish Independent. Independent News & Media. Retrieved 29 September 2011.
  8. ^ "There is no better man than Banville for Nobel Prize". Irish Independent. Independent News & Media. 8 October 2011. Retrieved 8 October 2011.
  9. ^ Steinberg, Sybil (July 1995). "Who Is John Banville?". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 21 January 2007.
  10. ^ "Vonnie Banville Evans".
  11. ^ Evans, Vonnie Banville (1994). The House in the Faythe. Dublin: Code Green. ISBN 978-1-907215-12-4.
  12. ^ a b "The Long Awaited, Long-Promised, Just Plain Long John Banville Interview". The Elegant Variation. 26 September 2005. Retrieved 26 September 2005.
  13. ^ a b c d Leonard, Sue (5 September 2009). "John Banville". Irish Examiner. Retrieved 5 November 2009.
  14. ^ a b "John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200". The Paris Review, No. 188, Spring 2009.
  15. ^ "The day the Press stopped rolling". Western People. 25 May 2005. Retrieved 27 October 2007.
  16. ^ Royle, Nicholas (12 January 2013). "The allure of the first novel". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
  17. ^ "Is John Banville better than Benjamin Black?". Book Brunch. 3 August 2009. Retrieved 3 August 2009..
  18. ^ "Soy un poeta que escribe en prosa". La Nación. 19 July 2008. Retrieved 19 July 2008. (Spanish language article posted at talk forum calamaro.mforos.com.)
  19. ^ Gekoski, Rick (28 March 2013). "Writing a book isn't supposed to be fun". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
  20. ^ Langan, Sheila (28 September 2011). "Banville on Black". Irish America Magazine. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  21. ^ "Shroud". Random House. 2004. Retrieved 27 October 2007.
  22. ^ Nolan, Val (6 September 2009). "Banville shines with profound rendering of a parallel universe". The Sunday Business Post. Retrieved 6 September 2009.
  23. ^ "John Banville Spectates Tennis".
  24. ^ Stein, Michelle (21 October 2011). "'Little Museum of Dublin' to open". The Irish Times. Irish Times Trust. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
  25. ^ a b c Brockes, Emma (12 October 2005). "14th time lucky". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 October 2005.
  26. ^ "Former Members of Aosdána". Aosdána. Retrieved 27 October 2007.
  27. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 17 May 2011.
  28. ^ "John Banville to receive the 2013 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature". Irish PEN. 14 January 2013. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
  29. ^ "Man Booker Prize: a history of controversy, criticism and literary greats". The Guardian. 18 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2011.
  30. ^ "A novel way of striking a 12,000 Booker Prize bargain". The Guardian. 14 October 1981. p. 14.
  31. ^ "John Banville awarded Franz Kafka Prize". CBS News. 26 May 2011. Retrieved 26 may 2011. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  32. ^ "Irish novelist wins Kafka prize". The Chronicle Herald. 27 May 2011. Retrieved 27 May 2011.
  33. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Writers: John Banville". Retrieved 1 March 2012..
  34. ^ a b "Benjamin Black is John Banville". BenjaminBlack.com. Retrieved: 2012-03-01.
  35. ^ "1997 John Banville: Lannan Literary Award for Fiction". Lannon Foundation. Retrieved: 2012-03-01.
  36. ^ Spain, John (26 May 2011). "Banville gets top book award". Irish Independent. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
  37. ^ Boland, Rosita (23 November 2012). "Banville wins novel of year at awards". The Irish Times. Retrieved 23 November 2012.
  38. ^ "John Banville to receive the 2013 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature". Irish PEN. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
  39. ^ "John Banville erhält den Österreichischen Staatspreis für Europäische Literatur 2013". bmukk.gv.at (in Austrian). 23 April 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  40. ^ Lawson, Mark (11 July 2011). "A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 July 2011..
  41. ^ Reflections (1984) Internet Movie Database. Retrieved: 2012-03-01.
  42. ^ Seascape (TV 1994) Internet Movie Database. Retrieved: 2012-03-01.
  43. ^ Albert Nobbs (2011) Internet Movie Database. Retrieved: 2012-03-01.
  44. ^ The Sea, Based on the novel by John Banville Independent Film Company. Retrieved: 2012-03-01.
Wikiquote has quotations related to John Banville.
Benjamin Black
Articles

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Banville&oldid=555438891"