The earliest working draft of The Book of Evidence is dated June 21, 1986 and comes in the form of a small red and black buckram notebook, very much used – indeed, completely full – but also very much preserved, so much so that almost four decades on its spine is still as stiff and as solid as one might imagine it was when first it was cracked open all those summers ago. The inside cover of the notebook bears three inscriptions, a lone line from Franz Kafka to his lover Milena Jesenská separating two quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche.
The figures of Kafka and Nietzsche loom large in the world of The Book of Evidence‘s Freddie Montgomery, a namesake, perhaps, of the latter. That the first encounter with the initial drafts of the novel is marked by their presence draws to mind a multitude of questions, not least regarding the role and relevance of the writers’ disparate outlooks – Kafka an absurdist, and Nietzsche a nihilist. It is their words which fill the first blank space of the notebook, and it is their ghosts which haunt the following pages.
Though Banville himself is of the the opinion that his works centre invariably around a ‘search for authenticity’ (synonymous with ‘meaning’ within his works) he is ambivalent at best towards this notion.1 His protagonists are figures of failure, thwarted and trampled underfoot by a world with which they are constantly at odds. This is, of course, no different in The Book of Evidence, and the question of meaning – what, if anything, it is, and how much, if at all, it matters – is a difficult one to contend with when the novel’s narrator so gleefully reminds his readers that ‘none of this means anything;’ however, the initial Nietzsche quotation, extant only in the working drafts, provides something of a clue: though there are no ‘moral phenomena’ in this world, there is a ‘moral interpretation of phenomena.’2 An idea of meaning as a conscious and creative construction begins to take shape here, coming through the various drafts to fully flourish in the published edition.
In examining the archival holdings of Trinity College Dublin I have set out on this ‘search for authenticity’ within The Book of Evidence in the hopes of discerning and developing what it is that constitutes meaning within Banville, and what that meaning is worth. A comparative approach has allowed me to analyse the working manuscripts against the finalised publication, and in so doing I have been able to identify what I have termed moments of inherent meaninglessness and moments of inherent meaning between the drafts, offering additional critical context to considering meaning within Banville. This research stands as an original contribution to the existing body of Banvillean scholarship, which heretofore has neglected to examine his manuscripts.
Inherent Meaninglessness looks at what has changed throughout the drafts, narratively, structurally and linguistically, making specific reference to certain comparative readings.
Inherent Meaning looks at what has remained unchanged throughout the drafts, narratively, structurally and linguistically, making specific reference to certain comparative readings.
What it All Means is a summation of the significance of this project’s findings.
A Note on Photography:
Unfortunately, it has not been possible to obtain permission to reproduce sections of the John Banville manuscripts at the time of this site’s publication, so I have transcribed sections from my own notes in as clear a manner as possible. I am hopeful that I will be able to furnish this site with photographs of the manuscripts themselves in time, and have received the personal support of Mr John Banville himself, who has written to the relevant parties to try to secure permission. I am very grateful to all involved who have done their utmost to aid in this endeavour, and look forward to sharing the material in due course.
Title is taken from John Banville’s ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’ quoted in Mark O’Connell, The Narcissistic Fictions of John Banville (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
1John Banville, quoted by Anthony Cummins, ‘John Banville: There’s been a creeping retreat into infantilism’ in The Guardian, 12 November 2022. Accessed 10 March 2024.
2John Banville, The Book of Evidence (London: Secker & Warburg, 1989; reis. Picadore, 2010.)
At Once Less and More 