John Banville: warm and plotty
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
The British literary website Untitled Books has conducted an interview with the erudite John Banville, the Irish writer who won the Man Booker Prize for his novel ‘The Sea.’ He says:
My work is frequently described as cold, which is baffling, since it seems to me embarrassingly, shame-makingly, scandalously warm.I find my work filled with sentiment and I can’t imagine why people find it cold,’ he says. He also takes umbrage with the fact that: ‘People said The Sea had no plot, but I thought it was throbbing with plot right down to the twist in the end. I was slightly ashamed of it there was so much plot.’
Actually, there wasn’t much of a hot/cold critical consensus on ‘The Sea,’ but such is the subjective take of a creator when listening to interpretations of his work. And maybe now Banville has stopped listening to critics -- he goes on to say that he doesn’t read his reviews.
Banville has a new book out in the U.K., ‘The Infinities,’ which is set for a February release in the U.S.
‘The Infinities’ didn’t make the longlist for this year’s Man Booker, but Banville doesn’t mind. ‘The thing about having already won is that you never have to care about it again,’ he tells Untitled Books.
Speaking of the Man Booker, the prize race heated up Monday when the longlist was winnowed to the shortlist, leaving just six books in the running. J.M. Coetzee, who has won twice before, and A.S. Byatt, who’s won once, are among those left standing (not that they have to care about it anymore).
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Related: Man Booker longlist includes Hollywood surprise
Photo: the Irish Sea by MattBuck4950 via Flickr
