John Banville: ‘I expected to be dead, or at least gaga, by now’

Tell me about your new book, The Drowned.
It’s another of my Quirke/Strafford tales, and as dark as its predecessors. I do try to lighten them, and I hope readers spot the odd, brightish flash of humour, but murder is a shadowed business.
It is the latest to feature Detective Inspector Strafford and the pathologist Quirke. Describe your characters and their relationship.
Quirke is deeply sceptical of Strafford, whom he sees as effete and something of a dabbler – he is neither – while Strafford is at once admiring of, deeply disapproving of, and slightly afraid of, Quirke.
Earlier Quirke books were published under the pen-name Benjamin Black. Why the change to your own name?
I suppose because I want the books to be read as novels, not crime novels. I deplore the notion of “genre”. Writing is either good or the opposite, in whatever form it takes. Simenon was my original inspiration for the Quirke books, and who would dare describe this great artist as a genre writer?
How important to your work is the dissection of Ireland’s troubled past?
I wish I could claim to be on a campaign to keep our past sins present to us, but I’m a writer, not a polemicist. For me, all of life is material. On my gravestone should be writ: He was a cannibal.
Your first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. How well do you remember each work? Which is your favourite?
I try not to remember them, those poor, afflicted, necessarily failed attempts at perfection. Mind you, recently I came across a quotation from the poet Philip Larkin which I like: “I don’t think I write particularly well,” he said, “only better than everyone else”. I have no favourite among my books – I can only give the time-worn answer: The next one.
You turn 80 next year. Is your appetite for writing still sharp?
Yes – isn’t it odd? I expected to be dead, or at least gaga, by now. I ended The Singularities with the words “full stop”, and meant them to be my last, in fiction. But here I am, still scribbling away.
You have lost loved ones in recent years. Has that marked your writing or your worldview?
One’s loved ones die, but they don’t go away. My worldview, to use your word, was set in stone by the time I was 11 or so.
What did you make of Mark O’Connell’s A Thread of Violence, about the murderer Malcolm Macarthur, which drew on your novel, The Book of Evidence, loosely based on his life?
I think Mark’s book is a very fine and subtle piece of work. It was a rather eerie experience to read it, as I figure in it. And of course, as you say, The Book of Evidence sounded many echoes of the Macarthur case. One day, not long after it was published, I chanced to meet the barrister Paddy McEntee, who told me he had read it, liked it, and had decided not to sue me for libel…
You were literary editor of The Irish Times for several years. What were the highlights?
Oh, all the lights were high. It was the most wonderful job, as you will know. It was such fun to call the likes of senator Eugene McCarthy, Bernadette McAliskey or Enoch Powell and cajole them into writing something for “the pages”. But if I must single out a particular venture, it would be the Reassessments series, in which I got Seamus Heaney, Anthony Burgess, Eavan Boland and many others, to celebrate one of their predecessors. There were some surprises: Eavan wrote on AE Housman – who’d have thought?
You still review regularly. How important is it?
I regard book reviewing as a noble craft, and I love doing it. The wonderful thing about a review is that once it’s done, it’s done. That affords a great sense of satisfaction.
Which projects are you working on?
I’ve just finished a play on the life, work and loves of John Maynard Keynes – yes, an economist, but one of the very great figures of the 20th century. And I’m writing my autobiography, for which an old friend provided the perfect title: Out of True. I expect it will end up as an exquisite and deeply moving, posthumous fragment…
[ John Banville: ‘I’m 76 now, and I’m as baffled by the world as I was when I was five’Opens in new window ]
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
I tried to visit the spot on the shores of the Wannsee near Berlin where Heinrich von Kleist took his life in a suicide pact with a young woman friend, but my driver got lost and we never made it. I can hear Kleist’s mordant laughter.
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
The ancient Roman, Cato the Censor, advised wordsmiths thus: Rem tene, verbum sequentur – concentrate on the object, and the words will follow.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
The Graeco-Roman temple at Segesta in Sicily.
Your most treasured possession?
My fountain pen.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
The Very Rich Hours of the Duc du Berry, illustrated by the Limbourg Brothers. It’s not the original, of course…
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
William James, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens. Oh, and Isaiah Berlin, for the gossip.
The best and worst things about where you live?
The sea; tourists.
What is your favourite quotation?
WC Fields on his deathbed: “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
Who is your favourite fictional character?
I have no favourites; they’re all chimaeras, made of words.
A book to make me laugh?
Lolita.
A book that might move me to tears?
Ditto.
The Drowned is published by Faber & Faber