The English language is beautiful. It’s immensely rich and untidy with so many influences from other cultures, and I glory in it. People say to me that they have to go to the dictionary. Is that a great trouble? The dictionary is one of the most precious things you have in your house. You should be thanking me for the excuse to go to it. I say to them: “I bet when you went to look up whatever word, you came across four or five new ones. So you gained! I did you a favour!”
Alas, most of Banville’s readers would’ve looked up the words on Google. It’s only the dictionary in codex form that works the way Banville wants it to work — the way it should work. Trust me on that — and also trust my buddy Austin Kleon. If you don’t have any other books in codex form, have a dictionary and a Bible. They’ll surprise you and teach you every time you pick them up.
P.S. Unrelated, but here’a another great passage from that interview:
You know, someone said to me recently: “John, I suppose you’ll be writing your Covid novel?” I said: “I certainly will not, and I hope nobody else does either.” The art of fiction isn’t for commenting on events of the time. It may do that, but that’s not its object, which is to imagine the world.