The Book of Evidence by John Banville
New York: Scribner's, 1989
220 pp
The Book of Evidence is the first-person story--the "confession"--of a thoroughly unattractive individual, Freddy Montgomery, who lives a dissolute, drifting, often drunken life, supported by squandering his small inheritance. In time, in his mid-thirties, having incurred a debt to what appears to be a crime syndicate, he returns home to Ireland, intending to sponge money from family or friends to pay off the debt. That does not work out, and after quarreling with his mother, then visiting some former acquaintances and planning to steal a work of art, he winds up committing a ghastly murder. Ten days later, the police catch up with him and put him in jail, where he writes his story while awaiting trial.
Many people think The Book of Evidence is a wonderful book, and compare it to Camus' The Stranger and Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment. But for me it has none of the philosophical significance of Camus, or the moral seriousness of Dostoevski. I found Freddy Montgomery to be animated exclusively by selfishness. He is self-indulgent, self-centered, and wallows occasionally in self-pity. Of course, that need not prevent him from being the hero (or anti-hero) of a good novel. But that would require, for me, some redeeming feature. Not of his character, necessarily, but of the book. There should somewhere be an answer to the question, "why should I take an interest in this jerk?" but I did not find it.
It is true that Banville writes well, much of the time, and there were places where the writing was enough to make me overlook the sordid, pointless events being described. Some people regard Banville as a wonderful writer, and would doubtless regard the writing alone as redeeming the book. I found some illuminating ideas, for example the passage toward the end where crime is described as enabled, in the end, by failure of imagination. But such flashes are rare.
I did not find the writing to be consistently on a high level. Consider the passage describing the moment when Freddy Montgomery sets in motion the events that lead to the murder. One would think this a pivotal moment, one in which some rationale would be forthcoming, whether a goal or motive, or a moral argument, something, at any rate, to make us take seriously what is going on. But Freddy offers no reasons, nor are we told what it is that he intends, nor does he even say anything equivalent to "I decided." My private suspicion is that Banville knows that if he told us at this point what was planned--returning to a recently visited country house to steal an important work of art--we would immediately consider it so absurd as not to bother reading further. So we do not get that, instead what we get is: "My mind was racing, my blood fizzled in my veins. I knew now what I would do. I was excited, and at the same time I had a deep sense of dread. There were stirrings downstairs. I wanted to be out, out, being and doing. I started to leave the room, but paused and lay on the bed for a moment to calm myself, and fell at once into a profound and terrible sleep. It was as if I had been struck down. I cannot describe it. It lasted no more than a minute or two. I woke up shaking. It was as if the very heart of things had skipped a beat. So it was that the day began, as it would continue, in the horrors." That is not profound, nor is it intellectually stimulating, nor is it morally compelling, nor is it insightful description, nor is it good, let alone great writing. It is the lurid hyperbole of a cheap dime-store romance.
220 pp
The Book of Evidence is the first-person story--the "confession"--of a thoroughly unattractive individual, Freddy Montgomery, who lives a dissolute, drifting, often drunken life, supported by squandering his small inheritance. In time, in his mid-thirties, having incurred a debt to what appears to be a crime syndicate, he returns home to Ireland, intending to sponge money from family or friends to pay off the debt. That does not work out, and after quarreling with his mother, then visiting some former acquaintances and planning to steal a work of art, he winds up committing a ghastly murder. Ten days later, the police catch up with him and put him in jail, where he writes his story while awaiting trial.
Many people think The Book of Evidence is a wonderful book, and compare it to Camus' The Stranger and Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment. But for me it has none of the philosophical significance of Camus, or the moral seriousness of Dostoevski. I found Freddy Montgomery to be animated exclusively by selfishness. He is self-indulgent, self-centered, and wallows occasionally in self-pity. Of course, that need not prevent him from being the hero (or anti-hero) of a good novel. But that would require, for me, some redeeming feature. Not of his character, necessarily, but of the book. There should somewhere be an answer to the question, "why should I take an interest in this jerk?" but I did not find it.
It is true that Banville writes well, much of the time, and there were places where the writing was enough to make me overlook the sordid, pointless events being described. Some people regard Banville as a wonderful writer, and would doubtless regard the writing alone as redeeming the book. I found some illuminating ideas, for example the passage toward the end where crime is described as enabled, in the end, by failure of imagination. But such flashes are rare.
I did not find the writing to be consistently on a high level. Consider the passage describing the moment when Freddy Montgomery sets in motion the events that lead to the murder. One would think this a pivotal moment, one in which some rationale would be forthcoming, whether a goal or motive, or a moral argument, something, at any rate, to make us take seriously what is going on. But Freddy offers no reasons, nor are we told what it is that he intends, nor does he even say anything equivalent to "I decided." My private suspicion is that Banville knows that if he told us at this point what was planned--returning to a recently visited country house to steal an important work of art--we would immediately consider it so absurd as not to bother reading further. So we do not get that, instead what we get is: "My mind was racing, my blood fizzled in my veins. I knew now what I would do. I was excited, and at the same time I had a deep sense of dread. There were stirrings downstairs. I wanted to be out, out, being and doing. I started to leave the room, but paused and lay on the bed for a moment to calm myself, and fell at once into a profound and terrible sleep. It was as if I had been struck down. I cannot describe it. It lasted no more than a minute or two. I woke up shaking. It was as if the very heart of things had skipped a beat. So it was that the day began, as it would continue, in the horrors." That is not profound, nor is it intellectually stimulating, nor is it morally compelling, nor is it insightful description, nor is it good, let alone great writing. It is the lurid hyperbole of a cheap dime-store romance.