John Banville: Literary Confessions

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2018

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A darkly funny conversation about writing, weather & Ireland. Banville, a Booker Prize-winning novelist and master wordsmith, explains why nothing in the world is more powerful than the sentence. He has sometimes spent weeks getting one just right. He's also a contrarian, and talks about why he loathes vacations, loves rain, and does his best to avoid other authors. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2018

Transcript

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0:00.0	The world has become a huge babbling sphere of mainly nonsense.
0:10.0	I sometimes think that social media should be really called social incontinence.
0:15.7	People imagine that because we can speak that we have something to say, that's not always
0:20.8	the case.
0:21.8	That's John Banville. That's John Banville.
0:23.0	For 50 years he has meticulously crafted words into some of the greatest prose ever written in the English
0:30.6	language.
0:31.7	So it's no wonder that he has little tolerance for a world increasingly
0:36.5	filled with words carelessly tossed about.
0:40.9	John Banville talks about his reverence for the sentence, for Ireland and for
0:45.8	rain on today's episode of What It Takes, a podcast about Passion, Vision and
0:52.4	Perseverance from the Academy of Achievement.
0:55.0	I'm Alice Winkler.
0:58.0	Had a maid, this child is gifted, and I heard that enough that I started to believe it.
1:04.3	If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity and you don't take it, you may never have
1:09.8	another child.
1:10.8	It all was so clear.
1:12.1	It was just like the picture started to form itself.
1:15.0	There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light,
1:21.0	death over life.
1:23.0	Every day I wake up and decide.
1:25.0	Today I'm going to love my life.
	...

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