My second book by John Banville, The Shroud, did not disappoint. The first one, Birchwood, blew me away. I was more prepared this time. The story of a churlish literary scholar with a nasty personal secret, a propensity to lie, and temper fit to destroy the world as he creates another fit to his measure carries the reader along on quite a journey. Banville drops references to Nietzsche, de Maistre, and other literary macho baddies like field mines throughout the narrative. Not surprising perhaps, there is a misogynistic feel overall. The narrative jumps from the male lead to a female antagonist(?), all wrapped in a stream of conscious delivery. Mann's Death In Venice also shows its influence implicitly as well as explicitly. As always, if Bainville's plot is convoluted, his language is sublime. I've read somewhere that Banville considered this novel among his favorites, and the lead character was supposedly inspired by Paul de Man's troubles. Banville is an imaginative craftsman who keeps within a particular and frankly restricted framework: always a first person narrator; a stream of consciousness delivery; inevitably an unreliable narrator of sinister intentions; a murky plot; always the artful fraud and the fraud of art; and downbeat, downbeat, downbeat. If any of the above fails to appeal to your taste, seek your literary satisfaction elsewhere. If all this sorts out for you, or, as can happen, sorts you out, then accept the risk of being hooked on Banville peculiar blend of irony, beautiful language, and dark interiors.

Thought provoking and well paced... Well written and better portrayed.

Axel Vander is a Belgian scholar working at a college in Arcady, California who is enticed to travel to Turin Italy by a young woman named Cass Cleave. He is about as unpleasant a character as you'll want to meet in a book who is old and unhealthy with some dark secrets of which Cass has uncovered. Their encounter is very strange and leads to a very improbable love affair. From this point the story slowly reveals Vanders secrets. Banville's prose is exquisite although at times very dense and almost impenetrable but excellent nevertheless.

A masterfully written novel. Duplicity, broken bodies and souls, not much happiness beyond this:

"I am not the first to have exclaimed upon the pleasures of life in wartime London. I do not mean the great, new, warm sense of communality everyone is supposed to have felt, the keeping up of peckers ('keep your chin up' in Britain) and home-fires burning and all the rest of that twaddle; no, what I am thinking of is the licence, voluptuous and languid, with just a whiff of brimstone to it, that was granted to us by the permanent likelihood of imminent, indiscriminate and violent death. Living there with Lady Laura and her money was like being on an ocean liner out of control and hopelessly adrift yet on board which all the indulgent decorums of a luxury cruise are punctiliously observed. What did It matter that up on the bridge the captain was drunk and down in the bilges the crew was frantically pumping? Despite the bombs and rumors of bombs, despite the austerities and the tiresome restrictions on everyday living, we flitted, my little lover and I, from bar to bar, from club to club, from party to party, heedless, and as happy as probably either of us was capable of being. The city was all plangent airs and melancholy graces."

Description: Axel Vander, celebrated academic and man of culture, is spending his twilight years on the west coast of America. For decades he has lived with the knowledge of a tragedy of which he was both perpetrator and victim.

Opening: WHO speaks? It is her voice, in my head. I fear it will not stop until I stop. It talks to me as I haul myself along theses cobbled streets, telling me things I do not want to hear,

4* The Sea
TR Shroud
TR THe Book of Evidence
2* Ancient Light
3* Prague Pictures

Why am I so attracted to despicable protagonists?

For all those who love the use of great language in a book, "Shroud" and John Banville in general, is a must recommendation. It's just my second book by the author but I guess his style will be about the same in all his books. I already have another one to read in my home library and will look for more. Banville is a truly excellent writer, his prose is simply elegant and wonderful. He is often compared to Nabokov and I can see why. Sometimes he may seem eccentric or ironic either but there is no doubt that his language is adorable. Ι must admit, I already declare myself a fan of him. The funny thing is that this book is a part of an informal trilogy, includes Eclipse, Shroud and Ancient Light. I first met him through his last one, now this is the middle one.. So I 'm gonna read it backwards. I believe that contemporary Irish literature, if not Banville himself, deserves every success and praise in worldwide level, and wish (and hope) for a Nobel soon.

CRITIQUE:

Playing with (the) Fire (of Language and Identity)

This is a wondrous achievement, a novel that wraps you in its sly embrace and seduces you with its rapturous prose, like an illicit lover.

A "Shroud" Contiguous with "The Untouchable"

While the novel was written as the second volume of the Cleave Trilogy, it has much in common with John Banville's earlier novel, n  "The Untouchable".n

The earlier novel concerned a protagonist and narrator (Victor Maskell) who had assumed a false identity, in order to spy for the Soviet Union. A writer and contemporary historian (Serena Vandeleur) had exposed his long-term spying activities in a book that was about to be published, and the newspapers had got onto the story.

What would Maskell do? Defect? Commit suicide? Confess? Make a fool of himself? Disgrace himself?

No, he sat down at his desk to write a version of the events. He doesn't necessarily seek to make himself look good or to add "yet another burnished mask" to the collection he has already assembled:

n  
n  "I shall strip away layer after layer of grime - the toffee-coloured varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling - until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self."n  
n

Inevitably, he laughs at his pretence, so that, as beautifully written as that work is, we don't know whether it is genuine or whether it is the product of a truly unreliable narrator.

"Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell" (1)

"Shroud" has a similar design and construction. The protagonist and sometime narrator is Axel Vander, an academic, who spent his childhood and youth in Antwerp, Belgium and now teaches at a university in Arcady, California.

However, Vander is not the real Axel Vander. The real Vander was a childhood friend, who died early in World War II. The fake Vander was a Jew who assumed the identity of his friend after his death. His motive was not necessarily to obtain some material benefit from the assumption of identity. Instead, it's likely that he was simply trying to avoid becoming a victim of the Holocaust, like the rest of his family.

A Lifetime of Dissembling

He actually had to fabricate a whole new identity for Axel Vander, one that the real Vander had not yet constructed at the time of his death:

n  
n  "It was not so much that I wanted to be him - although I did, I did want to be him - but that I wanted so much more not to be me. That is to say, I desired to escape my own individuality, the hereness of my self, not the thereness of my world, the world of my lost, poor people.

"I took, or borrowed, rather, nothing except his identity...

"Axel Vander's reputation in the world is of my making. It was I who clawed my way to this high place."n  
n

In effect, the fake Vander had become an Other (i.e., his own Other), and was now two.

The Appearance of Cass and Her Research

Meanwhile, a postgraduate literature student (Catherine/ Cass Cleave, the daughter of Alexander Cleave from n  "Eclipse")n has discovered that Axel Vander had written a number of anti-Semitic articles for a collaborationist Belgian newspaper at the beginning of World War II.

She writes a letter to Vander to reveal that she has discovered his back story, and he agrees to meet her in Turin, where he had planned to deliver a speech to an informal conference of academics (he calls the attendees an "influential coterie of savants"):

n
"That letter, of course, was the crossing point. Now I was cloven in two more thoroughly than ever, I who was always more than myself. On one side there was the I I had been before the letter arrived, and now there was this new I, a singular capital standing at a tilt to all the known things that had suddenly become unfamiliar."
n

He fears meeting Cass, because he's concerned she might wish to blackmail him or destroy his reputation:

n  
n  "...what could there be here for me except confrontation, exposure, humiliation...

"[What did she know] about me and my shady, not to say shrouded, past?n  
n

A Novel Inspired by a Trilogy of Philosophers

This aspect of the novel is based on the wartime life of the deconstructionist literary critic, Paul de Man, whose own newspaper articles were discovered by a research student only in 1987 after his death (in 1983). The implications of this discovery are still resonating in the corridors of academies of literary theory.

While in Turin, the organiser of the conference, Franco Bartoli, accuses Vander of having murdered his wife, Magda, who has recently died, after a short struggle with an unidentified "malady" ("I know you killed your wife"). Vander says only that he's unsure whether he has been "widowed" or "widowered". He confides, nevertheless, that:

n  
n  "Only in death has she begun to live fully, for me."n  
n

While this accusation isn't explored in detail in the novel, it is based on Louis Althusser's 1980 killing of his wife, Hélène Rytmann, for which "crime" Althusser was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity.

There is also an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche's shouting "You, inhuman slaughterer of this steed!" at the Turin horseman who was whipping his horse in the street, which preceded Nietzche's degeneration into madness:

n  
n  "I must have shouted out something, her name, perhaps, for suddenly everyone in the crowded place was looking at me, as they do here, not in alarm or disapproval but simple curiosity."n  
n

These philosophers are like the sound of the sea deep within the shell of Banville's character or Vander's identity.

Disarming Cass

Vander soon learns that Cass (who suffers from seizures) is not well:

n  
n  "I knew that Cass Cleave was mad. Well, not mad, exactly, but not sane either."n  
n

This triggers the fake Vander to sit down and write his own story, a la Victor Maskell:

n  
n  "I shall speak only of what I know, of what I can vouch for."n  
n

His story becomes the novel we read. Consistently with Vander's philosophy, his story tempts us to infer that:

n  
n  "...every text conceals a shameful secret..."n  
n

Paul de Man (with his son, Michael) (Source)

The Manufacture of Identity

Vander says of his past:

n  
n  "I have manufactured a voice, as once I manufactured a reputation, from material filched from others...

"I spent the best part of what I suppose I must call my career trying to drum into those who would listen among the general mob of resistant sentimentalists surrounding me the simple lesson that there is no self: no ego, no precious individual spark breathed into each one of us by a bearded patriarch in the sky, who does not exist either..."

"I had made myself adept at appearing deeply learned in a range of subjects by the skilful employment of certain key concepts gleaned from the work of others, but to which I was able to give a personal twist of mordancy or insight...

"I was fashioning a new methodology of thinking modelled on the crossings and conflicts of my own intricate and, in large part, fabricated past...

"I could not but admire my own performance. What a fabulist I was; what an artist!"n  
n

Then again, perhaps, the question ought to be, what an unreliable narrator? (But if he concedes that he has lied or dissembled, is his story nevertheless/ still unreliable?)(2)

Harlequin in His Half-Mask

In her journal, Cass describes the fake Vander as "Harlequin in his half-mask":

n
"His black half-mask completes the impression of something savage and fiendish, suggesting a cat, a satyr, and executioner..."

"Rip the mask from his face to find - another mask. Father father father."

She associates Vander (the academic) with her father (the actor) or, perhaps, the paternalist God (i.e., the "bearded patriarch in the sky"). She also shares some kind of love for them both (or all three?).

Only in death has Cass begun to live fully, for Vander, if only through his story, this novel, as if he had invented his love (and her death).

Caveat Lector

For anybody about to embark on reading the Cleave Trilogy, I highly recommend that you start with "Eclipse" and read "Shroud" second.

"Shroud" actually ends at the same point in time as "Eclipse", and clarifies the questions I had about the fate of Cass, and therefore was intimidated by the risk of spoilers in my review of the first volume. In a sense, "Shroud" itself would be a spoiler, if read before "Eclipse".



FOOTNOTES:

(1) This heading is the title of an essay Jacques Derrida wrote about Paul de Man's experience of World War II.

(2) Is this a case of the liar's paradox?



VERSE:

"Legion of Selves"
[Partly in the Words
Of John Banville]

I am, dear reader,
A legion of selves
Assembled out of
A multitude of
Characters from the
Books upon my shelves.

"Life and Death"
[In the Words of John Banville]

Why should I
Have life, and
She have none?


SOUNDTRACK:

The Rolling Stones - "Play With Fire"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBGS...

Lucinda Willams - "Play With Fire"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHEzW...

The Velvet Underground - "Some Kind of Love"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnYlC...

This is not an easy book to read and certainly not for entertainment. But it is brilliant.
The character narrating the story is despicable. Seen through the eyes of the narrator, other characters are also extraordinarily unattractive.
So, why read this book? My response is that it is a privilege to read such a writer.
I think the work has the similar attraction and fascination that one might have for a beautiful but deadly spider.
The writing is in a craft of its own, the author having complete control of the medium, giving the reader access to an extraordinary world of the mind.
The characters of this novel have a connection with those in "Ancient Light", published some ten years later. I happened to read Ancient Light first, and this created a sense of mystery for me.
There is a certain kind of redemption as the story of Shroud finds its conclusion and that is somewhat satisfying. Anything more complete would not be possible or believable for such a character.

Pg 25, “Time and age have brought not wisdom, as they are supposed to do, but confusion, and a broadening incomprehension, each year laying down another ring of nesience.” Shroud, cover or envelop so as to conceal from view. John Banville weaves for us a tale around a central character, Axel Vander who has shrouded his self identity in lies and deceptions. A young woman, Cassandra has found him out and writes him a letter. Axel in an attempt to find out how much she really knows will reveal to her his life's story but not without concealing an important detail. A shocking page turner, you'll not be able to put this one down. Much of this has to do with narcissism, self identity and the authentic self which the author covers in stylish detail. “Is not love the mirror of burnished gold in which we contemplate our shining selves?”

I have a hard time assigning stars to this review. Whereas I was mesmerized by Banville's writing, I found this story and the characters dismal. Axel Vander evoked by pity and revulsion and had not one redeeming quality that I can recall. "Miss Nemesis" was pathetic and cruel. Even the gracious setting of Turin (thus, the most obvious reference in the title "Shroud") couldn't lift the oppressive cloud of lethargy and depression that permeated this novel.

But there is a twist that kept me turning the pages. That, and Banville's astonishing power as a writer. I will read more, if only to immerse myself in his fierce style.

Senility, the sickness of old age that most have yet to worry about, and yet those who do need to worry, avoid it like the plague it is. I can't relate to Axel Vander's age and celebrity, nor can I relate to his place of childhood, and yet I was lured by this exquisite story that seemingly drags along in lengthy paragraphs and conscious thought, with Proustian references to Swann's Way and memory. I don't even like Vander, still he manages to keep me intrigued; in fact at some point, I even find both he and his indomitable cane humorous. He is a man "thrown together by a legion of selves," a man who has led a double life which started with his quest for survival.
n  

I desired to escape my own individuality, the hereness of my self, not the thereness of my world, the world of my lost, poor people…I can scarcely remember what it was like to be the one that I once was…I pause in uncertainty, losing my way in this welter of personal, impersonal, impersonating, pronouns.

n
Vander, a Holocaust orphan who is saved by a mysterious note, is linked to four women: Cassandra Cleave, his wife Magda, Lady Laura, and Kristina Kovacs. I liked the former less, the latter three I found intriguing. Cassandra Cleave is unhinged and unreachable and so in need of love and attention, that she is willing to cast her love to a man old enough to be her father--or, oddly enough, because she views him as her father. Cass is so intellectually inclined, she is one step away from being a scholar, if only she didn't have an ailing mind: "she was one of those creatures who exist on a median plane between the inanimate and the super-animate, between clay and angels." Lady Laura is Vander's rich, former lover during his younger days, the woman much like Vander, and who is responsible for his stiff leg and one eye. Kristina Kovacs is the woman who Vander possibly loved; his one-night stand who was too much of his intellectual equal, and possibly because of this, never his significant other.

I preferred Vander to Cleave not only because he is a Holocaust survivor who'd spent most of his life pretending that he wasn't Jewish, but because he is also a self-aware scoundrel. He uses everyone with whom he comes into contact; he is unapologetic and ruthless. Vander is the bad guy in your favorite thriller movie, the one whose actions you don't side with, yet become addicted to watching (think Denzel Washington in Training Day).
n  

The past, my own past, the past of all the others, is still there, a secret chamber inside me, like one of those sealed rooms, behind a false wall, where a whole family might live in hiding for years. In the silence, in solitude, I close my eyes and hear them in there, the mouse-scuffles of the little ones, the grown-ups' murmurings, their sighs.

n
Banville seems to have his niche: a blend of past and present intermingled with thought, themes embedded in memory, and elegant prose. Whenever I seek an author who can give me words uniquely wound in a lyrical waltz, I know I can look to Banville, especially when time constraints and convoluted work readings set my mind ablaze. His sentence structures are cooling streams for the mind, and even his titles are symbolic: the Shroud of the Crucifixion; the shroud who is Axel Vander. I only wish I'd read this before reading Ancient Light, so I could have had this backstory of Cass Cleave, this daughter of the infamous protagonist in Ancient Light.