Early on in this conversation there's a dead patch. The mic
didn't pick up the glorious seagull call that comes reverberating
down the chimney into the room John Banville and I were sitting
in.
John Banville is an Irish novelist, short-story writer, and
screenwriter who hates his own work. He's won a ton of prizes
("hundreds") including the Booker in 2005 for The
Sea. He's currently waiting on the Nobel. John published
his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971, and his first
book, a collection of short-stories called Long
Lankin, in 1970. In addition to the "literary" work he's also
written a string of popular crime novels.
We met at his home in Howth; Howth, as you’ll know, is located near
that meadow in Ulysses where James Joyce has Molly
Bloom saying:
"…the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among
the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his
straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes like now yes 16
years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he
said I was a flower of the mountains yes so we are flowers all a
woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and
the sun shines for you today yes…"
"…I was a Flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my
hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and
how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well
him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes
and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and
first I put my arms around him and yes and drew him down to me so
he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going
like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."
John mentions what a curse it is to have Joyce, and Yeats (who, as
you’ll also know, wooed Maude Gonne on Howth Head), et al, writing
like this, constantly looming in the rearview mirror; I follow on
with the regular drill, asking John: what he does, how he does
it, why he does it, and why it matters.