Book Interview: John Banville on new novel 'The Lock-Up' and maintaining a high standard
John Banville.
- The Lock-Up
- John Banville
- faber, €14.99; Kindle, €8.28
When John Banville wrote back in 2007, he invented the pseudonym, Benjamin Black to show that this wasn’t some post-modernist joke. Describing his crime writing as craft — compared to the art of his literary novels, he caused consternation in the crime writing fraternity by saying that he could rattle off thousands of words a day as Benjamin Black, compared to just 400 as John Banville.
“I do like to disturb,” says Banville, with a chuckle, when we meet in Howth, at his local wine bar.
He dropped the pseudonym, when, checking a detail in an earlier book, he listened to it being read by the former James Bond, Timothy Dalton, and decided that it wasn’t at all bad.
Reading , his third as Banville, it’s clear that his crime books have become much closer to his literary ones. This book is a delight; full of atmosphere, imagery, and depth of character.
A contrarian, Banville says that he hates his own books, and never re-reads them, then adds that his stuff is better than anyone else’s.
“And I’m not being ironic. What’s the point of writing a book if you don’t write it well? The world is full of mediocre books, and I don’t want to add to that pile.”
Banville can be a frustrating interviewee. He doesn’t remember how he starts a book — saying they seem to have already been embarked on — and he seems to forget a lot of the content. When I mention one of my favourite scenes, he looks at me blankly. And later, answers a question with an anecdote he’d forgotten he’d used in the book.
, featuring the pathologist Dr Quirke and DI Strafford, involves the apparent murder of a Jewish woman, a pro-life campaigner, found dead in a lock up garage. Initial enquiries lead to a German father and son living in County Wicklow who have business interests in Israel.
Although it’s a fascinating premise — with a clever twist in the tale, the joy of this novel comes from Banville’s immersion into fifties Dublin — and the exploding tension between Quirke and Strafford.
Quirke, who, like his creator is pretty much self-educated, resents the protestant, Strafford, son of the big house. But Banville dismisses any resemblance between himself and the woman loving Quirke, saying he’s much more like Quirke’s daughter, the ethereal Phoebe.
“I don’t have a lot in common with Quirke except for the gloom,” he says. “Quirke, I find rather boring.” He claims to find men, in general, boring.
“I bore myself,” he says. “I really do.” How then, can he bear to be in his own company, day after day?
“I’m not me when I’m writing,” he says. “The person who eats, drinks and sleeps doesn’t exist when I’m writing. Every morning I sit down at my desk and think, I don’t know how to do this. I put down a few words and squiggle around and shortly after lunch I’m sunk deep in concentration. Sometimes, I watch my hand writing. Or I go for a walk, come back and find another thousand words done. It’s a kind of hypnotic state.”
He shows an Ireland of class tension.
“There are about 12 layers of class in this country,” he says. “My American wife used to say there’s a class system in Ireland, but nobody will explain it to you.”
It’s an Ireland of Church domination, with an undercurrent of antisemitism. And it’s that aspect, Banville thinks might have been his starting point.
“I love the world of Jews,” he says, telling me a story about his friend, the late David Marcus. “I think they’re the funniest people in the world. And they’re inventors — I love that — I’d love to be a Jew.”
The book starts with a scene, just post-war, of the Franciscans sheltering a Nazi.
“The Vatican was a big route for Nazis to South America,” he tells me. “And the Franciscans helped them. These followers of St Francis who love birds and bees, and probably didn’t much like the Jews.”
Before Banville started being published, he worked as a clerk for Aer Lingus. He then became a subeditor on and then . How did he make the leap to his highbrow writing?
“Books,” he says. “Reading and travel.”
He doesn’t regret his lack of a university education. “I think I’ve been cosseted from not having gone. I could risk more things in my writing.”
Quirke’s wife was killed in Banville’s last crime book, and in this one, he’s in deep grief. A state he shares with Banville, whose wife died in recent years. Did he draw on that? He nods.
“It’s material,” he says. “We’re ruthless. In the seventies my first wife and I were having a really savage row. She was in full flow telling me what a swine I was, and I said, ‘Can I use this?’ She said, ‘What?’ And then she agreed that I could.”
We talk about the cruel joke played on him, when he had a call from Sweden telling him he’d won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He shows me a cartoon from his fake Twitter account, showing the critic Fintan O’Toole asking a laughing Colm Tóibín what accent he used when he rang Banville with the ‘news.’
He was surprised when was nominated for the 2005 Booker Prize and told the committee he was unable to attend the ceremony.
“I was due to be in Saratoga Springs being conferred with an honorary degree. They said I had to be at the dinner, so I organised the conferring for the following day. Then I go and win the bloody thing. I rang the States and said I couldn’t fly out that day, and they were furious. They’d organised a banquet. I felt guilty, and it spoiled the whole thing of winning the bloody Booker Prize.”
These days, he says, the Booker means nothing. But then, he never reads contemporary fiction, claiming that young writers seem to inhabit a different world. But he did rather admire the young, (and extremely beautiful,) Irish writer, Nicole Flattery, whom he met recently at a book event in Oxford.
“I thought she was wonderful,” he says. “If there are more like her, I will start reading.”
We talk about Banville’s friendships with Martin Amis, Roddy Doyle, John Boorman, and Neil Jordan. And, mentioning the countless screenplays he has written, he tells anecdotes about Maggie Smith, and his great late friend, Nigel Hawthorne.
“I adore actors,” he says. “They are so vulnerable, but great fun.” During the filming of Albert Nobbs, Glenn Close gave him a piece of writing advice.
“She said to me, ‘John, you see all this stuff between the dialogue? You don’t have to write that. We’ll do it. We’re actors.’” In all, Banville’s had a pretty gorgeous life, I suggest.
“Of course,” he says. “I’ve been amazingly fortunate. I mean, I made a lot of it myself. This boy from Wexford. I had to push myself because I’m innately shy. But yeah, it’s a wonderful life.”
It’s one that left his late mother rather puzzled.
“It scared her,” he says. “For her, it would have been ideal if I’d become general manager of an insurance company in Wexford. She would have been proud of that.”
At 78, Banville doesn’t fear death — and swears he will never retire. He’s been much quoted as saying that his 2022 novel, , will be his last literary book, and that he couldn’t go through that process again.
But when I say I bet another one will grow in his head, he says, “Yeah of course! And I’m going to call it Sinatra’s Last Tour.”
