The Infinities (Borzoi Books) |  | Author: John Banville
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 128871
Format: Deckle Edge
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1ST
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307272796
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307272799
ASIN: 0307272796
Publication Date: February 23, 2010
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Product Description
On a languid midsummerâs day in the countryside, old Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician, is dying. His family gathers at his bedside: his son, young Adam, struggling to maintain his marriage to a radiantly beautiful actress; his nineteen-year-old daughter, Petra, filled with voices and visions as she waits for the inevitable; their stepmother, Ursula, whose relations with the Godley children are strained at best; and Petraâs âyoung manââvery likely more interested in the father than the daughterâwho has arrived for a superbly ill-timed visit.
But the Godley family is not alone in their vigil. Around them hovers a family of mischievous immortalsâamong them, Zeus, who has his eye on young Adamâs wife; Pan, who has taken the doughy, perspiring form of an old unwelcome acquaintance; and Hermes, who is the genial and omniscient narrator: âWe too are petty and vindictive,â he tells us, âjust like you, when we are put to it.â As old Adamâs days on earth run down, these unearthly beings start to stir up trouble, to sometimes wildly unintended effect. . . .
Blissfully inventive and playful, rich in psychological insight and sensual detail, The Infinities is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a wise look at the terrible, wonderful plight of being humanâa dazzling novel from one of the most widely admired and acclaimed writers at work today.
Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Author John Banville
Question: Where did you get the idea to use Greek gods as characters in a novel? And then how did you settle on the ones we meet in The Infinities? John Banville: I have always been an admirer of the great German dramatist Heinrich von Kleist, particularly the play I consider his masterpiece, Amphitryon, which I adapted for the Irish stage. In this wonderful tragi-comedy Jupiter falls for Alcmene, wife of the Theban general Amphitryon, and comes to earth with his son and sidekick Mercury, to spend a heavenly night with the lady; the next morning Amphitryon returns unexpectedly from the wars, precipitating an intricate comedy of errors. Originally I intended to base The Infinities quite closely on Amphitryon, but fiction has its own laws and its own demands, and the finished novel is an autonymous creature, though the Kleist is still there in skeletal form. Question: Why did you decide to make Adam Godley a mathematician? John Banville: I donât know that I ever actively decided to make him anything."Decisions" in the writing of fiction tend to be mostly a matter of dream and drift. But I wanted him to be someone operating in an otherworld of speculation, pure number, and infinitudes, where the gods might be already at play. Question: There is something so classical and familiar about the death bed scene, the family patriarch dying and the family coming from far and wide to gather at his bedside. What about the death bed construct appealed to you as a starting off point? John Banville: Again, I didnât think of the book as centering on a death bed scene--and I donât think it does, really--but of course fiction is a tired old business where there is nothing new under even the intensest sun. In fact, one of the pleasures of working in the novel form is the challenge of finding new ways to present old things. Spinoza says somewhere that the wise man thinks only of death but all his thoughts will thereby be a contemplation of life. I hope thatâs the case with The Infinities, and that everything in it is vividly alive, even the dying old man upstairs. Question: Many readers have commented on the humor in this novel. Is it harder for you to write comedy or tragedy (which you have certainly done in previous novels)? John Banville: All my books are funny, if you know how to listen for the jokes. The novel, at a certain basic level, is a comic form. Do you know the story of Kafka reading to a group of friends from The Trial, and laughing so much he could not get past the first page? Kafka is a great realist--indeed, one of the greatest--and reality is always funny, though the fun is often steeped in pathos. Question: This novel takes place over the course of a single day. Why did you decide on that time structure? John Banville: I was following Amphitryon in this--preserving the unities, as the Aristotelians say. There is a nice compactness to the time-scale in the book, which I like. Also the fact of limiting the action to a single day makes for a mysterious sweet melancholy. Everyone has days that will live in the memory for a lifetime; for my characters, that Midsummer Day is one. Question: So Hermes is our narrator (though, of course, John Banville is really our narrator). So author as messenger? Author as God? Or is that just reading too much into it? John Banville: Well, of course, in the little world of a novel the author is a god, or at least a demigod, watching over his creatures, helping them, if he can, or at least not hindering them. In a wider sense, I find the pagan world of the Greeks highly appealing, and wish we could regain their state of innocence and sophistication. Bring back the old gods, I say. (Photo © Jerry Bauer)
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 The gods are "endlessly diverted by the spectacle of ... heart-searchings and travails of the spirit" February 26, 2010
S. McGee (New York, NY)
74 out of 78 found this review helpful
Ostensibly, this is book about a dying man, whose family assembles around him and waits for him to draw his final breath - a conventional enough device, second only to the old standbys of a family assembling for the holidays, a marriage or a funeral. Ostensibly. In actuality, that's just a jump-off point for what I can only describe as a romp through nearly every theme touched on by classic literature, from existential ruminations on the meaning of life to the bawdy realities of what that life actually involves for the people that live it.
On the surface, it's the story of the dying Adam Godley (take heed of the name...), his wife, Ursula, son Adam and daughter Petra (think of the meaning of her name - stone); and Adam junior's wife, Helen (whose name also will prove meaningful.) But it's also narrated by the gods of Olympus, who, as is their wont, have decided to alleviate their boredom or pursue their lusts by descending to involve themselves in the concerns of the Godley family. The narrator is Hermes - or is it? As his voice seems to blur and meld with that of the dying Adam in the final pages. Zeus covets Helen and commands Hermes to hold back the dawn so that he can have his way with her. And then Pan, in the form of Benny Grace, shows up on the doorstep...
There's no way to summarize what happens in this novel, and indeed what happens, event-wise, seems less important for Banville than finding a way to make us think about the world we inhabit. It's a world where the immortals are as present as the `infinities' of the title, which the dying Adam, a mathematician, discovered. Why would the gods come back? Well, Hermes points out in a matter-of-fact manner, they never left. "We merely made it seem that we had withdrawn, for a decent interval, as if to say we know when we are not wanted," he explains. "At the same time, we cannot resist revealing ourselves to you once in a while, out of our incurable boredom, our love of mischief, or that lingering nostalgia we harbour for this rough world of our making."
Adam and the family dog appear to be the only members of the household to suspect the presence of the immortals amongst them. Adam recognizes it intellectually - after all, if there are infinities, shouldn't there be immortal beings that inhabit them? - while the dog recognizes it on a more visceral level, along with the innate human fear of death. Meanwhile, the others will have their lives reshaped by the gods in ways they may not understand, or attribute to chance.
This is a fascinating book, but one that - despite the constant references to every possible bodily function and fluid imaginable - is all about ideas, likely to appeal to those who can pick up on all of Banville's allusions to classic drama or alternative history. as I was reading, there were often moments where I felt he was present at my shoulder, whispering "get it?" and giving me a sly wink or a nudge in the manner of the Olympians in his novel. I don't usually have a taste for surreal elements creeping into a book, or self-conscious wit, but ultimately Banville won me over with his combination of luscious writing and comic insights into human frailty.
Highly recommended to anyone with a taste for literary fiction, but not for anyone who finds themselves disliking novels that are more about people thinking than doing stuff. (If you haven't enjoyed anything else by Banville, the odds are high that you won't like this one.) I've rated it 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
MERCURIAL February 28, 2010
Kerry Leimer (Makawao, Hawaii United States)
39 out of 44 found this review helpful
Somewhere, someone will read this book and comprehend the various implications pulling and pushing between the stories of the mortals and the immortals, between the conventional narrative and the insertion of the author as the sort of god that cannot fully grasp his own creation. On my own somewhat reduced level of comprehension I can only offer that Banville has again managed to create a text that without warning illuminates some of the more profound details of existence, some of the most disjunctive associations, all within a playful fluidity of seemingly casual observation. These periodic shocks and flares of insight -- gleefully departing from the conventions of story-telling -- strike me as what the book is actually about, sorting through the tangle that shapes constructs of personal identity, belief, experience and knowledge to gain some momentarily objective glimpses of the truer contours of the human condition. Banville has a distinct ability to transcribe a sense of time and place to the page and with "The Infinities" he gives articulate voice to those more elusive impressions of being. Scattered, infrequent, unexpected and always profound shifts in perception draw us closer to an at least momentary comprehension of our selves and the world of which we are a sometimes conscious part. One to read, let rest for a year or so, and then read again.
The Father. March 15, 2010
Jan Dierckx (Belgium, Turnhout)
12 out of 17 found this review helpful
The novel is set in an old mansion in the country side. Mr. Adam, the old man, compared with Zeus the primordial lover, is dying and wishes to spend his last days in the mansion instead of the hospital. His family is also present. But not only the family, some of the ancient gods - like Zeus the Father and Lover, and Hermes the Guide to the World of the Dead - are there also . The gods watch the humans and comment on what they say and do.
This blend of modern and ancient personages gives the novel its universal and timeless meaning: the battle between young and old and Love as a substitute for immortality.
During their stay at the mansion they are questioning themselves and the others. They experience their surroundings in different ways, depending on their vantage point. Past and present become intertwined.
'The Infinities' by John Banville is a rich and complex novel.
Well Worth the Read, a Modern-Versed Shakespeare June 8, 2010
Bookreporter.com (New York, New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This novel is a chariot that brings the gods, the avatar of the infinities. Being human is a curse, bedeviled by having to choose between right and wrong --- "philosophical idealism" --- choices not necessary for immortals.
In John Banville's first book since the Booker Award-winning THE SEA (and THE LEMUR, written as Benjamin Black), the titular infinities are immortals, Zeus and son Hermes, messenger of the gods who often led men astray. With this intriguing work, readers certainly are not led astray. This complex novel has page-length paragraphs and run-on sentences that prodigiously describe with all senses events leading to an enlightening conclusion well worth the read, a modern-versed Shakespeare. "You will have noticed my way with words, supposedly rare in a man of my calling. Words are so friendly, so accommodating, so loosely adaptable, not like numbers, with their tiresome insistence on meaning only what they mean and nothing more."
Temporal "Old Adam" Godley has a stroke. He "felt, actually felt, a blood vessel bursting in his brain, and toppled forward on the floor, his face to the tiles and his scrawny bare bum in the air." Adam "fears premature burial" and considers death "the age-old inquisition." His daughter Petra, the "loony sister" of young Adam, manages the care of their father at Arden House, a magnificently described estate rivaling Wuthering Heights. Adam-the-elder has regrets: "I treated my children as adults and my wife as a child...and now it is too late to make amends. Spilt milk, spilt milk --- the dairy floor is awash and the dairyman and his missus are weeping buckets."
The narrator assumes earthly forms and sometimes doesn't like the experience: "The milk was barely cool and noticeably soured; one of the incidental interests of taking on temporary mortal form is the opportunity it affords of sampling new sensations. I had never tasted sour milk before; I shall not taste it again." Even immortals acknowledge shortcomings, when they inhabit mortal coils, "one of those shameful social compromises that happen in dreams."
With epic poetic prose, the over-wordiness isn't haughty. But then, immortals and infinities have æons to accumulate a voluminous vocabulary that kept this mortal coil springing to the dictionary every other page. Acutely detailed descriptions seem more like a movie than a novel. Not unlike the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where Bowman becomes an ever-devolving chrysalis, Old Adam counts clicks of a clock and steps taken to school, and relives his past in sort of a drowning flash-before-your-eyes: "[T]he impossibility of accuracy torments him." Observations question what is reality: "For what is spirit in this world may be flesh in another. In an infinity of worlds all possibilities are fulfilled."
At the end, a touching scene has Old Adam Godley temporarily alert, facing the world through open windows in the Sky Room. He imparts knowledge to each in the household, giving precious gifts to all, especially to young Adam and daughter-in-law Helen. Written with expansive verbiage, "compared to your barely articulate gruntings," Godley's world is an "infinity of worlds" that requires readers to pay close attention. "It is a world where nothing is lost, where all is accounted for while yet the mystery of things is preserved." This momentously cerebral work of literary art barely misses a five-star rating, only because of tangential asides.
Mesmerizing Prose and Fascinating Story July 4, 2010
publiuspen (San Francisco, CA)
The inclusion of Greek Mythology and certain of the Gods in particular makes this a wonderfully ambitious novel. Banville's prose, his use of words and metaphors, is nothing short of art work. While I very much enjoyed the plot and character interplay, I found myself frequently re-reading paragraphs out of pure admiration (not for lack of clarity, as some reviews of Banville have suggested). This is definitely for readers who love beautiful writing. Some reviewers have suggested that a slow pace and density make this a difficult read...afterall, this book does take place during one day. However, I found the plot enormously entertaining and ribald. Banville's prose, however, is pure artistry of the highest level.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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