From the deluge of stories about John Banville following his (conventional-wisdom alert!) surprising Booker Prize win, the most interesting nugget was offered up by John Boland, whose Saturday TV review in the Indo is always worth reading. According to Boland,”[…]since the day we first met as young subs in the ‘Irish Press’ until he [Banville] stepped down as literary editor of the ‘Irish Times’ a few years ago, he was a full-time journalist as well as novelist.He retains the connection, too, not just as a reviewer, but also socially – a couple of his closest friends remain former journalistic colleagues from the old days, while a couple of others are folkies he used to sing with.”As Boland rightly points out, such information jars with Banville’s public persona, making it difficult to picture him bellowing “The Irish Rover” over a Guinness-laden table in the Cobblestone pub. But rather than becoming too arty-farty, the Indo shows that it’s still true to the memory of William Martin Murphy with a story that begins as follows: “BOOKER prize winner John Banville is likely to bag less than a sixth of chick-lit queen Cecelia Ahern’s millions, say publishing insiders.Despite scooping the top prize in literature, his success does not necessarily translate into a bulging bundle of banknotes, they said.” Art’s true reward–not just bundles of banknotes, but bulging bundles of banknotes.BTW, the Nobel Prize for Literature is due to be announced tomorrow at around midday Irish time. Apparently, there’s been a bit of a publicity-generating spat in the Swedish Academy over last year’s winner.