Today, John Banville is 70. The Prodigal has
read much of his writings and never found them simple. Dr. Copernicus, Kepler, and Ancient
Light are some of his books I recall with impact.
For me however his outstanding writing is contained
in “The Book of Evidence” and “The Sea”.
Of these the adjudicators of the ‘Man Booker Prize’ decreed that the latter was
a deserving winner of the ‘Booker’ prize. To my way of thinking this decision
in 2005 was retrospective adjustment for their failure to award the prize to
Banville in 1989 for “The Book of Evidence”.
Banville was robbed of the GPA Award in 1989 by
none other than Graham Greene, one of the greatest writers of all time. Greene
is best remembered for his novels : Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, Our Man in
Havana, and The Human Factor. Apparently Greene had some sort of veto which
empowered him to overrule the winner which was chosen by the adjudicators as
Banville. While Banville collected the first prize, Greene chose ‘The Broken
Commandment’ by Vincent McDonnell as the winner. Strange. Banville’s opinion of
Greene has been predictable in the interim. I believe the word ‘grubby’ was
used to describe the debacle.
The story of the ‘Book of Evidence’ is ostensibly
based on the infamous case of Malcolm MacArthur who murdered a nurse while
stealing her car and then took refuge in the home of Patrick Connolly, who was
no less a person than the Irish Attorney General at that time.
The difficulty was that no one wanted to try and
explain the relationship between Connolly and MacArthur which situation was
compounded by the fact that Connolly was a member of Cabinet by virtue of his
office as Attorney General.
Taoiseach
Charles Haughey described the incidents and MacArthur's taking
shelter at Connolly's as "a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation,
a grotesque situation, and an almost unbelievable mischance". The acronym GUBU
(grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented) was subsequently coined by
Conor Cruise O'Brien and later applied to reflect the entirety of
Haughey's 1982 government, a government marred by constant trouble and strife.
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