The Untouchable

John Banville's The Untouchable is a remarkable book for myriad reasons. For the sheer artistry of his prose alone, I would recommend this book. The weight and care placed upon each word and sentence gives the novel a wonderfully balanced and effortless feel, and at the same time leaves the reader in no doubt that he/she is in the presence of a true master craftsman of the English language. But it is not just Banville's prose that makes The Untouchable a book of the highest merit; it is the character of Victor Maskell, portrayed in all of his ambiguity and nuance, which moves this book. Based of the Cambridge spy Anthony Blount, Victor Maskell narrates his pseudo-memoir in the first person, but that doesn't clarify the man or make him easily understood. In short, Banville gives us a masterful insight into a man of many contradictions: Royalist, jaded Communist, spy, husband, father, homosexual, Irish yet working for the British at Bletchley. The sheer amount of contradictions gives the reader a sense of wariness when it comes to trusting Maskell's word, but that is the point for I doubt that Maskell himself truly knows who he is. The setting and ancillary characters like Boy (based on Guy Burgess), Nick and Querell (Graham Greene?) are also deftly handled with meticulous care. This is a profound, beautiful and at times darkly humorous work of art that deserves to be ranked among the great works of Western literature.

It is rather commonplace, I suppose, that it is difficult to write an "objective" review of a book one so deeply enjoys. Nevertheless, I'll give it a whirl. Banville truly does seem incapable of writing about anything that does not become a work of art under his pen. And, while John Le Carre is frequently praised as writing spy novels that are literature, they aren't. They're merely a cut above the usual 007 sort of thing. For something to be labelled art, correctly, it must soar above not only any genre it supposedly represents (herein, the "spy novel"), but must also must stake a unique claim in the reader's mind as something rich and strange, the like of which she/he has never yet come across. Banville accomplishes this feat with such apparently effortless ease here that this reader, in any event, is left, after reading it, in a swoon of delight which I'm still savouring. It's a pity to dissect what makes this so, but, really, it's not much of a dissection, only one cut into two parts: 1) Banville's lyrical, lulling yet erudite prose which comes here through the medium of our somewhat flawed protagonist, Maskell. It is literally transporting, in its Yeatsean reveries, not only to a different time and place but to the inside of Maskell's mind and heart, or perhaps some would prefer the term soul. 2) The Proustian depths of Banville/Maskell's insights into the kaleidoscopic, shape-shifting nature of life, love and identity. I suppose I'm obliged to say something about the "spy" aspect of the book and the to-do about the Cambridge set. I shall. It's of no importance.........Well, let me qualify, it's of no importance save as the setting in which Banville writes. It's just a sort of prop, as is Maskell's homosexuality. For, after reading this book, one realises that whether one is homo or hetero, spy or patriot (Maskell is, at times, all four.), we are all a bit out of our depths in this world in defining who we are and why we do things. To quote from the book, "Yes, how deceptively light they are, the truly decisive steps in life we take." When is a certain Swedish committee going to take note of this fellow?

John Banville, the Dublin author whose fiction is at once literary and accessible, funny and mordant, informed by history but rooted in subjective reality, is one of best writers in English today. "The Untouchable," his 1997 novel based on the life of Sir Anthony Blount, the Fourth Man in the Cambridge Spy Scandal, is extraordinarily good."Who am I?" art historian Victor Maskell asks himself in this first-person narrative, crafted ostensibly for the benefit of an ersatz amanuensis in a leather skirt. "What do I know? What matters?"Maskell, an essential outsider, has spent a lifetime using his studied charm, suppressed emotions, closeted homosexuality, and distant family connections to winnow a place for himself in the English establishment. It matters not that his marriage is a failure, that he is estranged from his children. Art, he concludes at one point - even the prized painting, attributed to Poussin, which has hung on his wall for 50 years - has no meaning; it simply is. The same, in his view, might be said of existence itself.This passive and unexamined life comes apart after Maskell, once an amateur intelligence operative, is publicly disgraced for having passed information of questionable value ("state secrets," the press calls it) to wartime ally the Soviet Union (the "enemy"). Why did he do it? Certainly not for money. Was it for the cause of worldwide socialism? For personal amusement? To put on the mask of a man of action? To avenge the underclass? Or was it simply another form of casual duplicity, no different is substance from the duplicity of proper gentlemen who take mistresses or of friendly governments which destroy villages in order to save them?Nothing is as it seems in this ambiguous, allusion-stocked, politically savvy, richly imagined life of Victor Maskell and his times. Robert E. Olsen

Loosely based on the life of British art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, and with capsule portraits of characters based on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, John Banville's "The Untouchable" is a witty and literate, if sometimes overwritten, novel, that never fails to entertain. The question of how a man like Blunt, or, in his present incarnation, Victor Maskell, could betray his country is a sticky one, but here the answer seems to be, quite casually. Maskell never appears to be very comfortable in the role of socialist, except when he's put on the defensive by his mocking friends, but he is amused by the idea of spying, which dovetails nicely with his personal philosophy of stoicism, as in Seneca, the Roman philosopher who ended his own life after being implicated in a conspiracy against the emperor, Nero. The obvious foreshadowing here is driven home by Maskell's obsession with a picture by Poussin depicting Seneca's suicide, which turns out to be possibly as fake as Maskell himself. Irish by birth, a father and husband, soldier and scholar, Maskell is also a closet homosexual, as well as a distant relation of the Queen. He is a mass of contradictions, who, having been betrayed as a spy and diagnosed as dying from cancer, has begun to wonder what was real and what illusory about his paradoxical life. In the end, he must face up to the ultimate betrayal. In "The Untouchable," Banville offers a perceptive glimpse into the world of those among us who are obliged to lead a double life, sometimes by choice, as in the case of spies, and sometimes not, as in the case of homosexuals. In the final analysis, spy and queer are not that far apart: the glamor and tawdriness, the mystery and banality, and always the backward look over one's shoulder. Victor Maskell may not be the most likeable of protagonists, but he is one of the most complex.

John Banville's "The Untouchable" is.....untouchable in its literary qualities and an instant classic. It's a shame it didn't enjoy more widespread recognition as a major and enduring literary work than it did. I've read many award winning contemporary novels these past two years but few have been as engaging and satisfying. Despite its topically controversial subject of the "Cambridge spies", Banville eschews cheap and tabloidy sensationalism in favour of a subtle and intimate approach to the unrevelling of the minds and motivation of a small group of intellectuals who betrayed England by passing state secrets to Russia. When their treachery was made public, the shock was compounded by the fact that the last of these spies to have been exposed (renamed Victor Maskell) was not some hip lefty but an art historian personally as well as professionally close to the Royal Family. But what emerges from this poignant and fictionalised treatment of the scandal and Victor Maskell's psyche is the realisation that these acts of treachery were probably committed for reasons that had little to do with ideology but with a desperate need to satisfy a hidden longing. Remember, the Soviet cause never took hold of Victor after an early visit to Russia which totally disenchanted him. But he secretly revelled in the furtive recruitment interviews and the risk of being caught as it provided relief and outlet for his (unconsciously) unhappy existence as a repressed homosexual. To all appearances, he was a family man but there is no trace of fatherliness in his relationship or feelings towards his adult children. The reader isn't spared a tragic ending and Banville's restraint only heightens the pain. "The Untouchable" makes a truly compelling read because Banville's writing is elegant, smart, humourous, subtle and hits you in between the eyes. His prose is never pretentious, always accessible and smooth as silk. This is an outstanding novel that should have made it to the Booker Prize shortlist. I'd give it a 6-star rating if I could. Read it.