Style
Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of English, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling. David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls him "one of the great stylists writing in English today"; Don DeLillo described his work "dangerous and clear-running prose"; Val Nolan in The Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious"; The Observer described The Book of Evidence as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Banville himself has admitted that he is "trying to blend poetry and fiction into some new form". He is known for his dark humour, and sharp, wintery wit.
In five of his novels (including one as Benjamin Black), he has used the trope of a character's eyes darting back and forth "like a spectator at a tennis match."
In 1984, he was elected to the Irish arts association, Aosdána, but resigned in 2001 so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the cnuas (annuity).
In an interview with Argentine paper La Nacíón, he described himself as a West Brit.
Banville has a strong interest in animal rights, and is often featured in Irish media speaking out against vivisection in Irish university research.
In 2011, he offered to donate his brain to The Little Museum of Dublin "so visitors could marvel at how small it was".
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)