John Banville flew in from Dublin (and boy were his arms tired!) to read from his latest book: Christine Falls (Henry Holt, 2006), a crime novel written under the pseudonym, Benjamin Black. Had he swapped the literary novel (The Sea won the Booker Prize in 2005) for the detective/crime/mystery genre? This was the central question of the Q/A at Books, Inc., 150-year-old independent bookstore in Opera Plaza, San Francisco, Monday night, March 19, 2007.
Banville may have swapped the literary novel for crime (see Julian Barnes', Joyce Carol Oates' latest indulgences), but he has not abandoned writing with elegance and beauty, to which he has added an absorbing plot, beguiling characters and evocative settings. He may well be the first author to add to his Man Booker prize a Gold Digger. (Marcel Berlins, The Times)
I met Banville at Max's Restaurant/Bar before the reading and he seemed amused at my W.C. Fields quips. (W.C. Fields' oeuvre now out on DVD. Check out Bank Dick, my favorite).
'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.
Inflation has gone up a dollar a quart.
Somebody left the cork out of my lunch.
I don't drink because fish pee in it.
Bring me my pineapple juice! (Bill always had pitchers of martinis on the movie set).
On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. (Epitaph)
Banville and I also shared some Irish humor while he quietly sipped his red wine and inscribed my copy of The Sea to my brother, David, a history/civics teacher in Georgia, whose birthday is "3.iv.1949". I know he'll love this luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory.
Q: After writing a number of amazing, erudite novels, did you have more fun writing this one?
A: Yes. Writing is never easy. What was different about this was the speed. I stayed with a friend in Italy, sat down at the kitchen table at 9:00 a.m., and by lunch time, I'd written 2,000 words. I was amused, bemused. Great doing something new. I've almost finished 2nd BB novel. I can now not be stopped. What if in 100 years time, John Danville is completely forgotten but Benjamin Black takes center stage? (Is that possible? I thought)
Q: How did you decide on name Benjamin Black?
A: A character in earlier novel called Benjamin White. Wife, the decider, thought "Bs" were higher up than "Ws" on the librarians' purchaser list.
Q: Why a crime novel?
A: I was writing serious books in the 1980's and needed to break out of a rut I was in -- all first person narratives about wicked men killing people, spying, all kinds of things.
Q: (me) Describe your process of writing. Do you start with an image, idea, dream fragment, conversation overheard in pub?
A: Things are not decided. I don't work that way; a thing grows in way you plant a seed. Don't know what it's going to be until you water it, feed it, put it toward the light. I used to think when I was young I was in control, but the older I get I realize I'm stumbling in the dark, like every other part of my life. It's organic. When Rilke, the poet, went to Paris to work for the sculptor, Rodin, Rodin said "travailler": work! work! work! Don't sit and dream and wait for inspiration. Work generates work and writing comes from other books, my own books, my reading. People think writing comes from life, no, it comes from books.
Q: Did you know where Christine Falls was going to go?
A: Yes, this book came from TV scripts which I had done. Narrative flow. Infinite number of ways to write a sentence....There are two monads of writing: sentence and paragraph. Greatest invention of civilization is the sentence. Nothing is more subtle, all-encompassing.
I reread the opening lines of The Sea: They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morning under a milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, rising to unheard of heights, the small waves creeping over parched sand that for years had known no wetting save for rain and lapping the very bases of the dunes.
And the closing line: A nurse came out then to fetch me, and I turned and followed her inside, and it was as if I were walking into the sea.
I left the bookstore with my signed copy of The Sea happy indeed I had come to hear this brilliant, funny, self-deprecatory Irish genius now writing under the false name, Benjamin Black.
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