The Irish are lauded as storytellers. John Banville is another in that long line. Among a batch of a recent books donation was his 14th novel, The Sea, published in 2005, winner of the Booker Prize. The entire narrative is from the point of view of a man in his 60’s dealing with loss, bewildered by the bittersweet mystery of life. The prose, the vocabulary, are exemplary. The action covers past and present, intertwined. Here is a line illustrative of the entire work in terms of artistry and theme: “Why do I torment myself with these insoluble equivocations…?“ The character’s frame of mind is bleak, which is to be expected of one in such circumstances. I was reminded of James Joyce’s The Dead and Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, of which I read two or three of the volumes. The author has been described as “the heir to Proust, Nabokov.” I found Nabokov a much tougher read than Banville. I had no problem with Joyce's The Dead or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but Ulysses was really tough. Curiously, I have a manuscript on file titled American Ulysses, a stream of conscious novel I tried to make understandable to any reader. I love the idea of spending an entire day inside someone’s head. Anyway, according to Banville’s profile at Wikipedia, his ambition is “…to give prose the denseness and thickness of poetry.” He cites Henry James as an influence. I found everything of James unreadable except The Turn of the Screw. The Sea is difficult but eminently readable. It is brutally honest in the depiction of humans, although it is almost completely lacking in the joys that make life worth living. It is less that 200 pages. Surprisingly, a film version was issued in 2013. I added it to my list at Netflix, curious as to how this work of almost zero commercial potential has been adapted to the screen. Banville also writes crime fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. On a scale of five, I rate The Sea 3.5, exactly the same as the consensus of the191 contributors at Amazon. It is literature, not popular fiction, which are not always exclusive. Banville has a substantial audience in the English speaking world.
I’ve surpassed 20,000 hits on my blog. It’s nice, but it hasn’t done anything for book sales. The futile literary quest continues.
It was a surprising day for the floating book shop on two levels -- in that it didn't rain or snow and in the number of customers who made purchases. Since I expected it to be a very short session, I set up shop where the first parking spot opened, and that was across the street from the bank. And I landed a good spot when I arrived home. Best of all, the snowfall has again been revised down for NYC to three inches, and that on grass and vehicles. Maybe things are finally starting to turn around.
My thanks to all the buyers.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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