The Untouchable

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of Verisimilitude
Review: I never read anything by John Banville until about a year ago, when I picked up a remaindered copy of "The Untouchable". The simplest way to express my reaction to this book is to say that, after finishing it, I promptly went out and bought several more of Banville's novels, realizing that he is one of a small handful of truly outstanding contemporary English writers.

"The Untouchable" is the first person narrative of Victor Maskell, Royalist and Marxist, art curator for the English monarchy and spy for the Soviet Union. Maskell's narrative begins in the 1980s, when he is in his seventies, sick with cancer. It is then that his past is suddenly and unexpectedly made public, the prominent, seemingly conservative intellectual revealed to be a man leading a double life, a traitor to his country. The reality, of course, is much more complex, for Maskell's motives, beliefs and actions, like those of all humans, are uncertain, clouded by conflicting memories, versions and perspectives. Married and the father of two children, Maskell is a homosexual. Ostensibly a Marxist and supporter of the great Soviet experiment, he is deeply attached to England and, in very personal ways, to the Royal family. Presumably acting for many years as a spy for the Soviets, the practical value of his activities is largely confined to being a symbolic trophy for his spymasters in the Kremlin, someone who rubs elbows with the highest levels of the British government while providing little in the way of truly useful information.

Drawing on the historical facts surrounding the Cambridge spies, "The Untouchable" is a brilliantly imagined, vividly realistic fictional memoir of the complex and often perplexing life of such a spy. Banville's prose is flawless, his narrative voice is always at perfect pitch, and his characters and story are a masterpiece of verisimilitude.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of Verisimilitude
Review: I never read anything by John Banville until recently, when I picked up a remaindered copy of "The Untouchable". The simplest way to express my reaction to this book is to say that, after finishing it, I promptly went out and bought several more of Banville's novels, realizing that he is one of a small handful of truly outstanding contemporary English writers.

"The Untouchable" is the first person narrative of Victor Maskell, Royalist and Marxist, art curator for the English monarchy and spy for the Soviet Union. Maskell's narrative begins in the 1980s, when he is in his seventies, sick with cancer. It is then that his past is suddenly and unexpectedly made public, the prominent, seemingly conservative intellectual revealed to be a man leading a double life, a traitor to his country. The reality, of course, is much more complex, for Maskell's motives, beliefs and actions, like those of all humans, are uncertain, clouded by conflicting memories, versions and perspectives. Married and the father of two children, Maskell is a homosexual. Ostensibly a Marxist and supporter of the great Soviet experiment, he is deeply attached to England and, in very personal ways, to the Royal family. Presumably acting for many years as a spy for the Soviets, the practical value of his activities is largely confined to being a symbolic trophy for his spymasters in the Kremlin, someone who rubs elbows with the highest levels of the British government while providing little in the way of truly useful information.

Drawing on the historical facts surrounding the Cambridge spies, "The Untouchable" is a brilliantly imagined, vividly realistic fictional memoir of the complex and often perplexing life of such a spy. Banville's prose is flawless, his narrative voice is always at perfect pitch, and his characters and story are a masterpiece of verisimilitude.

Rating:
Summary: Extraodinarily Good
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Extraodinarily Good
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Leaves You With More Questions Than Answers
Review: Literary "purists" might find this offensive, but Banville's THE UNTOUCHABLE reminded me more of DA VINCI'S CODE when I finished reading it. This is a novel that will leave you with more questions than answer, a really mind-boggling stuff.

Victor Maskell (the novel's main character) is a witty (even "campy"- should I say Quentin Crisp camp?), complex intellectual obsessed with Stoicism and fighting for a higher purpose. An elitist who spied for the Soviet Union. A somehow dedicated father who lurks around toilet blocks looking for sex (narrated in a delicious manner, may I say, and told with authenticity and conviction). A Marxist who hangs around royalty. Maskell is a grown-up Hamlet, disgraced now and re-telling (or is it justifying?) his past.

This is a novel on many things, and let me guarantee that after finishing this book you will be consulting plenty of reference books on the philosophy of the Stoics, Poussin, and, maybe, "camp". THE UNTOUCHABLE is my second Banville book, the first being THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE, another vividly realised novel.


Rating:
Summary: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Another Masterpiece From a Master.
Review: One of the finest books I've ever read. Outrageously well-crafted, the prose unfurls at a such stately pace and is laced with such acuity, heartbreak, and, yes, humor, the Untouchable seems more conjured than written; Banville is more magician than novelist.

Rating:
Summary: "The Untouchable" is truly awesome : a literary classic
Review: Prior to reading this work, "The Untouchable", I had read, "Athena", also written by Mr. Banville. I have read 5 of his works, however at this point these are as different and far from one another as novels can be. That Mr. Banville is able to write at tremendously separated points on a literary map is a testament to his work as an Author.

As in, "Athena", the events of the novel are told primarily in the first person by Victor. The difference this time through is that Victor is a historically based individual, as are many others in the novel. Victor is one of,"The Cambridge 5", the group of Soviet Spies that maintained there cover for so very long, with the 5th man not being identified publicly until many decades after others had fled to the Soviet Union. Victor is not the name of one of the spies as they existed for so many years, and the names placed on the others are not precise either. If you have read about this group or even one of its more flamboyant members, Kim Philby for example, all the players become readily recognizable.

Mr. Banville delivers a remarkable mosaic of what this particular man may have written had he placed his memories on paper. Victor never wavered from viewing himself as a Royalist, yet he worked for the Communists, without pay. He also worked for the King arranging the Royal Art Collection. His sexuality produced a marriage that lasted until his wife's death, produced two children, while he was discovering and acknowledging his homosexuality. He was raised a Catholic, he married a Jewish woman, and was amazed when she was buried in the traditional Jewish manner, and that his children were conversant in their Mother's religion as well. Even his wife, referred to as Baby until she had one of her own, was able to pass as a man dressed in formal wear and her androgyny. There is nothing about this man that is simple, he is not publicly exposed as a spy until he has ceased from the activity for over 30 years.

I found this to be the finest study of an individual by Mr. Banville, with the possible exception of his, "Doctor Copernicus". The latter is not necessarily better, and which you prefer may depend on the historical period during which their lives take place.

This is an excellent piece of work, and yet another example of this Author's range and depth of knowledge. Whether he is dealing with Kepler, Copernicus, 17th Century Flemish Art, or World War Two, his competency is absolute.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite!
Review: The last time I was as totally immersed in a book's style & substance I was reading Jose Saramago's The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis on the NYC rush hour subway - totally oblivious of my surroundings. Shortly thereafter, Saramago won the Nobel prize.

I do not think Mr. Banvile deserves less. A magnificently witty, penetrating & beautiful written book.

Rating:
Summary: An "anquished, seething in the heart..."
Review: Victor Maskell takes us step by (often debauched) step through what passes for his life. Maskell, a thinly disguised Anthony Blunt, is one of several by now well-known Cambridge spies from the thirties and forties. Banville vividly recreates not only the political and social turmoil of the period but also the intellectual experimentation and the search for values spawned by these turbulent times. The depiction of decadence, drunkenness, sexual depravity, and social snobbery, combined with intellectual arrogance and political naivete, all show the reader how someone could have been seduced into becoming a willing spy. Though it is difficult to feel any real sympathy for Maskell, one can understand his need for significance--for something bigger in his life--and equally, his eventual need to reject that role. In prose that is astonishing in its facility and virtuosity, Banville sweeps away the fustiness of previous journalistic accounts of the Cambridge spies and creates flawed, breathing humans