Small Talk: John Banville

“To me writing is like breathing,” says John Banville. “I do it out of necessity.” Banville won the 2007 Man Booker Prize with his 14th novel, The Sea.

Born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945, Banville travelled the world after school while working as a clerk for airline Aer Lingus. He embarked on a career in journalism, starting as a newspaper subeditor. He went on to become literary editor of the Irish Times in 1988. Banville also writes crime fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. He lives in Dublin.

Who is your perfect reader?
Somebody who prefers prose style over plot.

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?
My royalty statements. It was a sardonic laugh.

What books are currently on your bedside table?
Letters of Wallace Stevens and Alexander Herzen’s My Past and Thoughts.

What book changed your life?
The catechism of the Catholic Church, which was dinned into me as a seven-year-old. It answered every question I could have possibly asked about the world.

When did you know you were going to be a writer?
When I was 12 or 13. I read Joyce’s Dubliners and realised writing could be about real life, life as I knew it.

Where do you write best?
In a tiny apartment in the centre of Dublin, on the river, overlooking a courtyard. It’s silent there.

Which literary character most resembles you?
Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza. He’s a complete realist and gets enjoyment out of the world’s silliness.

What are you most proud of writing?
I’m not proud of any of my writing – it’s better than everyone else’s but it’s all botched.

Who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?
Henry James.

What are you scared of?
Death and the dark.

When were you happiest?
When I’m starting a book everything seems wonderful.

When do you feel most free?
Never, I wouldn’t want to be. It’s the most terrifying state imaginable. We live by rules.

How do you relax?
I don’t. Work is more fun than fun, as Noël Coward said.

What would you change about yourself?
I’d make myself tall, dark and handsome, and I’d be permanently 35 years old.

If you could own any painting, what would it be?
The last of Bonnard’s portraits of his wife in the bath.

What book do you wish you’d written?
Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said.

What would you go back and change?
I would do all my books better. It’s my fantasy that when I’m passing a bookshop I click my fingers and all of my books go blank.

John Banville’s latest novel is ‘The Infinities’ (Picador)