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Banville and Battersby

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  • 29-11-2011 12:13am
    #1
    chasmcb
    Registered Users Posts: 278 ✭✭


    What's the story with these two, they're not half cronyish. I was reading The Guardian's 'Books of the Year' pages on Saturday, where they invited sundry writers to nominate their reading highlights of the past twelve months, and Banville nominated Battersby's 'Ordinary Dogs'. Not read it myself but could it really be that good?? And then I was recalling how Banville weighed in to the letters page of the Irish Times earlier this year to defend Battersby against Eugene McCabe. And he has been quoted as calling her "our finest critic of fiction". Is she?? And last year, in a piece Battersby was doing on whether Irish writers were engaging with modern day issues, just about the only Irish crime writer she bothered to mention was Banville's alter-ego, Benjamin Black. Is there some kind of literary equivalent of Brangelina going on here? Battersville perchance?


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    #2
    Denerick
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,488 ✭✭✭Denerick


    Two alternatives. One is that they genuinelly respect and admire each other. The other (my personal favourite) that they have connived cynically to create positive PR for one another.

    I'd take Mc Cabe over Battersby any day of the week.


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    #3
    Toby Take a Bow
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,732 ✭✭✭Toby Take a Bow


    chasmcb wrote: »
    Not read it myself but could it really be that good??

    Not if it's anything like her writing style in her reviews or in her articles that I've read. And from reading the odd paragraph here and there it's pretty much of that standard, although I would guess an editor in Faber has helped in cleaning up her atrocious style.

    It may be a case of drumming up positive PR for each other, but before Battersby's entry into publishing, she wouldn't really have needed it. It may be more prudence on Banville's part. Why would you piss off one of the few critics in Ireland who actually sell literary books?


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    #4
    Richard Roma
    Registered Users Posts: 259 ✭✭Richard Roma


    They worked together when Banville was the literary editor of the Irish Times.


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    #5
    chasmcb
    Registered Users Posts: 278 ✭✭chasmcb


    Richard Roma wrote: »
    They worked together when Banville was the literary editor of the Irish Times.

    Yeh, I know they have been colleagues in Irish Times but jeez they are like a pair of freemasons with the mutual backscratching. Interestingly, I see Saturday's Times did a similar 'books of the year' feature to the Guardian but this time the bould Eileen didn't make Banville's selection.


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