Novelist John Banville is the subject of a new film that explores the business of being a 21st-century writer, writes Arminta Wallace.
'It's one of the quintessential works of art in our period . . . as close to Greek tragedy as we can get in our time." That's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect the novelist John Banville to say - isn't it? But what's he talking about? An opera in Finnish, perhaps? A volume of Macedonian poetry? No. He's talking about The Sopranos. That's why the film Being John Banville, to be shown this week as part of RTÉ's Arts Lives series, is so engaging. It shows - as you would expect - Banville discussing his work and his life, alongside shots of him travelling to Rome, meeting literary folk in London, winning the Man Booker Prize for The Sea, and so forth. But the programme is also a tale of the unexpected.
Banville fans may be cringing at this point, in anticipation of some kind of Banville Lite presentation, or an exercise in dumbing down. Fear not, folks. The film's director, Charlie McCarthy, is himself a Banville fan of long standing - indeed, it was with some trepidation that he embarked on the project at all. "I'm a genuine admirer of his work and have been reading him since I was a student in college," he says. "But of course his reputation precedes him, and so you're inclined to wonder whether you'll be up to the task.
"Also, I haven't much faith in what television can do in terms of a programme about a writer. It's a huge challenge because the act of writing is essentially invisible." Having taken on the challenge, McCarthy made life even more difficult for himself by deciding not to consult other writers, or even literary critics, for assessments of his subject. Rather, he opted to show Banville as a 21st-century writer in context. Thus we see him with his agent and his editor, articulate Americans both. We see him travelling to, and addressing, a literary conference in Rome. We see him meeting readers, shaking hands, signing books. It's all part of the business of being a writer nowadays, and the sight of those sparsely-furnished offices, allied to talk of contracts and film rights and publicity tours, leaves the viewer in no doubt that it is a business.
The viewer also demands to be entertained, however, and there are plenty of visual and aural dimensions to keep things moving along - snatches of Banvillean prose, read with marvellous earthiness by Jim Norton; a silk-smooth Schubert soundtrack; an excerpt from a 1980s Channel 4 production of The Newton Letter which stars Donal McGann and a fresh-faced Gabriel Byrne.
The director is dismissive of what he calls "all the old gimmicky, television-y things I had to do to keep it pacy" - shots of the writer in his Dublin apartment, peering into his computer screen or leafing through an art book. "Pretending", as McCarthy puts it, "to write." Still there is a moment, when you see Banville inscribing his impeccable longhand into an enormous ledger straight out of Bleak House central casting, and you hear him say he never deletes anything, just puts unwanted material into brackets, then trawls back through page after page to find the good stuff, when you feel - just for a fleeting second - that you understand how writing is done.
It's an illusion, of course. Nobody knows how writing is done, not even the writer. But some writers are better than others at talking about the process, and by far the most gripping bits in Being John Banville are the bits which ought to be irredeemably tedious - the bits where Banville sits in a chair and talks about himself. "I decided I'd need to do seven or eight interviews with him," says McCarthy. "And it's completely fascinating. It really could be put out un-edited. I could have transmitted eight hours of this thing, if RTÉ would let me."
What did he most hate having to leave out? He thinks for a moment. "The things where he said 'I'll sue you if you put that in'." Roll on the director's cut. Meanwhile, there's plenty to enjoy. A fascinating vignette in which Banville's approach to being an Irish novelist is contrasted with that of his friend, the late John McGahern. Mesmerising glimpses of the bitchiness of the international literary world, notably in Banville's recollection of the time he called Ian McEwan's much-lauded book, Saturday, "self-satisfied and ridiculous". It was, he explains, a result of his "many separated selves"; one self the compulsively honest book reviewer, another the writer "taking a flying kick" at a colleague. "I regret that." Lengthy pause. Then a highly unapologetic grin. "Not much. But I regret it."
Whether he's analysing his own work - "oh, that's dreadful . . . that's really, really pretentious . . . I should never have written that" - or recalling, with sometimes unnerving frankness, his parents and his early life in Wexford, or discussing the relationship between his literary novels and the two thrillers written under the open pseudonym of Benjamin Black, Banville comes across as smart, urbane and wickedly humorous. In fact, as those who know him in "real" life will attest, you're never quite sure if he's taking the mick or is in deadly earnest. Being, in other words, as Banville as it gets.
Being John Banville is on Tuesday at 10.15pm on RTÉ1