Saturday, August 19, 2006

Supreme fiction ...

... according to John Banville, is The art of self exposure. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:33 PM

    Hmm. I recently finished _The Sea_ and I loved the prose -- very immediate and visceral -- and I was equally happy that Banville had imposed a plot on that poetic prose so that the novel actually moved somewhere, got to its rather surprising conclusion (though I must say I didn't buy one aspect of that conclusion, which I shall simply call "Not waving but drowning").

    Nevertheless, I have to agree with the comment left by one Alan Peart on the original post: Trust the tale and not the teller. I hate it when writers, actors, fine artists try to talk about "the act of creating" -- it always sounds so conceited. The reality is probably more like a great postcard I once saw: A woman stood in front of a small boy who had obviously just flung a platefull of pasta and gravy onto her white apron, completely spattering her front. The caption? "Jackson Pollock and his mother."

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  2. The funny thing is, Banville comes off in these interviews as this self-centered guy with a Himalayan opinion of himself - and he isn't that way at all. He is a droll and delightful companion.

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