MCGAHERN YEARBOOK 2011 REVIEW - Irish Times

Liam Harte reviews the McGahern Yearbook 2011 in today's Irish Times here. I have an essay in the book on the novel Amongst Women.

Harte quotes a line from my essay which says: 'Moran is not altogether unpleasant'. In the essay this sentence is preceded by five paragraphs explaining his deep unpleasantness, in case anyone should think that I am a fan of the bullying Moran. Here are the six paragraphs in question, just to balance things out a little:

"This book is about a man who, to my mind, never matured. Like a toddler, Moran wants to be the centre of attention, but only in the small kingdom of his immediate family. He is an awkward man; he delights in being contrary and difficult. Outsider are treated with suspicion and disdain.

One can only conclude that Moran is based on John McGahern’s own father, such are the similarities between the two men. In Memoir, McGahern refers to his father as a ‘violent and wilful’ person, devoid of a sense of humour, who ‘looked on any manifestation of enjoyment in others as a symptom of irresponsibility’ crucially because it diverted attention away from him: the king of the castle.

Moran is not a man for fun – levity is allowed into the house on his terms only. His daughters hide giddiness from him – they conceal their true personalities – especially when younger. And, early on, his new wife Rose, though she hardly knows Moran, instinctively does the same.

Money, and the supposed lack of it, is a constant source of concern for Moran. On a summer holiday in Strandhill, he sends his children door-to-door selling turf. He and Rose have a modest wedding at her family home because he does not want to squander money at the local hotel. Later, with the cost of his daughter’s wedding fresh in his mind, he attacks son-in-law Seán for not being ‘mature’ in his attitude to the importance of his pensionable civil service job.

We are to believe from the narrative that Moran’s personality stems from his disappointment after the way things panned out in the country after he had fought for independence. Surely, though, his depressed nature worsened after the death of his first wife, and his tendency towards lording it over people is long ingrained.

Moran is not altogether unpleasant, it must be said. He certainly has some welcome highs when he feels secure amongst his women. If he were analysed today he might be diagnosed as manic depressive: after the highs come the lows."

FESTIVAL FEVER - Emma Donoghue and Colm Tóibín

I feel like someone on a merry-go-round but instead of candy-coloured horses and stripey poles there are writers. Oh look, there's Emma Donoghue. That's Colm Tóibín! I spy with my little eye Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Brian Leyden, Belinda McKeon...

I am careening around to literary events and happenings like a mad woman. And I love it. But what I essentially need is a nanny to mind the kids while I swan off because I am starting to tire of taking the kids along. Even with a very supportive husband who entertains them while I do my thing or listen to others' thing, I always have to leave early/come home. And that is often annoying. Particularly when one of the kids throws up for the 60 mile journey home. Maybe she's sick of writers?

Anyway I went to hear Emma Donoghue at Galway Arts Festival this week and she was fantastic. If you get a chance to see her at the Mountains to the Sea Festival in September, take it. I've been a fan of hers for years and I am thrilled with her commercial success (to add to her critical success). Because of the former she says she now reads from the book (Room) for 10 mins then takes questions for 50 mins. And so she did on Wednesday evening. The reverse was the case when she was 'merely' a critical success.

Emma D is a brilliant, fluent and intelligent speaker about her own work. She had so many good and interesting things to say. She talked about Room being a very Irish book: 'a boy and his Mammy having fun under impoverished Irish circumstances.' She said the novel represented 'an extreme version of parenthood' and that writing historical fiction had been great practice for writing it: 'You have to create a whole world. It was easier to create the room than, say, the entirety of eighteenth century London.' She said it was the easiest book she has ever written in the sense that it came quickly to her - she drafted it in six months - and she sees it as 'a voice piece', a book of dialogue and very simple monologue.

She talked too about the challenges of being a mother-writer, something that I am always interested in hearing about, being in the same situation myself. Like me she just has a few hours a week while the kids are minded and so she uses the time wisely. 'The more urgent your need for that time, the better you will use it,' she said (paraphrasing) and I totally agree with that.

My friend Karen and I celebrated rather exuberantly after Emma's reading so I was a bit fragile yesterday heading to the John McGahern Summer School in Carrick-on-Shannon, for the launch of the Yearbook in which I have an essay on McGahern's novel Amongst Women. The Yearbook is a gorgeously posh production: A4 size, navy linen covers, heavy paper, beautifully laid out. I was welcomed by editor John Kenny of NUI Galway, who has been very good to me over the past few years, giving me different bits of work to do, supervising his CW students' novel writing etc.

Colm Tóibín - pic from Guardian website

Before the launch, Colm Tóibín delivered a key-note speech on memory, preceded by speeches from John Kenny (the school is guaranteed at least another five years of life - yay!) and Nollaig Mac Congaíl (an amusing talk about the Irish language & McGahern).

Colm Tóibín gave an amazing, learned, erudite speech on the parallels between McGahern's use of real life instances in both fiction and memoir. Colm posited that, in Irish writing, only McGahern and Aidan Higgins had used events in fiction first and memoir later. He specifically drew on the deaths of both authors' mothers and the language used in their fictional and factual acounts. Colm said that writers are uneasy about their relationship between real life and fiction: 'Fiction is what actually happened to us, tarted up a bit.' He also said 'a novel is a created truth' and that 'writers use memory and put it into fiction like a ship putting its anchor down.' He brought in Borges, Cervantes and Hardy and all sorts of other parallels and examples, and wove it all together with ease. The speech must have taken him months to write. Impressive stuff. He is always impressive.

Afterwards there was wine and abundant food (I was still too wobbly to indulge) and the Yearbook was officially launched. I had a nice time chatting to various writers until the kids let me know it was time to go. Before we left, Colm Tóibín demonstrated his magical, magnetic glasses to Finn and Juno, and he also showed them his croc-like red rubber heels on his shoes. I don't know what the heels were all about, tbh :)

All in all a great few days of literary activity and I have plenty of food for thought and, also, hope which is what these events often give me.

McGAHERN WEEK-END THOUGHTS

DAVID MEANS AT AUGHAWILLAN HALL, JOHN KENNY IN THE BACKGROUND

I'm attempting to gather my thoughts and write a post about the McGahern Week-end which I went to in Leitrim at the week-end. But the baby is not co-operating with me trying to type. I should turn on the Hoover and park it by my desk. So seldom is it used in this house that she is afraid of it, so it would keep her away.

Today I paid the deposit on her creche place. From September on I will have three whole mornings a week to write. I think I am going to explode with the excitement of it!! Who needs success, money or all the rest of it when one just has time to write?! (Though the rest of it would be fun!!)

DERMOT HEALY IN HENRY'S PUB, COOTEHALL

But John McGahern. I'm a huge fan and have been since I was in my teens. The organisers commissioned an essay from me about Amongst Women which appeared in the Leitrim Observer (I didn't see it) and on Friday night I discussed the novel with Dermot Healy and about a hundred other people in the gorgeously old-fashioned Henry's pub in Cootehall village. There were cameras trained on us which was un-nerving, but the discussion was lively and relevant and we all enjoyed teasing out the whys and what-fors of Moran and his family of 'dismayed pullets'. We talked about food, ritual and the wonderful Rose in the novel, and about Moran's controlling personality. Cootehall is where the barracks is of The Barracks fame.

THE BARRACKS, COOTEHALL

The next day we drove out to Aughawillan where John lived happily with his mother (the house is now gone) but we did see the schoolhouse where his mother taught and John went for a while. Professor Pat Dolan from NUI Galway gave a presentation on McGahern and the childhood development of resilience. It was personal, moving, informative. He read out the passage from Memoir in which John's mother tried to get him to promise not to cry if she was 'taken away'. I had to fight back the tears - so sad and upsetting. Pat concluded that John contributed hugely to our  understanding of childhood in this country and he highlighted abuse when it needed to be talked about (i.e. when church and state were colluding like mad men. As they still do...)
Back then to Ballinamore for lunch -another quiet, but surprisingly large, Leitrim town.

AUGHAWILLAN SCHOOL

That evening we went to Lough Rynn Castle near Mohill for the closing reception. Talk about posh - it's where Brian and Amy got married a few weeks ago. It's utterly fabulous.There we spoke to Danny Denton, a young writer late of Galway, recently moved to Dublin where he is completing a novel.
The mini-series of Amongst Women was screened but with baby in tow, we didn't go. The writer of the screenplay, Adrian Hodges, was there and we had a great chinwag about writing and particularly all the lovely BBC dramas we've enjoyed: Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre etc.

DANNY DENTON AT LOUGH RYNN CASTLE

And to I got to talk to David Means and his lovely wife Geneve. David and I are on the same wavelength about a lot of writerly concerns and I thoroughly enjoyed our chat about the Frank O'Connor Festival, Cúirt, short stories, his work at Vassar College etc. A lovely couple. We met them again later on in The Bush Hotel with John Kenny of NUI Galway's English Dept. and others. It was a late night of chat about books and film and all in all, a very enjoyable end to a great week-end.

SIGNINGS, REVIEW & A TRIP TO LEITRIM

On Wednesday I did a walkabout of Dublin bookshops with the PR lady from New Island and also the bookshops liaison woman. It was fun, meeting the staff and managers in the shops and signing the books. And we three ladies had a good chat and laugh about everything from Twitter to reviewers. Yes, reviewers, we laugh at you!

Speaking of reviews and reviewers, I have a review of Terese Svoboda's Trailer Girl in the summer issue of The Short Review here. (Nice person that she is, Terese didn't laugh - she sent me a friendly e-mail yesterday after reading the review...)

Right now I'm off to the John McGahern week-end in Leitrim. I'm taking part in a roundtable discussion of McGahern's fantastic novel Amongst Women in Henry's in Cootehall at 5pm. David Means is also taking part in the summer school today. I'll miss his talk on the short story but I hope to meet him over the course of the week-end. I love his writing.

So, until next week, cheerio, and don't forget there is still time to enter the Seán Ó Faoláín Short Story Competition. It could be you!

John McGahern Yearbook

The John McGahern Yearbook, Volume 1 edited by Dr. John Kenny is now available.

To order, you send your name and address with cheque/postal order/bank draft to The John McGahern Yearbook, Summer School Office, NUI Galway or e-mail fiona.dwyer nuigalway.ie [There is no charge for postage and packing.]

The Leitrim Observer noted that “the highlight of the book is the inclusion of the ‘After McGahern’ contribution, Mike McCormack was chosen as this year’s writer. The organisers of the year book decided that in order to keep McGahern's influence alive after his death, a specially commissioned original short story should be included which would be prefaced by the writers reflections on their encounter with John McGahern's work. McCormack's story entitled ‘There are things we know', has it's roots in the McGahern style with it's sparse but exact use of adjectives and it's emphasis on the unsaid.”

I only hope that Mike includes this new story in his next collection, as the McGahern book costs €50. Eek.