Literary criticism: An impressive roster of scholars and critics from this country, the continent and from North and South America have contributed to this comprehensive and right-up-to-date review of John Banville's fiction, writes George O'Brien.
The international approach is not only a welcome sign of the cultural times, particularly with regard to the study of Irish authors, nor should it be taken merely as an obvious indication of, and tribute to, the subject's artistic status and appeal in the world at large, though it draws attention to both. More importantly, it acts as a valuable reminder of the internationalism which has been such an essential feature of Banville's work from the beginning, a persistent presence, whether by means of locale or allusion, in which his work's range, originality and imaginative daring most immediately meet the eye.
The geographical spread represented by the 14 contributors finds a counterpart in the diversity of their commentaries. Thus we have expositions on Banville and metafiction, Banville and Freud's formulation of the uncanny, Banville and postmodern identity. Other essays invoke Baudrillard's conception of the simulacrum, consider the function and significance of the ekphrastic as an artistic strategy, and evaluate Banville's treatment of sexuality and gender. If, as Derek Hand remarks, "In many ways Banville has been retelling variations of the same basic story from the very beginning of his writing career", there are clearly just as many ways in which that story may be read, a testament to the plasticity of design and sinuousness of thought of which Banville's much-vaunted style is the obvious hallmark.
Given the contributors' essentially thematic approach, some works inevitably loom larger than others. Each commentator refers at will to the whole of the Banville canon, though the critical spotlight tends to linger longest on such works as Ghosts, Athena and Eclipse, whose place in the author's imaginative universe is now staked out. This emphasis has the effect of somewhat overshadowing The Untouchable and Shroud, works whose public and historical aspects might strike the common reader as more substantial, though this effect is somewhat redressed by a reading of The Untouchable by Eibhear Walshe which affirms its significant standing in the Banville oeuvre. And a couple of bonuses are provided by the happy editorial decision to include some Banville prose - a portrait of an actor strutting and fretting in that mood of chagrin and self-revelation which many readers will recognise from The Sea - together with a record of a relaxed and revealing conversation between the author and Derek Hand.
As is only to be expected from a university review, the articles maintain a strictly professional academic standard of discussion, and the majority of them include an admixture of theory. So there's no disputing the editor's claim that what we have here is "a fair reflection of Banvillean studies as they now stand". It would be a great shame, though, if it were thought that the pieces in question were confined to, or only had relevance for, an academic audience, and that the general reading public would find themselves stifled should they attempt to breathe the rare intellectual air of the professors. It would be worth anybody's while to take a look at an article such as Kersti Tarien Powell's The Lighted Windows: Place in John Banville's Novels, whose many points of interest include fascinating glimpses of manuscript materials. On quite a different plane, Patricia Coughlin's Banville: the Feminine and the Scenes of Eros is a terrific instance of how an academic paper can transcend its professional occasion to produce a set of ethical considerations worthy of any citizen's careful reflection. John Kenny's Well Said Well Seen: The Pictorial Paradigm is a complex and ambitious introduction to the Banville aesthetic. (This is the piece where the ekphrastic enters in, but don't be put off: the term means making writing resemble painting.) And at a different level, Rüdiger Imhof's review essay on The Sea will certainly enrich a reader's appreciation of that novel.
Post-modern, self-reflexive, "quixotic" (as Derek Hand argues), exponent of a "belated engagement with classical modernism" (as Joseph McMinn put it), there are conceivably as many Banvilles as there are readers, since to read is to attest to and collaborate in the singularity and potential for meaning which a given work possesses. Readers also make things up, or make up for things, their activity being the necessary attestation to and redemption of the fragmentary nature of narrative. The keener - or, let's say, the more theoretical - the reading the stronger this compensatory activity. The common reader, however, will discover that exposure to the kind of incisive reading carried out in these articles results in a series of sightings from which a composite picture of an author who compels attention may ultimately be constructed. No amount of critical reformulation can, or indeed would wish to, deny that coexisting with the intellectual ambition, stylistic brilliance and cultural resonance of Banville's work is a moving and often shocking sense of fallibility and futility. A zone of mourning draws his protagonists towards it even as their limited intellects and flawed egos attempt to flee it. A faith in art and a wonder at nature accompanies a connoisseurship of the fallen and broken, the vulnerable and lost. A scrupulous sense of difference haunts the perception of the commonplace and familiar, making us, in a manner that is both heartbreaking and liberating, strangers to the world, to one another, and to ourselves. Action begets as conclusive a critique of purpose as inaction. The confessional mode discloses how little has been understood.
In all these phases of his work, John Banville reveals how well acquainted he is with the doubts and demons of the human subject. If it is true, after all, that his stories essentially repeat themselves, the story that recurs concerns the limitations, duplicities, divagations of consciousness, and the uncertain accomplishment of knowing one's own mind. And in giving that story form he cannot help but expand the awareness of his readers. The value of that expansion is not exhaustively annotated in this number of the Irish University Review, nor is it the editor's intention that it should be, sensibly enough. In his conversation with Derek Hand, Banville remarks: "To me, first of all, an artist must be against everything." Readers who are willing to take Banville seriously will find a certain paradoxical reassurance in the challenge that statement issues.
George O'Brien is academic director of the Irish Studies Summer School at Trinity College and professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Irish University Review, Vol 36, No 1: John Banville Special Issue Guest Editor Derek Hand 256pp. €12