Reply to “Endless Beginnings”

Résumé

“Endless beginnings” is an appropriate phrase to apply to John Banville’s work. It is appropriate too, perhaps, to all those who come to that work and evaluate it critically. After many years reading and studying Banville, and reading and studying the criticism that surrounds Banville’s work, it seems to me that any one attempt to “say” or to “know” that work necessarily leads on to other attempts to say and to know: and so it goes on, endlessly. Truth – or a final end – is not, I think, the aim of any reader of Banville’s work, nor is it mine. This “reply”, then, is testament to that fact which Banville and his characters are so very much aware of, that one text leads inexorably onto other texts.