The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Athena by John Banville
Irving Malin

John Banville. Athena. Vintage, 1996. 232 pp. Paper: $12.00.

John Banville has always been interested in perceptions of reality. His wonderful historical novels—dealing with Kepler, Copernicus, Newton—are attempts not only to create the scientists’ minds but to demonstrate that scientific discovery arises from psychological origins. Cosmology and psychology are married. In this brilliant novel—surely one of the most fascinating texts written in the last few years—he offers a cunning, ghostly work—an odd exploration of the narrator’s reality. The narrator, who chooses to call himself “Morrow,” writes a “letter”—this novel—to Athena, who has disappeared. He cannot address her properly; he calls her “you” and then proceeds to refer to “her.” The shifting tenses characterize his mental wanderings, and so does his use of oxymorons, puns, anagrams. Thus we must read this text with great care—the care we give to The Sacred Fount. And indeed the narrator’s style and interest in vampires and ghosts and occult phenomena demonstrate that he resembles James’s narrator in that puzzling masterpiece.

We do not know how to interpret Morrow’s perceptions. Is he mad? Is there an Athena? Why does he call her A? These questions are never answered because his world is one of hesitation, unease (disease?). It is “muddled”—to use one of his words—and it may be a dream or hallucination of enormous proportions. Morrow is a critic of painting. And he offers detailed descriptions of seventeenth-century paintings. The paintings may not exist, may function as his own projections. He sees in Pygmalion and Galatea, painted in 1649, the “violence” of “sudden passion.” He sees “ambiguous sexuality” in this “phantasmal” and “death-drunk work”—to use his words—details that correspond to his own life. Several questions come to mind. Do the paintings exist? Are they copies of original works? Although Banville offers a truly shocking revelation of Athena on the last page, he leaves open the possibility that the revelation, the “evidence” of Athena is psychotic. Here is merely one sentence that conveys the duplicity of Morrow—deliberate or undeliberate—and the duplicity of Banville: “I say her, but of course I know it was not her, not really.”

The turns and counterturns of Morrow’s words undermine any stable interpretation. The text is, perhaps, an “interpretation of interpretation,” a dream-work of the highest order. It is our Turn of the Screw, a transgressive work which puzzles and amazes us. [Irving Malin]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Athena by John Banville Irving Malin John Banville. Athena. Vintage, 1996. 232 pp. Paper: $12.00. John Banville has always been interested in perceptions of reality. His wonderful historical novels—dealing with Kepler, Copernicus, Newton—are attempts not only to create the scientists’ minds but to demonstrate that scientific discovery arises from psychological origins. Cosmology and psychology are married. In this brilliant novel—surely one of the most fascinating texts written in the last few years—he offers a cunning, ghostly work—an odd exploration of the narrator’s reality. The narrator, who chooses to call himself “Morrow,” writes a “letter”—this novel—to Athena, who has disappeared. He cannot address her properly; he calls her “you” and then proceeds to refer to “her.” The shifting tenses characterize his mental wanderings, and so does his use of oxymorons, puns, anagrams. Thus we must read this text with great care—the care we give to The Sacred Fount. And indeed the narrator’s style and interest in vampires and ghosts and occult phenomena demonstrate that he resembles James’s narrator in that puzzling masterpiece. We do not know how to interpret Morrow’s perceptions. Is he mad? Is there an Athena? Why does he call her A? These questions are never answered because his world is one of hesitation, unease (disease?). It is “muddled”—to use one of his words—and it may be a dream or hallucination of enormous proportions. Morrow is a critic of painting. And he offers detailed descriptions of seventeenth-century paintings. The paintings may not exist, may function as his own projections. He sees in Pygmalion and Galatea, painted in 1649, the “violence” of “sudden passion.” He sees “ambiguous sexuality” in this “phantasmal” and “death-drunk work”—to use his words—details that correspond to his own life. Several questions come to mind. Do the paintings exist? Are they copies of original works? Although Banville offers a truly shocking revelation of Athena on the last page, he leaves open the possibility that the revelation, the “evidence” of Athena is psychotic. Here is merely one sentence that conveys the duplicity of Morrow—deliberate or undeliberate—and the duplicity of Banville: “I say her, but of course I know it was not her, not really.” The turns and counterturns of Morrow’s words undermine any stable interpretation. The text is, perhaps, an “interpretation of interpretation,” a dream-work of the highest order. It is our Turn of the Screw, a transgressive work which puzzles and amazes us. [Irving Malin]

Search the full text of our books: