:00:00. > :00:00.Now it's time for Meet the Author with Jim Naughtie.
:00:00. > :00:09.John Banville developed as a young writer in Dublin imbibing
:00:10. > :00:11.the literary folklore of the streets.
:00:12. > :00:12.Now, after decades as a celebrated novelist,
:00:13. > :00:16.winner of the Booker Prize, winner of the Franz Kafka Prize,
:00:17. > :00:19.he's decided to set down some of his early memories,
:00:20. > :00:23.the days when he was learning his trade in a town where there seems
:00:24. > :00:28.to be a poet living on everything street and someone in every pub
:00:29. > :00:30.who's capable of making a poetic utterance, perhaps
:00:31. > :00:37.Time Pieces is a memoir that is also a walk round one
:00:38. > :01:01.You raise a question quite early in this memoir that seems
:01:02. > :01:04.to have haunted you really through your writing life -
:01:05. > :01:12.Well, it probably is unanswerable, but it is a question that
:01:13. > :01:18.I mean, I think as a three-year-old I was nostalgic for when I was two.
:01:19. > :01:24.We think we live in the present, but the present doesn't exist.
:01:25. > :01:35.The future is, you know, a mere plausibility.
:01:36. > :01:40.The past is, it accumulates, it supports us.
:01:41. > :01:44.Everything that we've done is deposited there and we only
:01:45. > :01:47.remember some of it, we forget most of it.
:01:48. > :01:54.If you think that our lives really are made up of fragments
:01:55. > :01:57.of the past, that's how we create the people we are, you point out,
:01:58. > :02:01.in your very touching memories of life as a young man in Dublin,
:02:02. > :02:09.Simple things like the coal or wood fires in your aunt's apartment,
:02:10. > :02:12.which happened, but you can't remember how the wood got
:02:13. > :02:16.there or where it went or where the ashes went.
:02:17. > :02:24.I mean, Freud says that what is remarkable is not
:02:25. > :02:27.that we remember, but that we forget and it is extraordinary the things
:02:28. > :02:29.that fall out of our minds, out of our memory and
:02:30. > :02:31.fall completely, not leaving a trace behind.
:02:32. > :02:38.Why does whatever happens to the past, when it becomes
:02:39. > :02:42.the past, why does it confer this luminous quality on experience.
:02:43. > :02:44.It's easy to read this memoir and realise the affect
:02:45. > :02:50.A young boy from Wexford, coming to the big city,
:02:51. > :02:53.which gleamed and glittered and had all kinds of magical qualities
:02:54. > :02:56.which people from other backgrounds and in other places will recognise,
:02:57. > :03:02.that thrill of recognition, of a place of excitement.
:03:03. > :03:04.Now, it's clear why you should remember that and cherish it.
:03:05. > :03:13.For instance, we didn't have buses in Wexford town, where I was born,
:03:14. > :03:18.so the smell of diesel fuels, even still sometimes when I catch
:03:19. > :03:20.it, it gives me this sense of romance, adventure and...
:03:21. > :03:23.The noise of trains or buses, that kind of thing?
:03:24. > :03:28.It's very strange because Dublin was a grim little city,
:03:29. > :03:37.We're talking about the 50s when things were pretty
:03:38. > :03:42.Stayed is a very nice word to use, it was a bleak time.
:03:43. > :03:45.It was a poverty stricken time, in terms of, not just in terms
:03:46. > :03:48.of money, but in terms of spiritual lives.
:03:49. > :03:55.The Catholic Church had absolute power in the country.
:03:56. > :03:59.Tell me, one of the alluring aspects of the book is the sense
:04:00. > :04:03.of your own opening out as a young man, not just as a writer-to-be,
:04:04. > :04:05.but as someone having the experiences, which we can
:04:06. > :04:08.all remember, being in the back row of the cinema, seeing
:04:09. > :04:22.The great thing for you, it was happening in a village that
:04:23. > :04:24.almost had a life that was unbelievable rich,
:04:25. > :04:29.I mean in terms of its literary culture, the characters,
:04:30. > :04:34.It was, as I said a spiritually poverty stricken time,
:04:35. > :04:39.there was great gaiety, I suppose, in the same way
:04:40. > :04:48.that there was great gaiety, I'm sure, in Budapest,
:04:49. > :04:50.Prague and Moscow in those terrible years.
:04:51. > :04:53.Gaiety against, you know, the people who were
:04:54. > :04:59.I sort of missed it, I fell between generations.
:05:00. > :05:03.The generation of Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan and so on,
:05:04. > :05:05.that had largely died out by the time I...
:05:06. > :05:07.I mean it was going on when I was there,
:05:08. > :05:14.Also, I was disdained from it because I wanted to be a great
:05:15. > :05:18.European novelist of ideas and these were mere local artists.
:05:19. > :05:21.Well, trying to be a great European novelist of ideas in Dublin brings
:05:22. > :05:28.you up against a huge problem in the persons
:05:29. > :05:30.of Joyce and Yeats and, I suppose, going right
:05:31. > :05:34.What is it about the literary tradition of Dublin that has allowed
:05:35. > :05:36.it to reproduce so regularly and so spectacularly
:05:37. > :05:46.Well, I think it's the tension between the English language,
:05:47. > :05:48.which was imposed on Ireland in the 19th Century,
:05:49. > :05:50.tension between that and, if you like, the deep grammar
:05:51. > :05:52.that is built into us in the Irish language.
:05:53. > :05:54.Because the Irish language and the English language
:05:55. > :05:59.The Irish language is very oblique, very poetic.
:06:00. > :06:04.It's almost a motivation rather than communication.
:06:05. > :06:06.Whereas basic English, that we gained in the 19th Century,
:06:07. > :06:09.was rather like the Latin of the Roman Empire.
:06:10. > :06:13.The tension between those two produced a new literary language.
:06:14. > :06:17.It's interesting that you elude to poetic, almost a kind of bardic
:06:18. > :06:21.culture there which throbs away underneath and brings something
:06:22. > :06:22.completely different to the experience of
:06:23. > :06:30.Do you think that's really, in the end, been the engine
:06:31. > :06:32.of so much literary creativity in Ireland?
:06:33. > :06:40.We love telling the story of ourselves, we love telling it
:06:41. > :06:48.I always feel that you can get away with anything in Ireland
:06:49. > :07:00.You know, politicians and churchmen, we don't so much care
:07:01. > :07:02.about the egregious outrages that they committed,
:07:03. > :07:04.what we want to hear is how they're going to explain
:07:05. > :07:08.You talk a lot about human failure and the human
:07:09. > :07:12.It's often said of you that you don't like re-reading your books
:07:13. > :07:17.I'm sure there's a twinkle in your eye when you say
:07:18. > :07:28.I distrust any writer who says that he or she re-reads
:07:29. > :07:31.I couldn't, I just read it with embarrassment and horror
:07:32. > :07:35.When you start again, do you always think -
:07:36. > :07:37.it's going to be different this time?
:07:38. > :07:41.One part of me thinks - this is going to be
:07:42. > :07:45.But you know you're telling yourself a lie?
:07:46. > :07:48.Oh, I know, but there you have it, we love telling ourselves lies.
:07:49. > :07:51.Which means, I have to ask you, what's next?
:07:52. > :07:54.You've written a memoir, what comes next?
:07:55. > :07:58.Ah, well, I'm writing the sequel to Henry James'
:07:59. > :08:08.Now, here is the young man who wanted to be a great
:08:09. > :08:09.European novelist of ideas and you've now decided,
:08:10. > :08:13.at a fairly ripe old age, not a very ripe, but ripish old age,
:08:14. > :08:15.after a very, very distinguished career as a novelist,
:08:16. > :08:18.you know, crime novels, literary novels, the works,
:08:19. > :08:20.to take on Henry James, do you do it with trepidation?
:08:21. > :08:33.I don't have to struggle with myself.
:08:34. > :08:42.Novel for novel, if you look at the masterpieces
:08:43. > :08:45.Equally, you know that, in the end, you'll be glad
:08:46. > :08:54.I suspect I will like this book because it won't be mine.
:08:55. > :08:59.James himself was going to write the sequel, but never got round to
:09:00. > :09:02.With that arrogance and foolhardiness
:09:03. > :09:25.Good evening, we will lose the chilly easterly wind into the
:09:26. > :09:27.weekend, but the weather charts looked distinctly