Fantasy
John Banville is still on my Want to Read shelf, which feels about right for a literary critic’s study of a writer who seems to attract either devotion or a careful sort of puzzlement.
“Accessible yet detailed” is a useful promise. The trick with books like this is whether they stay open to ordinary readers without sanding off the arguments. A good critical study should explain why a writer matters, but not behave as if disagreement is impolite. That would be far too tidy, and Banville doesn’t strike me as a tidy sort of subject.
“Accessible yet detailed” is a useful promise. The trick with books like this is whether they stay open to ordinary readers without sanding off the arguments. A good critical study should explain why a writer matters, but not behave as if disagreement is impolite. That would be far too tidy, and Banville doesn’t strike me as a tidy sort of subject.
A study like this lives or dies on whether it keeps some friction in the room. If it turns Banville into a neat case study, it has missed the point. I’m more interested in criticism that can say, plainly, where a writer works for it and where he doesn’t. Too much reverence makes the whole thing flatter than the fiction it’s trying to explain.