SOURCE: "Profoundly Superficial," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 8, No. 340, February 17, 1995, pp. 38-9.

In the following review, MacCann discusses Banville's Athena and concludes that "At the heart of his writing appears to be a fear of uglification by the ordinary."

Joyce described respectable society in Dublin as suffering from a particular unreality: perhaps colonial mimicry, perhaps also the result of a great literary tradition, disproportionately dominant for such a small culture. In Ireland there is a sense in which one's every gesture is a literary cliché; there are more scenes in books than things to do.

A major theme in Irish (and much other) literature is the threat of lifeless conformity and overfamiliar material to individual imagination. For this reason some Irish writers still exile themselves. A few have looked to the vibrant working-class culture, previously excluded from the canon and thus free from literary self-consciousness. John Banville, who...