John Banville/Benjamin Black

An absolutely wonderful interview with Irish author John Banville in The Village Voice. I love his humor, and I have always loved his ego. It’s towering, and it makes no friends. But then he always ends up by saying something self-deprecating which takes the edge off. It’s so Irish. John Banville has been writing novels for years – he’s one of my father’s favorite writers … and recently he began writing books under another name – Benjamin Black … there was no secret about it, though. In the “Benjamin Black” books, there are author photographs of Banville, so it’s clear that he wrote the books … it’s just that he’s interested in working on something else at the moment, at NOT writing a “John Banville” book. It’s an alter ego.

I love this, he says:

Benjamin Black writes very quickly indeed. . . . I’d never written like this before. March of 2005, I went to Italy to stay with a friend of mine. She gave me a room, and I sat down at nine one Monday morning and I thought: I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do this or not. But by lunchtime I’d written 1,500 words, which for John Banville would have been absolutely unheard of. If I write 1,500 in a week as John Banville, I’m doing very well. I discovered in myself a facility for this kind of writing.

Wonderful! I totally understand the uses of personae … I used to do way more of that … it would help me deal with little Sheila-isms that hold me back (shyness, insecurity) … I would choose who I would want to be for a night, and my clothes would reflect that. It’s a way of hiding, sure, but hiding is WAY under-rated – you just have to be good at it, so that you don’t seem like you’re hiding. Choosing a persona is a way to step out into the light. Maybe only artists behave this way … because, for the most part, we are social misfits. I’m shy, introverted, and very weird. Most of my friends are the same way. But the way we behave can be outrageous – because that’s who we are, how we express ourselves. If I just walked around as myself all the time … Jeez, what’s the fun in that? Also, I would get NOTHING done, because my natural tendency is towards a hermit-like monastic existence. Mitchell and I would be getting ready to go out, and I’d be picking out an outfit – and one night he said to me, “Your clothes aren’t clothes, you know. They’re costumes.” And that’s so true! I would say, “Tonight I’m going for a kind of Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause thing …” as I put on my leather jacket and wrapped a long filmy red scarf around my neck. Or, “I think tonight I’m Ann Margaret” as I put on my black bustier, my long flowing pants, and I made my hair HUGE – a bouffant to end all bouffants. Sometimes Mitchell would call it. He’d look at me and say, oh, “You look like a disaffected spoiled member of some defunct royal family.” (I don’t know, I think he’s right!) It’s a joke now to say “It is better to look good than to feel good …” but for me there is certainly a lot of truth in that. Anyway, I’ve always felt freer, more uninhibited, more my TRUE self, when I’m onstage, saying somebody else’s words, acting like I am somebody else.

And Banville is kind of speaking to that … how he was freed up when he was writing as Benjamin Black – even though he’s the same guy! How wonderful!

Banville also says:

I’m having much too much fun as Benjamin Black. I’ll have to pay for it. I’m Irish. This is what we do—guilt.

Now you’re speakin’ my language.

I read Christine Falls, his first Benjamin Black book, in one sitting, while I was waiting in O’Hare for 10 hours … to get on a flight – ANY flight – going ANYwhere vaguely near New York City. Some thoughts on the book here. If you like crime novels, then this is one you do not want to miss. It’s a noir – with the murky almost muffled atmosphere of any classic noir. Big grand secrets are hiding behind the damask tablecloths, the thick drawn curtains of Dublin’s Georgian-era houses. And it is Quirke – the unlikely hero – the alcoholic haunted coroner – who finds himself obsessed by the murder of Christine Falls … there’s something “off” about it, he can almost smell the cover up … but why? Dead girls are not unusual to a coroner. But this one is different. Banville evokes the quiet intense atmosphere of Dublin in the 1950s – way before the Celtic Tiger came into existence … and you can almost smell the wet wool drying on the clanging radiators, you can hear the stillness of the Sunday mornings, when the town is shut down and everyone is in church … and you can taste the stale whiskey on a hungover morning. It’s terrific writing. But the book is also a page-turner of the first order. Whodunit? And why? Powerful people are implicated. Quirke is struggling to even get through the day, he has his own torment to deal with … but he’s like a dog with a bone. He can’t let it go.

The sequel just came out – The Silver Swan – same characters, different case – and I can’t wait to read it.