John Banville - Influences

Influences

Banville said in an interview with The Paris Review that he liked Vladimir Nabokov's style, however he went on, "But I always thought there was something odd about it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then I read an interview in which he admitted he was tone deaf." He is highly influenced by Heinrich von Kleist, having written adaptations of three of his plays (including Amphitryon) and having again used Amphitryon as a basis for his novel The Infinities. Banville has reported that he imitated James Joyce as a boy: "After I'd read the Dubliners, and was struck at the way Joyce wrote about real life, I immediately started writing bad imitations of the Dubliners." However, The Guardian reports that the early Joycean influence may not have persisted, quoting the writer again: "Banville himself has acknowledged that all Irish writers are followers of either Joyce or Beckett - and he places himself in the Beckett camp." During an interview on The Charlie Rose Show in 2011, Rose asked him, "The guiding light has always been Henry James?" and Banville replied, "I think so, I mean people say, you know, I've been influenced by Beckett or Nabokov but it's always been Henry James so I would follow him, I would be a Jamesian."