Acclaimed novelist John Banville (The Sea won the Man Booker Prize in 2005) visited campus for two weeks in November 2018. Mr. Banville taught classes, was the subject of a Roundtable on his works, and gave a public reading, in which he discussed how and why he writes. During the Q & A session after the reading, he even answered the question (in a sly reference to his book The Blue Guitar): "Have you ever stolen anything?"
See the video of John Banville's Reading, with Q&A following.
This month's edition of Notre Dame Magazine includes a reflection by Associate Editor Jason Kelly '95 on John Banville's visit. It includes this paragraph:
Novels, like paintings, are “flat surfaces, decorated.” And an artist in any genre must see with an almost indecent depth of perception. “The artistic gaze makes the world flinch,” he says. “It doesn’t expect to be looked at with such intensity.”
Read "Art and Craft with John Banville," Notre Dame Magazine, Jan. 2019