Friday, April 10, 2009

Banville at The Paris Review

The Paris Review "Art of . . ." interview series is probably the finest of its type, allowing readers to see into the working mind of beloved authors; it has also, in the most recent issue, reached its 200th installment, and their bicentenary author is John Banville, winner of the prestigious Man-Booker Prize and author of, among many other fine novels, Mefisto and The Newton Letter. (via Mark Sarvas) From other interviews I've seen, Banville is extraordinarily open and articulate about his writing and the process of writing in general. From the interview:

BANVILLE: It all starts with rhythm for me. I love Nabokov’s work, and I love his style. But I always thought there was something odd about it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then I read an interview in which he admitted he was tone deaf. And I thought, that’s it—there’s no music in Nabokov, it’s all pictorial, it’s all image-based. It’s not any worse for that, but the prose doesn’t sing.

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