James Wood's Banality Hunger

James Wood (Photo by Juliana Jiménez)

I’m not crazy about the word “banal.” To me, it smacks of superiority, a snooty distain for everyday life. Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1984) says,

With “common,” “commonplace,” “trite,” “trivial,” “mean,” “vulgar,” “truism,” “platitude,” and other English words, to choose from, we should confine “banal” and “banality,” since we cannot get rid of them, to occasions when we want to express a contempt deeper than any of the English words can convey.

James Wood, one of my favorite writers, relishes the word. He uses it endlessly – “the banal amnesia of existence,” “brutally banal,” “the present banality of her existence,” “the mere pantomime of banality,” “banal failure,” “level banality,” “beautifully banal,” “banal details,” “apparent banality,” “the repetitive banality of his existence,” “blind banality,” “the evil of banality,” on and on. What does he mean by it? Is he using it to express contempt? Or is it, for him, just another word for “ordinary”? To answer, I want to consider twelve examples of Wood’s use of “banal”:

1. Both have been caricatured, and what is being enjoyed here is not the deep comic surprise of ordinariness (as in Chekov, say) but the mere pantomime of banality. [“Julian Barnes and the Problem of Knowing Too Much”]

The mere pantomime of banality – a great phrase, in which “banality” is used negatively, contrasting with “the deep comic surprise of ordinariness (as in Chekov, say).”

2. But Porphiry does not really lie to himself, for he has lost touch with the truth. He speaks the “truths” (as he sees them) that are all around him, and they are the most dismal, banal, lying platitudes. [“Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Subversion of Hypocrisy”]

Here again, “banal” is used pejoratively (“the most dismal, banal, lying platitudes”). This is “banal” as old Fowler would use it.

3. And so his father, who surely knows this, meekly agrees, says, “That’s true!” – incidentally, a beautiful placing of the exclamation point, suggesting a final fervency before death, a fervency all the more affecting because it is about an apparent banality – and dies. [“Giovanni Verga’s Comic Sympathy”]

Here, too, “banality” is used pejoratively to indicate triviality. But it’s also an early instance of Wood distinguishing between banality and apparent banality. In the same piece, Wood says, “What seems to be a fleeting triviality is actually very important – this is both Verga’s subject and his mode of writing: his banalities, like those of his characters, are never unimportant.” It’s an indication Wood understands the aesthetic of certain writers (e.g., Verga, Knausgaard, Chaudhuri) who aim to give banality its beautiful due.

4. Exile is acute, massive, transformative; but homelooseness, because it moves along its axis of departure and return, can be banal, welcome, necessary, continuous. [“Secular Homelessness”]

This is an instance of “banal” used positively, as a desirable aspect of a way of life Wood calls “homelooseness.”  

5. Her life seems circumscribed, satisfying, banal, disappointing. [“All Her Children”]

Here, “banal” seems ambiguous; it could be positive or negative, though not as negative as Saltykov-Shchedrin’s usage in the example above.

6. This sort of ordinariness anchors the book. Jim Crace’s The Pesthouse, by contrast, is finely written but is afraid of banality. [“Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”]

Afraid of banality – this is interesting: “banality” used positively as a synonym for “ordinariness.”

7. Of course, Richard, who was just a child during the war, is guilty only of the evil of banality, the moral myopia that dims most of our lucky lives in the West. ["Strangers Among Us"]

The evil of banality – sounds bad, but as an element of “our lucky lives in the West,” appears to signify mere ordinariness.

8. He wants us to inhabit the ordinariness of life, which is sometimes visionary (the Constable sketch), sometimes banal (the cup of tea, the Old Spice), and sometimes momentous (the death of a parent), but all of it perforce ordinary because it happens in the course of a life, and happens, in different forms, to everyone. ["Total Recall"]

No question here; “banality” is used as a form of ordinariness (“all of it perforce ordinary”).

9. These people stare at us, as if imploring us to rescue them from the banal amnesia of existence. [“W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz”]

I love this line, but I struggle with its meaning. It’s Wood’s response to the photographs of people in Sebald’s Austerlitz. My interpretation is that “amnesia of existence” means “oblivion.” Wood describes it as “banal” because oblivion is the destiny that awaits most of us; it’s our common fate. Earlier in his piece, Wood looks at the Austerlitz photo of the white-caped little boy and says,

The boy’s identity has disappeared (as has the woman whose photograph is shown as Agáta, the boy’s mother), and has disappeared – it might be said – even more thoroughly than Hitler’s victims, since they at least belong to blessed memory, and their murders cry out for public memorial, while the boy has vanished into the private obscurity and ordinary silence that will befall most of us.

Note that “ordinary silence.” Wood sees our one-way death trip to oblivion as ordinary. “Banal” in this instance isn’t pejorative; it isn’t judging the average person’s fate as no-account. It’s simply a synonym for “common” or “ordinary.”

10. Arvid’s life is drifting, like the sentences he voices, moving between banal failure and bottomless losses. [“Late and Soon”]

Obviously, banal failure is more than just failure; it’s uninteresting failure, low-level failure, uninspired failure. But the question is: by using “banal,” did Wood also mean to convey a tinge of distain? I’m not sure.

11. As is generally the case at such final celebrations, speakers struggled to expand and hold the beautifully banal instances of a life, to fill the dates between 1968 and 2012, so that we might leave the church thinking not of the first and last dates but of the dateless minutes in between. [“Why?”]

This, to me, is one of Wood’s most questionable uses of “banal.” Obviously, there’s no pejorative intent here. But is there a hint of unconscious condescension? The line is from the first paragraph of Wood’s personal essay “Why?,” in which he describes his attendance at the memorial service of a man he’s never met. Wood writes,

He was the younger brother of a friend of mine, and had died suddenly, in the middle of things, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters. The program bore a photograph of the man, above his compressed dates (1968-2012). He looked ridiculously young, blazing with life—squinting a bit in bright sunlight, smiling slightly, as if he were just beginning to get the point of someone’s joke. In some terrible way, his death was the notable, the heroic fact of his short life; all the rest was the usual joyous ordinariness, given form by various speakers. Here he was, jumping off a boat into the Maine waters; here he was, as a child, larkily peeing from a cabin window with two young cousins; here he was, living in Italy and learning Italian by flirting; here he was, telling a great joke; here he was, an ebullient friend, laughing and filling the room with his presence. As is generally the case at such final celebrations, speakers struggled to expand and hold the beautifully banal instances of a life, to fill the space between 1968 and 2012, so that we might leave the church thinking not of the first and last dates but of the dateless minutes in between.

“Joyous ordinariness,” “beautifully banal” – I see the connection. “Banal” and “ordinary” are being used interchangeably. Still, I find it an odd thing for Wood to say about a person he doesn’t know. I believe he intends it as praise. But it’s a backhanded kind of praise because it judges the deceased’s life as ordinary. It denies him his singularity.

12. One’s own small hardships—such as forgetting one’s A.T.M. card number, as Julius does, and being consumed by anxiety about it—may dominate a life as completely as someone else’s much larger hardships, because life is brutally one’s own, and not someone else’s, and is, alas, brutally banal. [“The Arrival of Enigmas”]

Life is no longer “beautifully banal”; now, it’s “brutally banal” – “banal” as an expression of contempt. Fowler would approve.

What to make of all this “banality”? One conclusion is that Wood likes writing “banal.” Sometimes he uses it positively (“beautifully banal”); sometimes he uses it negatively (“brutally banal”). Sometimes he uses it simply as a synonym for “ordinary”; sometime he uses it to express contempt. Obviously, it’s an important word in his vocabulary. It’s part of his aesthetic.