Day: January 13, 2013

John Banville is a literary stylist of the old school, a vanishing breed expected to win a Nobel Prize one of these days. His kind of novel – once the embodiment of the literary experience – is fading, and few people take the time or spend the money to read writing like this. Like many of the great writers, Banville, who lives in Ireland (“Kepler,”  “The Sea,”  “Shroud And The Untouchable”) uses words the way Beethoven wrote music – every word considered and polished, his writing lyrical,  beautiful and considered. He can say more in a few sentences about someone’s bearing than many writers can squeeze into a book. In our hurried and distracted world, this kind of book seems both a throwback and a treasure. A luxury perhaps, especially in America, the land of too much information and hyper-story telling. Like all of the greatest novelists, his subject matter is our interior selves, in this case time memory, sex and longing, youth and aging, success and failure. In other words, life.

His books are an event, and his new novel “Ancient Light” is much in keeping with his genius for textual and conceptual precision. His descriptions of the smallest things – people’s clothing, the sky, a memory or thought – are lyrical, pure genius, a gorgeous feast for people who love words.

The story is told by the brooding aging actor Alexander Cleave, recalling memories of his long-ago summer affair with a 35-year-old woman, Mrs. Gray. At the time, Cleave was 15 and Mrs. Gray was his best friend’s mother.  The love affair shaped Cleave’s emotional life in many ways.  His mind also struggles to comprehend the death of his daughter, believed to have committed suicide while working in Italy. When his failing acting career is suddenly revived by an unexpected offer to star in a movie, Cleave’s leading lady, famous and fragile, unwittingly provides a window to see with haunting clarity the vast chasm between the doing of a thing and the recalling of what was done.

Cleave describing the first day of his affair: “What could she want of me? The obvious was not the obvious. I was only fifteen remember? I was torn between the impulse to plunge headlong down the stairs and flee the house, never to darken its doorstep again, and an opposite urge to stand my ground, and turn, and open wide my arms for this lavish and unlooked-for gift of womanhood, naked as a needle…all breathless and a-flutter and drooping with desire.” The affair ends suddenly and Mrs. Gray vanishes mysteriously, and all of his life Cleave wonders what happened to them, to her.

This gorgeous book – that is the word that comes to mind about the writing – focuses on the intensity of adolescence, the loss of a beloved child, the struggle between memory and reality. Banville doesn’t need to hide behind woman-eating serial killers to engage the reader. Words can do it.  Modern fiction usually has lots of bangs and bumps, over-the-top twists and turns to engage the cynical, easily bored and jacked-up reader in an age when stories and books of all kinds in many forms rain literally from the sky. You can say “Ancient Lights” is really about nothing as compared to contemporary stands of fiction – no deaths, violence, serial killers or victim’s of Lou Gehrig’s disease, the American novelists favorite new manipulative engage-the-reader tool.

But the book is about everything. Cleave has to deal with the passion of first love, the betrayal of his best friend, a hollow but committed marriage, a fading acting career, the suicide of his  daughter, about which he understands nothing and knows little. All of his life, he remembers the details of his affair with Mrs Gray, and the way in which it ended. Near the end of his life, he gets to discover and understand the truth of all of it and come to an honest reckoning of his own life. To the truth. If you love language, this book is a feast and a treasure. Every page is like a painting, love and faith, loss and death all woven today in a magnificent tapestry. The book cautions us to beware of memory, it plays lots of tricks, and works to serve us rather than give us the truth.

I read very few writers like John Banville and I easily recommend this book for people who savor a gentle and brilliantly crafted look at the interior self, a trip into the experiences and recollections that shape our consciousness. Perhaps not for people who like the roller coaster twists of contemporary story-telling. Banville is a wonderful writer, a painter of words really, as much as a gifted story-teller. “Ancient Lights” is published by Knopf and available in print and digital editions.

I glanced over by the barn door and it seemed to me as if Red had called a meeting, there was a gathering of livestock – Flo, the new barn cat, Strut the Rooster and his hens. I wondered what these disparate creatures could possibly be huddled about. It was nearly 50 degrees today and the sun came out and most of the snow melted, and I think everybody was happy about that.

Perhaps Red was reprimanding Flor for hissing and spatting when Minnie tried to get into the barn. The barn cats needed to get along. Red might have been pointing out that a path had melted out to the pasture. Perhaps he suggested to the hens that it was time somebody laid a few eggs. He was looking at me to see if I had any work for him to do with the sheep, but it was too muddy and I was waiting for the field to dry out.

Perhaps Flo was apologizing to Red for swatting him on the nose when she was walking around the floor of the vet’s office last week. Flo has caught the Bedlam Farm magic, I think, she is settling into the Peaceable Kingdom. When animals know they have food, water, shelter and attention, they relax.

There are no greater sun worshipers than farm animals, especially after weeks of cold, snow and ice. Today is one of those days that makes global warming seem friendlier, and Minnie was napping on her chair when one of the chickens (we don’t name them anymore) hopped up to join her. One of those things you see on a farm…

The dank and cold and gloom was pulling me down this morning, so I decided to step out of myself. Florence’s blue glass on the windowsill sparkled just as the sun came up over the horizon, and I realized the way to deal with fear and gloom and resentment is to step out of myself, do a little dance in my head, follow my better spirits. Heading out to walk the dogs with Maria.

Gloomy, misty, dark morning. The warrior for light is restless, a little gloomy back. Got up early this morning to feed the animals. Maria joined me, both of us in our night clothes and rubber boots and caps, looking strange, the animals all standing by the gate, waiting for us. Simon brays when he hears me come down the stairs and into the kitchen. We made some breakfast, got back into bed to read. My Hubbard Hall Writer’s Workshop is meeting this afternoon, a wonderful group of talented writers working on their blogs, their writing, their sketches and memories. Got to figure out what we will do this year and when I might do another workshop.

The farm is shrouded in fog and mist, mud and manure. I always feel for the animals, ice thawing, the ground soggy, little green to graze on. The gloom can pull me down, I need to take a photo, talk to Maria, take a walk, pull myself back up.