“I expected to be dead by now, or at least crazy” – The Irish Times

Tell me about your new book, The Drowned.

It’s another of my Quirke/Strafford stories and is just as dark as its predecessors. I try to lighten it up, and I hope readers see the strange, light touch of humor, but murder is a shadowy business.

It is the latest film starring Detective Inspector Strafford and pathologist Quirke. Describe your characters and their relationship.

Quirke is deeply skeptical of Strafford, whom he sees as effeminate and something of a bungler – he is neither – while Strafford simultaneously admires, deeply disapproves of, and is a little afraid of Quirke.

Previous Quirke books were published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. Why changing your own name?

I guess because I want the books to be read as novels and not as crime novels. I detest the term “genre.” Writing is either good or the opposite, in whatever form. Simenon was my original inspiration for the Quirke books, and who would dare call this great artist a genre writer?

How important is analyzing Ireland’s troubled past to your work?

I wish I could claim to be part of a campaign to keep our past sins present, but I am a writer, not a polemicist. For me, all life is material. It should be written on my gravestone: He was a cannibal.

Her first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. How well do you remember each work? Which is your favorite?

I try not to remember them, those poor, sad, inevitably failed attempts at perfection. However, I recently came across a quote from the poet Philip Larkin that I like: “I don’t think I write particularly well,” he said, “just better than anyone else.” I don’t have a favorite book among my books – I can only give the old-fashioned answer: The next.

You’ll be 80 next year. Are you still hungry for writing?

Yes – isn’t that strange? I expected to be dead or at least crazy by now. I ended The Singularities with the words “period,” meaning that it should be my last book in fiction. But here I am, still doodling.

You have lost loved ones in recent years. Has that shaped your writing or your worldview?

Loved ones die, but they don’t disappear. To use your words, my worldview was already set in stone when I was about eleven years old.

What did you make of? Mark O’Connell’s A Thread of Violence.about the murderer Malcolm Macarthur, which was based on your novel The Book of Evidence and loosely based on his life?

I think Mark’s book is a very beautiful and subtle work. It was quite a scary experience reading it the way I go about it. And of course, as you say, The Book of Evidence has a lot of echoes of the Macarthur case. One day, not long after its publication, I happened to meet lawyer Paddy McEntee, who told me that he had read it, liked it and decided not to sue me for libel…

You were literary editor of the Irish Times for several years. What were the highlights?

Oh, all the lights were up. As you know, it was the most wonderful work. It was like that Fun Calling people like Senator Eugene McCarthy, Bernadette McAliskey or Enoch Powell and persuading them to write something for “the pages.” But if I have to highlight a particular project it would be the Reassessments series, in which I enlisted Seamus Heaney, Anthony Burgess, Eavan Boland and many others to celebrate one of their predecessors. There were some surprises: Eavan wrote about AE Housman – who would have thought?

They still check regularly. How important is it?

I view book reviewing as a noble craft, and I love doing it. The wonderful thing about a review is that as soon as it’s done, it’s done. This gives a great feeling of satisfaction.

What projects are you working on?

I just finished a play about the life, work and loves of John Maynard Keynes – yes, an economist, but one of the great figures of the 20th century. And I’m writing my autobiography, for which an old friend provided the perfect title: Out of True. I expect it will be an exquisite and deeply moving posthumous fragment…

[ John Banville: ‘I’m 76 now, and I’m as baffled by the world as I was when I was five’Opens in new window ]

Have you ever undertaken a literary pilgrimage?

I tried to visit the spot on the banks of Lake Wannsee near Berlin where Heinrich von Kleist committed suicide in a suicide pact with a young friend, but my driver got lost and we never made it. I can hear Kleist’s biting laugh.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever heard?

The ancient Roman, Cato the Censor, advised wordsmiths as follows: Rem tene, verbum sequentur – Focus on the object and the words will follow.

Most remarkable place you’ve ever visited?

The Greco-Roman temple at Segesta in Sicily.

Your most prized possession?

My fountain pen.

What is the most beautiful book you own?

The very rich Book of Hours of the Duc du Berry, illustrated by the Limbourg brothers. Of course it’s not the original…

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

William James, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens. Oh, and Isaiah Berlin for the gossip.

The best and worst thing about where you live?

The sea; tourists.

What is your favorite quote?

WC Fields on his deathbed: “I would rather be in Philadelphia.”

Who is your favorite fictional character?

I don’t have any favorites; They are all chimeras made of words.

A book that makes me laugh?

Lolita.

A book that could move me to tears?

Ditto.

The Drowned is published by Faber & Faber