Monday, July 11, 2011

Books I Never Finished Reading

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The Silver Swan: A Novel (Benjamin Black)
- Highlight on Page 27 | Loc. 427-38  | Added on Monday, July 11, 2011, 06:22 PM

He stood for a moment in the middle of the living room, the key still in his hand, looking about at his things: the characterless furniture, the obsessively neat bookshelves, the artist’s wooden manikin on a little table by the window with its arms melodramatically upflung. On the mantelpiece there was a vase of roses. The flowers had been given to him, somewhat improbably, he thought, by a woman—married, bored, blond—whom he had seen for a not very exciting week or two, and he had not had the heart to throw them out, although by now they were withered and their parched petals gave off a faint, stale-sweet smell that reminded him disquietingly of his workplace [the morgue]. He turned on the wireless and tried tuning it to the BBC Third Programme, but the reception was hopelessly weak, as for some reason it always was in fine weather. He lit a cigarette and stood by the window, looking down into the broad, empty street with its raked and faintly sinister-seeming shadows. It was still too early for the whores who had their patch here—oh, well-named Mount Street!—though even the ugliest and most elderly of them did a brisk trade on sultry nights such as this. He could feel the first fizzings of the desperation that often assailed him in these summer twilights. A soft, small sound behind him made him turn, startled: a heavy petal had detached itself from one of the withered roses and had fallen, like a scrap of dusty, dark-red velvet crimped around its edges, into the grate. Muttering, he snatched up his jacket and made for the door.
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Amazing that a distinguished literary novelist who decided to let his hair down and write an "entertainment" would come up with something this dreary. Is he having a laugh?

5 comments:

Tulkinghorn said...

Well... Don't forget what Mark Lawson said in the Guardian:

"A detective novel has an emotionally insecure life insurance risk at its centre: the challenge is what can be achieved, linguistically and psychologically, around these fixed points.The answer, in the Quirke series, is a great deal...."

Oddly enough, it seems that you (of all people) may be condescending to genre by assuming that working in genre must involve entertainment and authorial relaxing. (Even Greene's entertainments were pretty bleak, if exciting and plot-driven.)

I don't argue with your reaction to the dreariness, just your assumption that muted greys and blacks are incompatible with detective fiction.

David Chute said...

For me it's just, as I said, not my idea of a good time. My puzzlement has to do with Banville's motives. Does this rate as a refreshing change of pace for him? If so he's an even weirder dude than at first appears.

Tulkinghorn said...

However much he might protest and call himself a "slut" for writing these, it appears that the similarities between Banville and Black are often as striking as the differences --at least that's what Joanna Kavenna in the New Yorker argues. There are ways to simplify without lightening, and maybe the real reason for the effort is to make a bit of money....

JRSM said...

I'm usually a big Banville fan, but I gave up on Quirke after the first book. It was just so dull.

Tulkinghorn said...

They didn't have sunlight in Ireland until after "She Loves You" came out...