The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Untouchable by John Banville
Irving Malin

John Banville. The Untouchable. Knopf, 1997. 367 pp. $25.00.

Banville writes novels which question the truths of biography; his historical novels about Copernicus, Newton, and Kepler subvert usual conceptions. The Untouchable, his most recent novel, is another “antibiography.” He uses the story of Blunt, the British art historian and Russian mole, to develop his own obsessive search for truth. Blunt is, in many ways, his secret sharer.
The novel is a mixture of reportage, biography, and meditation. It is, in a perverse way, an occult, secretive work about the hidden world of homosexuality and spying. Form and content are reflective. Banville understands the marriage of homosexuality and spying. Both realms dwell upon coded messages, gestures, and obscure pleasures. He makes us wonder whether family nurtures or creates untouchables (or vice versa). The novel’s opening lines are clues: “First day of the new life. Very strange. Feeling almost skittish all day. Exhausted now yet feverish also, like a child at the end of a party. Like a child, yes; as if I had suffered a grotesque rebirth. Yet this morning I realized for the first time that I am an old man.” The sentences seem to be unbalanced; the oppositions of new/child and end/old are deliberately presented in a jittery way. They make me wonder whether I can trust Victor’s confession-text.
This novel reinforces my contention that Banville is one of our most daring, erudite novelists. He deserves close reading. [Irving Malin]