Ruth Dudley Edwards (right) gets in touch to see if I’d be interesting in hosting her version of events in Banvillegate (See what I did there? It was John Banville, right, at Harrogate, and … oh. Okay). Erm, Ruth? Yes, please. To wit: “Tony Benn never opens his mouth without switching on his tape-recorder, and after this business with John Banville, who represented me as saying the precise opposite of what I believe, I fear he is wise. At the risk of being balls-achingly tedious, my historian’s instincts make me want to set the record straight.At the risk of getting splinters up my fundament, I genuinely think what’s happening here is a misunderstanding. Mind you, I’ve no problem with a good old-fashioned literary spat, either, especially when crime writers are pretty much universally nice people. I mean, seriously, crime writing festivals can get a bit Stepford at times, no?
“Banville got up the noses of the Harrogate audience by – no doubt unwittingly – giving the impression that he was rather embarrassed by his Benjamin Black persona. It’s is hard not to bristle when you hear that because Banville agonises over every sentence that he does well to write 100 words a day, but Black merrily bashes out 2,000.
“Being an out-and-proud crime writer myself, who misses no opportunity to assail those who disparage the genre, I displayed my irritation when moderating the Emerald Noir panel the following morning by asking Declan Hughes whether he thought Banville was denying that he felt he was slumming it, although he really believed he was. Dec, being more streetwise than me, refused to get involved in this fight.
“In the Daily Telegraph on 28 July, Jake Kerridge got the wrong end of the stick by saying: ‘The writer Ruth Dudley Edwards commented at one event that “he may insist he’s not slumming it, but he’s slumming it.’ On the Guardian books blog this turned into: ‘”He’s slumming it,”’ author Ruth Dudley Edwards said the following day. “He says he isn’t, but he is.”’ Which in Banville’s Guardian article on 1 August - which was trailed on the front of the Review section as ‘’John Banville: ‘I’m not “slumming it” as a crime writer’ - became ‘Another blogger did a survey among attendees [of the event where he and Reginald Hill were interviewed by Mark Lawson]. One of them, Ruth Dudley Edwards, a good writer who should have known better, allowed herself to be quoted as saying that I was slumming it as Benjamin Black. The inevitable implication of this is that Dudley Edwards considers crime writers to be slum dwellers.’ He then proceeded to defend crime writing against me and people like me.
“Mind you, if he’d stayed for Emerald Noir he wouldn’t have got this wrong. And if he’d looked at my website, he’d have found some impassioned defences of crime writing. But, hey, as Reg Hill wrote when I moaned to him about this: ‘There’s nothing like a good misunderstanding for promoting misunderstanding among people.’” - Ruth Dudley Edwards
6 comments:
Ugg. It's just one of those instances where if everyone sat down in the same room and had the conversation, there'd probably be no disagreement or disrespect at all.
Of course Banville as Banville spends more time on his sentences than Banville as Black. It isn't slumming it, and it's no comment at all on the overall 'worth' of the final product. Nobody would bat an eyelid if Sophie Hannah said she got fewer words done as Sophie Hannah the poet than Sophie Hannah the crime writer.
"Balls-achingly tedious" may be the best phrase I've read in a week. In my admittedly limited experience of being interviewed by the press, I have yet to read one resulting article where I didn't think, "Hang on, I never said that." The misquotes have ranged from things the journalist has misheard, to things they've misinterpreted, to things they'v flat-out made up. I don't see eye-to-eye with Tony Benn on many things, but having a tape recorder handy I can agree with.
As for the dispute between Mr. Banville and Ms. Dudley Edwards - clearly the only way to settle this is with a bareknuckle fist fight. As soon as a time and place is announced, I'll be there.
If this were in the U.S., Obama would have put his oar in, and by now they would all be embracing in the beer garden--uh, I mean Rose Garden.
Send 'em on over.
A short man looking for a balcony.
Steve, squire - "Of course Banville as Banville spends more time on his sentences than Banville as Black. It isn't slumming it, and it's no comment at all on the overall 'worth' of the final product."
Correct and true, sir.
Cheers, Dec
Dec's a softie. Stuart has the right idea. Ruth
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