“Though he has been described as “the heir to Proust, via Nabokov,” Banville himself maintains that W.B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.”
Oh my sweet Christ. That Wikipedia page is truly something else. I started to dig, and found that it had been almost entirely written by one user ("Scheibfeder") whose contributions are entirely, you guessed it, either on the John Banville page, or his books' pages, or adding trivia to pages of people who have interacted with John Banville.
The absolute most heinous edits are those for books which Banville did not win the Booker prize. The actual winners are described, not named. Arundhati Roy's win for The God of Small Things is described as thus: "the award went instead to the debut effort of an Indian political activist." A 2002 loss to the Life of Pi is: "it was not even shortlisted and the award went instead to a Spanish-born Canadian man's yarn about a spotted hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger (named Richard Parker), all of whom are cast adrift with an Indian Tamil boy in the Pacific Ocean." And, drumroll for the most explicitly racist, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is summed up as "the award went instead to a book by an Oriental man who had obtained a Master of Arts in Creative Writing."
Either this is John Banville, or John Banville should sleep with one eye open.
hoo BOY! I do not believe that John Banville worries himself about his wikipedia page (nor do I think he would write so clunkily) but whoever it is is really on one
I would really hope so. Fortunately all of the racism seems to have been cleaned up, and the main John Banville page has had a lot of the most egregious puffery undone already.
Banville is a clown of whom I have never heard. Nabokov is gross and thinking about him leaves a slime trail in my brain. Proust is boring. You are a national treasure.
if you ever decide to read Banville I think The Book of Evidence is fascinating! been a while since I read Doctor Copernicus but I remember enjoying it immensely
And here I was thinking he was the guy who married Iris Murdoch.
he did write 'The Sea' and she wrote 'The Sea, The Sea' so there's some overlap there!
Oh my sweet Christ. That Wikipedia page is truly something else. I started to dig, and found that it had been almost entirely written by one user ("Scheibfeder") whose contributions are entirely, you guessed it, either on the John Banville page, or his books' pages, or adding trivia to pages of people who have interacted with John Banville.
The absolute most heinous edits are those for books which Banville did not win the Booker prize. The actual winners are described, not named. Arundhati Roy's win for The God of Small Things is described as thus: "the award went instead to the debut effort of an Indian political activist." A 2002 loss to the Life of Pi is: "it was not even shortlisted and the award went instead to a Spanish-born Canadian man's yarn about a spotted hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger (named Richard Parker), all of whom are cast adrift with an Indian Tamil boy in the Pacific Ocean." And, drumroll for the most explicitly racist, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is summed up as "the award went instead to a book by an Oriental man who had obtained a Master of Arts in Creative Writing."
Either this is John Banville, or John Banville should sleep with one eye open.
hoo BOY! I do not believe that John Banville worries himself about his wikipedia page (nor do I think he would write so clunkily) but whoever it is is really on one
Who else would care so much though? Is Banville’s mom still alive?
I would really hope so. Fortunately all of the racism seems to have been cleaned up, and the main John Banville page has had a lot of the most egregious puffery undone already.
Banville is a clown of whom I have never heard. Nabokov is gross and thinking about him leaves a slime trail in my brain. Proust is boring. You are a national treasure.
if you ever decide to read Banville I think The Book of Evidence is fascinating! been a while since I read Doctor Copernicus but I remember enjoying it immensely