/
John Banville
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| John Banville | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 8 December 1945 Wexford, Ireland |
| Pen name | Benjamin Black |
| Occupation | novelist, playwright, journalist |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Notable work(s) | The Book of Evidence, The Untouchable, The Sea |
|
Influences
|
|
John Banville (born 1945) is an Irish novelist and journalist. His novel, The Book of Evidence (1989), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.
Banville is known for his precise and cold prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. His stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".[1]
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties; his mother was a housewife. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.
Educated at a Christian Brothers' school and at St Peter's College in Wexford, he did not attend university. After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply-discounted rates. He took advantage of this to travel in Greece and Italy. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at the Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970.
After the Irish Press collapsed in 1995,[2] he became a sub-editor at the Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left. Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990. In 1984, he was elected to Aosdána, but resigned in 2001,[3] so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the cnuas.
Banville also writes under the pen name Benjamin Black.[4] His first novel under this pen name was Christine Falls, which was followed by The Silver Swan in 2007. Banville has two adult sons with his wife, the American textile artist Janet Dunham. They met during his visit to San Francisco in 1968 where she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Dunham described him during the writing process as being like "a murderer who's just come back from a particularly bloody killing".[5] Banville has two daughters from his relationship with Patricia Quinn, former head of the Arts Council of Ireland.
[edit] Style
Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of the English language, and his writing has been described as perfectly-crafted, beautiful, dazzling.[6] David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls Banville "one of the great stylists writing in English today;" Don DeLillo calls his work "dangerous and clear-running prose;" and the UK Observer described his 1989 work, The Book of Evidence, as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." He is also known for his dark humour, and sharp wit.[7]
[edit] Awards
| Year | Prize | Work |
| 1976 | James Tait Black Memorial Prize | Doctor Copernicus |
| 1981 | Guardian Fiction Prize | Kepler |
| Allied Irish Bank Fiction Prize | ||
| American-Irish Foundation Award | Birchwood | |
| 1989 | Guinness Peat Aviation Award | The Book of Evidence |
| 1989 | Booker Prize (shortlisted) | The Book of Evidence |
| 2005 | Booker Prize | The Sea |
| 2006 | Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year | The Sea |
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Short story collection
- Long Lankin (1970; revised ed.1984)
[edit] Novels
- Nightspawn (1971)
- Birchwood (1973)
- Doctor Copernicus: A Novel (1976)
- Kepler, a Novel (1981)
- The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982)
- Mefisto (1986)
- The Book of Evidence (1989)
- Ghosts (1993)
- Athena: A Novel (1995)
- The Ark (1996) (only 260 copies published)
- The Untouchable (1997)
- Eclipse (2000)
- Shroud (2002)
- Prague Pictures: Portrait Of A City (2003)
- The Sea (2005)
- The Sinking City (forthcoming[8])
[edit] Plays
- The Broken Jug: After Heinrich von Kleist (1994)
- Seachange (performed 1994 in the Focus Theatre, Dublin; unpublished)
- Dublin 1742 (performed 2002 in The Ark, Dublin; a play for 9-14 year olds; unpublished)
- God's Gift: A Version of Amphitryon by Heinrich von Kleist (2000)
- Love In The Wars (adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea, 2005)
- Conversation In The Mountains (radio play, forthcoming 2008)
[edit] As "Benjamin Black"
- Christine Falls (2006)
- The Silver Swan (2007)
- The Lemur (2008, previously serialised in The New York Times)
[edit] Book Reviews
- "The Family Pinfold" The New York Review of Books 54/11 (28 June 2007) : 20-21 [reviews Alexander Waugh, Fathers and Sons : the Autobiography of a Family]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Steinberg, Sybil."Who Is John Banville?". Publishers Weekly, July, 1995. Retrieved on 21 January 2007.
- ^ "The day the Press stopped rolling". Western People (IRL), 25 May 2005. Retrieved on 27 October 2007.
- ^ "Former Members of Aosdána". Aosdána. Retrieved on 27 October 2007.
- ^ From a Radio 4 programme on 15th October 2007 in which Banville was interviewed.
- ^ Emma Brockes "14th time lucky". The Guardian, 12 October 2005. Retrieved on 27 October 2007.
- ^ "Shroud". Random House, 2004. Retrieved on 27 October 2007.
- ^ "John Banville (1945-)". Guardian (UK). Retrieved on 19 October 2007.
- ^ "Manchester literary journal to publish new work by John Banville", Crain's Manchester Business, 2008-10-01, http://www.crainsmanchesterbusiness.co.uk/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081001/FREE/810019989/1083/toc/-/-/manchester-literary-journal-to-publish-new-work-by-john-banville, retrieved on 11 October 2008
[edit] Further reading
- John Banville, a critical study by Joseph McMinn; Gill and MacMillan; ISBN 0-7171-1803-7
- The Supreme Fictions of John Banville by Joseph McMinn; (October 1999); Manchester University Press; ISBN 0-7190-5397-8
- John Banville: A Critical Introduction by Rüdiger Imhoff (October 1998) Irish American Book Co; ISBN 0-86327-582-6
- John Banville: Exploring Fictions by Derek Hand; (June 2002); Liffey Press; ISBN 1-904148-04-2
- Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies: Special Issue John Banville Edited by Derek Hand; (June 2006)
[edit] External links
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Banville |
- Benjamin Black's Official Website
- Benjamin Black's Books on Macmillan.com
- Aosdána biographical note
- As clear as mirror glass. John Banville in interview with Three Monkeys Online Magazine
- John Banville at www.contemporarywriters.com
- John Banville at the Internet Book List
- John Banville interview with the Village Voice about Benjamin Black
- Chapter 1 of The Sinking City
- Banville author page and article archive from The New York Review of Books
![Image:WWI end.jpg [en]](/en/wiki/Image:WWI_end.jpg.html){kind=link}
![Image:HR icon.png [en]](/en/wiki/Image:HR_icon.png.html){kind=link}
![Dosiero:Ikono tero malgranda.png [eo]](/eo/wiki/Dosiero:Ikono_tero_malgranda.png.html){kind=link}
![Dosiero:Brockhaus Lexikon.jpg [eo]](/eo/wiki/Dosiero:Brockhaus_Lexikon.jpg.html){kind=link}
![Image:Okarina.jpg [en]](/en/wiki/Image:Okarina.jpg.html){kind=link}