The Sheila Variations

Rock-Paper-Scissors

Congratulations are in order to Mark Cleland, Ireland's newest rock-paper-scissors champion.

Every sentence in that story is a delight.

'I didn't go into the heats with any particular strategy, but as the final approached I practised with friends and focused on improving my concentration and stamina.'

Brilliant.

Thank you to Carrie for sending it along!

And it should be of special interest to my dear cousin Kerry who stars in the upcoming film The Flying Scissors, a mockumentary about "the intense, grueling world of competitive "Rock Paper Scissors".

I love people.

Edna O'Brien on The Country Girls

A terrific essay by Edna O'Brien about the publication of her first novel The Country Girls. Well worth reading but I'll pull out the two parts I liked especially:

The Country Girls took three weeks, or maybe less, to write. After I brought my sons Carlo and Sasha to the local school in Morden, I came home, sat by the windowsill of their bedroom and wrote and wrote. It was as if I was merely a medium for the words to flow. The emotional crux hinged on Ireland, the country I had left and wanted to leave, but now grieved for, with an inexplicable sorrow.

Images of roads and ditches and bog and bog lake assailed me, as did the voice of my mother, tender or chastising, and even her cough when she lay down at night. In the fields outside, the lonely plaint of cattle, dogs barking and, as I believed, ghosts. All the people I had encountered kept re-emerging with a vividness: Hickey our workman, whom I loved; my father, whom I feared; knackers; publicans; a travelling salesman by the name of Sacco, who sold spectacles and sets of dentures; and the tinkers who rapped on the door demanding money in exchange for mending tin pots. There was the embryo poet, an amateur historian and the blacksmith who claimed to have met the film director John Ford on the streets of Galway and was asked to appear in The Quiet Man, but declined out of filial duty. The lost landscape of childhood.

I'm going through something right now - some developments in my life - that have put a fire under me. I have a deadline. I have to get to work. Reading her essay really bolstered me up.

And then this lovely bit:

Where do words come from, I wondered. I still wonder. Because even without books or rather with only prayer books and bloodstock manuals in our house, I had conceived a love of words and assembled my own little crop of them. I believed they had magical associations and that something amazing could be done with them. I had, of course, the language of the Gospels, which to me seemed and seems perfect, and the marvelling narratives of Irish myths and fables. I learnt everything through Irish, except English itself, and I loved both tongues.

Here is my post on The Country Girls.

The Books: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (Flann O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

It's kinda hard, as an O'Malley, to talk about this book in a normal book-report kind of way. I think I even sort of believed, as a child, that Flann O'Brien might have been related to us. Or something. There must be SOME personal connection. And O'Brien is my grandmother's maiden name. So it was possible! I didn't even read the book until after college - but the title - At Swim-Two-Birds - was already in my life and consciousness (forever) by, oh, age 4? I don't know. I can't remember a time when I wasn't aware that there was a man named Flann O'Brien and he had written a book with a mysterious title called At Swim-Two-Birds. My first blog's URL was atswimtwobirds.blogspot.com. And then, of course, there was my first published essay - if you go here and scroll down, you can see that they excerpted my essay on the back cover and it's called "Two Birds". It's not even a book to me, for God's sake. It's basically the story of my family, my childhood, everything. I have no idea why. It's one of the weirdest books ever written. I write about the book a bit here - and link to a terrific John Updike article about Flann O'Brien (one of his many monikers). I might be repeating myself a bit from that post, but here goes:

At Swim-Two-Birds anticipates the experimental meta-literature of today - Dave Eggers, for example, owes a great debt to At Swim-Two-Birds, with his narrator that suddenly steps forward, looks right at the reader, and starts addressing us directly. The goofiness, the non-literal structure ... things have no real substance, everything is malleable. The book is really about a young Holden Caulfield type narrator - a college student, who lives with his uncle, and basically lies around in his room smoking all day, dreaming up the great novel he will write. And then occasionally he goes out with his buddies and gets absolutely wasted. His uncle is pretty much horrified at what a loser his nephew is. The book also, fantastically, becomes about the entire history of Ireland - its myths, legends, old tales come back to life in a modern context. The novel the narrator is writing is about Finn McCool - or, he's one of the characters - and also Mad King Sweeney - the dude who turned into a bird - and the narrator keeps writing outlines of what he wants to write - the whole book is broken up into headings and sub-headings, as though it itself is the outline for another book ... and at some point, the narrator loses control of his own characters. They start to behave in ways he finds incomprehensible, they say and do whatever the hell they want - and he is struggling to rein back them in, to take charge again. But once Pandora's box is opened ... Finn McCool and Mad King Sweeney stroll the modern streets of Dublin. They're out. Flann O'Brien also directly references Joyce - especially in one section that is set up exactly like the famous ithaca episode in Ulysses (excerpt here) - with the call-and-response ... James Joyce casts a giant shadow. Irish writers struggle to either be compared TO him or defined AGAINST him ... Either way, he can't be ignored. Even when an Irish writer comes out and says, "You know what? I hate Joyce!" - it's still evidence of the fact that Joyce dominates the landscape still, to this day. Flann O'Brien doesn't wrestle with Joyce in private, he brings it on out into the open, and puts it all in his book. He doesn't worry about structure or narrative. He lets Irish history - fanciful and literal - be unleashed ... Ireland, so consumed by its own past (one of the things Joyce found so annoying and why he looked elsewhere for inspiration) - here in At Swim-Two-Birds the past has come to life. It's not a tale in a dusty book. It's real people, stepping out of the pages of a manuscript ... despite the author's intentions.

I have to say, too, that At Swim-Two-Birds is laugh-out-loud funny - although perhaps it's very specific humor. I would imagine if Catch-22 (excerpt here) made you laugh out loud, At Swim-Two-Birds would, too. There is a laboriousness to some of the descriptions - that just go on forever - and it gets funnier and funnier, the more specific Flann O'Brien gets. Like this. The elaborate sentence goes against what he is talking about - a most base human experience - and that just makes it funnier. There are also about 20 more words in the sentence than there "needs" to be, and that just makes it funnier too:

Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsequently addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.

Like, that is RIDICULOUS. But soo funny to me. This formal intricate sentence basically saying, "I love beer, even though it makes me barf." And then there's the even more ridiculous first sentence of the book, which is a masterpiece of self-consciousness:

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.

See, I've read the book a couple of times and that kind of sentence is STILL funny to me. It's ridiculous. It's observant. It's hugely overwritten. You want to say to him, "Oh, get OVER yourself!!" Who describes their own behavior that way?? But that's why it's funny.

I can't really talk more about the book - it's very weird, with 25 page long discourses on Irish history - with poems and songs and Finn McCool tromping through the pages ... but it's one of the all-time great Irish books. And it's funny: its influence is enormous. He is the precursor of the self-conscious looking-in-mirror-at-self literature we see in vogue today. It feels very very modern, this book - when you read it now. At the time it was published, it was unlike anything else out there - and in a way, it still is unlike anything else. But his experimentation with form, and content matching form, was hugely influential.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

That same afternoon I was sitting on a stool in an intoxicated condition in Grogan's licensed premises. Adjacent stools bore the forms of Brinsley and Kelly, my two true friends. The three of us were occupied in putting glasses of stout into the interior of our bodies and expressing by fine disputation the resulting sense of physical and mental well-being. In my thigh pocket I had eleven and eightpence in a weighty pendulum of mixed coins. Each of the arrayed bottles on the shelves before me, narrow or squat-bellied, bore a dull picture of the gas bracket. Who can tell the stock of a public-house? Many no doubt are dummies, those especially within an arm-reach of the snug. The stout was of superior quality, soft against the tongue but sharp upon the orifice of the throat, softly efficient in its magical circulation through the conduits of the body. Half to myself, I said:
Do not let us forget that I have to buy Die Harzreise. Do not let us forget that.

Hazreise, said Brinsley. There is a house in Dalkey called Heartrise.

Brinsley then put his dark chin on the cup of a palm and leaned in thought on the counter, overlooking his drink, gazing beyond the frontier of the world.

What about another jar? said Kelly.

Ah, Lesbia, said Brinsley. The finest thing I ever wrote. How many kisses, Lesbia, you ask, would serve to sate this hungry love of mine? - As many as the Libyan sands that bask along Cyrene's shore where pine-trees wave, where burning Jupiter's untended shrine lies near to old King Battus' sacred grave:

Three stouts, called Kelly.

Let them be endless as the stars at night, that stare upon the lovers in a ditch - so often would love-crazed Catallus bite your burning lips, that prying eyes should not have power to count, nor evil tongues bewitch, the frenzied kisses that you gave and got.

Before we die of thirst, called Kelly, will you bring us three more stouts. God, he said to me, it's in the desert you'd think we were.

That's good stuff, you know, I said to Brinsley,

A picture came before my mind of the lovers at their hedge-pleasure in the pale starlight, no sound from them, his fierce mouth burying into hers.

Bloody good stuff, I said.

Kelly, invisible to my left, made a slapping noise.

The best I ever drank, he said.

As I exchanged an eye-message with Brinsley, a wheezing beggar inserted his person at my side and said:

Buy a scapular or a stud, Sir.

This interruption I did not understand. Afterwards, near Lad Lane police station a small man in black fell in with us and tapping me often about the chest, talked to me earnestly on the subject of Rousseau, a member of the French nation. He was animated, his pale features striking in the starlight and his voice going up and falling in the lilt of his argumentum. I did not understand his talk and was personally unacquainted with him. But Kelly was taking in all he said, for he stood near him, his taller head inclined in an attitude of close attention. Kelly then made a low noise and opened his mouth and covered the small man from shoulder to knee with a coating of unpleasant buff-coloured puke. Many other things happened on that night now imperfectly recorded in my memory but that incident is still very clear to me in my mind. Afterwards the small man was some distance from us in the lane, shaking his divested coat and rubbing it along the wall. He is a little man that the name of Rousseau will always recall to me. Conclusion of reminiscence.

Happy birthday, John Millington Synge

Today is the birthday of Irish playwright John Millington Synge - born on this day in 1871. He was author of The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, and more - not to mention his wonderful book about his time on the Aran Islands, called, coincidentally, The Aran Islands. Playboy is now in the history books, not only for being a wonderful play, and part of the theatrical revolution going on in Ireland at the time (the creation of the Abbey Theatre, etc.) - but also because of the riots that broke out when it opened (they are now known as "The Playboy Riots"). Things got so out of hand that a police squad had to stand along the edge of the stage during the performance, so that the actors wouldn't get hurt or mobbed. If I had a time machine, I would LOVE to go back and be there on the opening night of that play.

Synge wrote:

Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.

Synge's time out on the Aran Islands, off the wild west coast of Ireland, gave him the nuggets of inspiration for many of his plays. Out there the "native language" was still spoken, out there he could encounter the real Ireland.

Synge had spent a lot of time in Europe, taking courses in French literature, immersing himself in different cultures, reading Baudelaire, writing poems, chasing girls ... You know, all La Boheme stuff. He remained interested in his own country, his own heritage - but there wasn't really a place for him there. (Interesting: NOW it's hard to imagine Ireland without Synge, but he had to TAKE that ground, he had to claim it - it didn't exist before he came along.) Yeats' whole nationalistic literary (and theatrical) movement (in broader terms - the Irish literary revival) drew Synge back to his home country - the Abbey Theatre was formed - things were HAPPENING in Ireland. In retrospect, it all seems inevitable. Of course Synge would not only come back to be part of that movement, but he would end up defining that movement.

Yeats gave Synge a piece of now legendary advice (and this is a direct quote):

Give up Paris, you will never create anything by reading Racine, and Arthur Symons will always be a better critic of French literature. Go to the Arran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.

In the middle of what was, essentially, an Irish cultural revival, Yeats (having been out to the Aran Islands) recognized that there was something untouched out there, a primitive life, Irish language still spoken, the culture not corrupted. Yet. It was a race against time.

The leaders of the cultural movement in Ireland at that time all had the same idea: Inspiration lay in the West of Ireland. Go west. Go west to find the real Ireland. (Interesting, to think of the final paragraphs of Joyce's The Dead (excerpt here).

So Synge took Yeats' advice and went west.

The story of his four trips out to the Islands make up his book The Aran Islands, a wonderful rich travelogue, a classic of the genre. I highly recommend it!! He sits around turf fires with the various storytellers, and listens, and writes the folktales and anecdotes down later. These stories contain the germs of Playboy, the germs of Shadow of the Glen, the germs of Riders. Yeats was right. With all of Yeats' airy-fairy Celtic frippery, he understood that a powerful culture lay beneath the surface, a culture that had never been shown to the world, never been expressed.

Not surprising, then, that Playboy of the Western World would cause such an uproar.

Here is an excerpt from Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh's marvelous book The Splendid Years: Recollections of Máire Shiubhlaigh as told to Edwa, which is the story of the Irish National Theatre. Máire was an actress, highly involved with the cultural revival of the time, and a member of the Abbey Theatre. Her memories of Synge (and also her memories of the "Playboy riots") are fascinating. Here she speaks of Synge:

John M. Synge who came to us with his play direct from the Aran Islands, where the material for most of his later works was gathered, was born near Dublin in 1871, graduated at Trinity College, and shortly afterwards left Ireland for the Continent, living alternately in Germany and France, where he made a rather precarious livelihood as a violinist and contributor to literary magazines. Yeats had discovered him in Paris in about 1897 and, recognizing the quality of his writings, had brought him back to Ireland, where he introduced him to Aran, prophesying that in the beautiful lyrical prose of the western peasant he would find an original vehicle for dramatic composition. He was right. Synge went to Aran for a month, and stayed there, on and off, for a matter of years. He drew his inspiration from the hearths of the tiny whitewashed cabins and the harsh rocks of the western seaboard, gathering tales and expressions from the old and the young of the most picturesque portion of Ireland. In a short life -- he died at the early age of 38 -- he wove them into sombre dramatic tapestries, embroidered with the rhythmic language of the Irish peasant. His prose, highly musical and enriched with flashes of the most beautiful poetry, he devised simly by transcribing direct from the Gaelic of the islands. It is most difficult for an actor to master; most effective if delivered correctly.

She's got that right. I did a scene from Playboy in a class in graduate school, and while my scene partner and I had a hell of a lot of fun working on it, it was DAMN difficult to get that language right. Not just the language, but the rhythm, the tone. It doesn't matter if you get the words all correct, and remember all your lines, if you say them in the wrong rhythm. Rhythm is everything.

Back to Synge.

He was a gentle fellow, shy, with that deep sense of humour that is sometimes found in the quietest people. His bulky figure and heavy black moustache gave him a rather austere appearance -- an impression quickly dispelled when he spoke. His voice was mellow, low; he seldom raised it. But for his quiet personality he might have passed unnoticed at any gathering. During rehearsals of his play, he would sit quietly in the background, endlessly rolling cigarettes. This was a typical gesture, born more of habit than of any desire for tobacco -- he gave away more cigarettes than he smoked. At the first opportunity, he would lever his huge frame out of a chair and come up on to the stage, a half-rolled cigarette in eaach hand. Then he would look enquiringly round and thrust the little paper cylinders forward towards whoever was going to smoke them. In later years he became the terror of fire-conscious Abbey stage-managers. He used to sit timidly in the wings during plays, rolling cigarettes and handing them to the players as they made their exits.

He didn't set out to revolutionize Irish theatre. He didn't set out to be a genius, or to write great plays. He just wrote down what he knew. That was the ONLY way this guy could write. And it turned everything upside down.

Here is Máire's description of some of the objections to Shadow, just to give you an idea of what was going on, and to also set the stage for the "Playboy riots". Synge was, indeed, ahead of his time. The world is rarely kind to those born ahead of their time.

The piece was "un-Irish" wrote some reviewers, an "insult" in fact to the peasant women of Ireland whom Nora Burke was taken to typify. There was an immense verbal furore about it. A number of writers claiming that Synge was slyly attacking the institution known as the "made marriage", and attributing it solely to Ireland, raised all sorts of objections. Others wrote of the character of Nora Burke: "Nora Burke is a lie". Of the play they said: "It is no more Irish than the Decameron. It is a staging of the old-world libel on womankind -- the Widow of Ephesus."

Now, I do not propose to analyse the extraordinary attitude adopted towards the play. Indeed, the attacks were launched so suddenly that few of us were even able to gather what they were all about. Perhaps it was that the Irish play-going public of that time was so used to the "genteel" comedy of the established theatre which I mentioned earlier -- the entertaining but not very realistic stuff that was time and again put before it -- that it couldn't swallow a credible satire. In those days if an actress played an unpleasant part, then it followed that she was an unpleasant person. Similarly, if a dramatist wrote a nasty play he was a nasty fellow. Then, of course, there was the fact that Ireland was on the threshold of a renaissance. Everybody, writer, politician, artist, was at pains to eulogise over the beauty of the Irish character. The advent of a comparatively unknown writer who painted an unpleasant if realistic picture of the peasantry at such a time was, to say the least, unwelcome. The Dubliners who raised the loudest objections could not accept In the Shadow of the Glen as a play. They refused to be entertained.

In 1907, the Abbey Theatre produced Playboy of the Western World. Máire, who was there, writes:

The "Playboy Riots", as they came to be known, indicate very clearly some of the difficulties that the Abbey was called upon to face during its first years -- and they show how the theatre, under Yeats, managed to surmount them. When this play is produced in Dublin now it is recognised and enjoyed as a work of art. In 1907 it drove a number of people into such a frenzy that they nearly wrecked the Abbey. I am in rather a good position to describe the riots because I was in the audience during some of them. Curiosity had taken me into the theatre, as it had taken many another person that week.

It was about the end of 1906 that Synge finished the Playboy ... Yeats later mentioned that Synge took considerable trouble over the piece and scrapped a number of earlier versions before he fixed on the one which was eventually produced...Yeats never tired of recounting the care which Synge lavished on the piece. This, indeed, may have been indirectly responsible for the reception accorded the play by some sections of the public, whose main argument against it was that it was "a slander on the peasantry of Ireland". As in the case of The Shadow of the Glen, its realism gave offence. The only differnce between it and any other play that did not take was that the public, instead of showing its lack of interest in the accepted way -- by its non-attendance -- displayed its disapproval by rioting in the theatre throughout the play's run. The most unusual feature of the affair was that although the players appeared on the stage and acted their parts for a whole week, the uproar caused by the audience was so great that the play was never really heard on any night but the first, and those who took part in the demonstrations on subsequent occasions were dependent on opinions of the firstnight audience and a few rather hysterical newspaper reports. As the week progressed, the trouble instead of lessening, increased, and before the run of the play was half over, the management felt compelled to call for the assistance of the police to preserve order.

The explanations put forward by the rioters during the week were many and varied and it is worth remarking that no two people appeared to base their objections on exactly the same thing. Some objected to the piece because "it made a hero out of a murderer" (the play deals in part with the welcome accorded by a West of Ireland village to a weak-willed boy who believes he has just killed his father); others claimed that the language used was too strong; more contented themselves by saying that the play was "vicious, untrue, and uncalled for" -- a "hideous caricature" in fact; while a considerable number based their objections on the assumption that the piece was a deliberate attack by Synge on Ireland in retaliation for the manner in which The Shadow of the Glen and The Well of the Saints had been received.

(All of this makes me think of what Joyce said, when it became apparent that no Irish publisher would go near The Dubliners and he would have to look outside his own country for a publisher: "It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass."

Máire describes what it was like in the theatre, on the opening night of Playboy of the Western World, January 26, 1907.

The first act went well. There was laughter at the right places and the correct degree of solemnity was maintained when it was demanded. But during the second act I began to feel a tenseness in the air around me -- I was sitting in the pit -- and there were murmurs from the stalls and parts of the gallery. Before the curtain fell it was obvious that there was going to be some sort of trouble. Faint calls and ejaculations like "Oh, no! Take it off!" came from various parts of the house and the atmosphere gradually grew taut. In the third act things really came to a head and those around began to stamp the floor and shout towards the stage, the noise gradually increasing until the voices of the players were drowned. People stood up in their seats and demanded the withdrawal of the play, and when it became clear that the cast was determined to see the thing out to the end, tempers began to fray. The auditorium became a mass of people pulling and pushing in all directions. By the time the curtain fell on the last act, the crowd was arguing and fighting with itself. People in front leaned over the back of seats and demanded quiet -- a lot of people seemed to be doing this -- and those at the back responded by shouting and hissing loudly. The crowd which eventually emerged into the street was in an ugly mood.

Despite vicious and hysterical reviews the play went on. One of the objections was that the word "shift" appeared in the play (meaning: "chemise", or "slip", whatever you want to call it). Christy - the lead character in the play - says - in what is now acknowledged to be a fine piece of dramatic literature, and one of the classic monologues of the stage: "It's Pegeen I'm seeking only, and what'd I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the eastern world?" This was seen as a shock and an outrage.

The Press and the public called for the play to be closed, the hysteria mounted, but the Abbey refused to capitulate. Obviously, Synge had struck a nerve. But things were getting out of hand, it was a violent atmosphere in the audience ... and so Yeats tried to quell this fire. Máire describes:

On the third night Yeats addressed the audience before the curtain rose. If anyone had anything to say against the piece they would be welcomed at a debate which he would be glad to arrange in the theatre at some other time. He was interrupted several times. He asked the interrupters to at least listen to the play so that they would know what it was they were objecting to.

It is just like those idiots who protested Scorsese's Last Temptation without even seeing it. I have no patience and no tolerance for people like that. I'm pretty open-minded, you know "live and let live", but everyone has their limits, everyone has their thing that they cannot endure - and I cannot bear people like that. I don't want to listen, or try to "understand where they're coming from". That's the thing. I DO understand where they are coming from, and that is why I have contempt for them. My contempt comes directly FROM understanding. Their sense of themselves is so fragile that it's a house of cards. Even the fact that Scorsese's movie EXISTED threatened their entire world view. Fine. Go home then and read only the Bible and close the blinds and don't let the big bad nasty world touch your precious house of cards, and let those of us who actually want to SEE the movie decide for ourselves.

Such people have always existed. Their complaints are always the same. As a matter of fact, without the idiots, there would have been no such thing as "The Playboy Riots" - which catapulted Irish theatre onto an international stage. So I suppose we should be grateful in a way! Nothing like someone screaming, "NO ONE SHOULD SEE THIS" to make something into a big giant hit.

Back to the Playboy Riots:

As on the first night, the opening passages were listened to quietly, and even evoked a little laughter. Halfway through the second act, however, a murmur arose in the pit and a man a few rows away stood up and, without any apparent reason, hit the person beside him. A gasp ran around the whole house and the lights went up. All around him the crowd was breaking into disorder.

Within minutes, the audience in the pit and stalls was completely disorganised, and the crowd in thte back and side galleries was almost as bad. Almost everyone was standing. The noise was deafening. Yeats appeared on the stage and pleaded with the sensible members of the audience to remain quiet. His voice was drowned by catcalls, cheers, much stamping of feet, and from somewhere at the back ,the notes of a toy trumpet which came from the centre of a group of young men who looked like university students. He continued to speak, but his words were apparently objected to by those in front, for a howl of protest went up from the stalls and parts of the side gallery, which increased in volume as those behind joined in or tried to cheer the protest down. On the stage the players stood in little knots, discussing the occurrences amongst themselves.

As the noise increased and several arguments broke out around the theatre, Yeats left his place on the stage. A few minutes later the doors into the auditorium opened and to the horror and surprise of most of those present, a body of police entered. At the same time the curtain came down and a semblance of order was restored -- partly due to the sight of the uniforms ...

After a brief speech by Yeats, and the ejection of the more truculent members of the audience, peace was partially restored, and everyone sat down again. At this stage it would have been impossible for anyone to get out. After everyone had been quietened and the greater part of the audience reseated, it would have been dangerous for anyone to stand up. Those who did so were immediately surrounded by hefty policement and shepherded, not too gently, in the direction of the vestibule.

Meanwhile, the orchestra, a recent addition to the theatre, began to play. The music seemed to help matters somewhat, and things almost returned to what they were before the play began. There was much discussion and gesticulation going on however. The affair was still far from settled.

After some time the orchestra retired, the lights were lowered and the curtain went up. Almost immediately the audience reverted to what it had been before the arrival of the police. Not a word of the play could be heard. The cast eventually gave up speaking altogether and went through the piece in pantomime. [Note from Sheila: God, I wish I had been there to see this. It must have been extraordinary.] As the play progressed the noise increased. Men and women stamped the floor, banged the backs of their seats with their fists, shouted and sang alternately. On the stairs from the stalls a man stood, dramatically addressing no one in particular.

The players courageously went through the whole piece. During this time several arrests were made and the police were kept busy operating between the doors and the hall. Just before the play ended I saw an opportunity to escape and took it. Almost everyone in the row where I had been sitting had vanished. I was able to make a dash for the door at the rear of the pit while the police were busy in the front of the house. My last impression of the scene was the sight of a figure standing on a seat somewhere about the centre of the stalls and the sound of a few bars of God Save the King, which were quickly stifled as someone pulled the singer down.

Amazing. The play continued to be performed, and continued to generate riots and protests, garnering the attention of the world. "What is going on over in Ireland right now? What exactly are they protesting??"

Synge died an early death, in 1909, but he left an indelible mark - not only on Ireland, but on theatre as a whole.

I'll end this post now, with a quote from Synge's beautiful book The Aran Islands (and I will post a photo, too, of Synge staring out into the Atlantic, from one of the Islands).

In the following excerpt, he describes leaving the Arans after a couple months' stay ... and returning to the bustle of Galway:

I have come out of an hotel full of tourists and commercial travellers, to stroll along the edge of Galway Bay, and look out in the direction of the islands. The sort of yearning I feel towards those lonely rocks is indescribably acute. This town, that is usually so full of wild human interest, seems in my present mood a tawdry medley of all that is crudest in modern life. The nullity of the rich and the squalor of the poor give me the same pang of wondering disgust; yet the islands are fading already and I can hardly realize that the smell of the seaweed and the drone of the Atlantic are still moving round them.

The Books: "Girls In Their Married Bliss" (Edna O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Girls In Their Married Bliss, by Edna O'Brien. Girls In Their Married Bliss, with its obviously sarcastic title, is the final book in Edna O'Brien's famous "Country Girls Trilogy".

Here's my post about The Country Girls Trilogy as a whole, and Edna O'Brien as a writer. And here's my post about The Lonely Girl, the second book in the trilogy. Things get pretty damn bleak in Girls In Their Married Bliss - marriage is obviously seen as no great shakes. As a matter of fact, it's a nightmare in some ways. BUT we do get a bit of relief - because the narrators have switched. The other two books were narrated by Kate who is a bit more earnest and naive. Baba is her best friend, and Baba is a bit wild, and she knows about things like sexy underwear, and how to order a fancy cocktail, and she has a bit of irreverence for things that Kate holds sacred. She's a wonderful character - and her no-nonsense voice is totally different from Kate's voice ... which is kind of a relief. My favorite of all of the trilogy is the first one, when they are teenagers, and just starting out. Girls In Their Married Bliss is just depressing! It was published in 1964 - which, in terms of Ireland - but also in terms of the world in general - was a much more conservative time, much more like the 50s than the late 60s. So the book needs to be seen in its proper context. It was early to be writing a book which is so vicious about marriage - and women's roles in particular - which is why, yet again, Edna O'Brien found her book banned in her native country. It's kind of like reading Margaret Atwood's earliest books - like The Edible Woman (excerpt here) and Surfacing (excerpt here. Those were published in the late 60s, and have nothing like the power and beauty and horror of her later books (although they are still good) - and her views on marriage and women and men were shocking, at the time. Now books like that are a dime a dozen (although perhaps not written so well). Girls In Their Married Bliss is a brutal examination of marriage, and being trapped in it, of making bad choices in a man because you don't know you have more agency in your life, and also - how women could get lost in marriage. Even down to the fact that you lose your last name. You disappear. Kate definitely disappears. She marries Eugene - the dude from The Lonely Girl - he finally gets a divorce. And he gets Kate pregnant. And they have a shotgun wedding. Very scandalous. The Catholic Church wouldn't bless a marriage like that. But Baba was always more practical. Kate believed in love. She was looking for love. Baba always just wanted a bit of a laugh, maybe some sex, and a comfortable life where she could buy things. Her standards were much lower. And she also lacked the earnestness of her best friend Kate ... she is not as easily hurt. Here's an excerpt from where Baba meets the guy she will eventually marry. Again, seen in the context of that time - especially in Ireland - all of this was quite shocking - I mean, birth control!!, and nobody wanted to hear it. (Well, everybody wanted to hear it ... but the powers-that-be freaked out. You can't say that!!!) Well, yes she could, and did.

EXCERPT FROM Girls In Their Married Bliss, by Edna O'Brien.

His name was Frank and he was blowing money around the place and telling jokes. I'll repeat one joke so as you'll have an idea how hard up I was. Two men with fishing tackle have an arm around an enormous woman and one says to the other, "A good catch." When people are drunk they'll laugh at anything, provided they're not arguing, or hitting each other.

Anyhow, he drove me home and offered me money - he has a compulsion to offer money to people who are going to say no - and asked if I thought he looked educated. Educated! He was a big, rough fellow with oily hair, and his eyebrows met. So I said to him, "Beware of the one whose eyebrows meet, because in his heart there lies deceit." And sweet Jesus, next time we met he'd had them plucked over his broken nose. He's so thick he didn't understand that the fact they met was the significant thing. Thick. But nice, too. Anybody that vulnerable is nice, at least that's how I feel. Another dinner. Two dinners in one week and a bunch of flowers sent to me. The first thought I had when I saw the flowers was, could I sell them at cut rates. So I offered them to the girls in the bed-sits above and below, and they all said no except one eejit who said yes. She began to fumble for her purse, and I felt so bloody avaricious that I said, "Here's half of them," so we had half each, and when he came to call for me that evening, he counted the number of flowers that I'd stuck into a paint tin, for want of a vase. And you won't believe it, but didn't he go and ring the flower shop to say they'd swindled him. There he was out on the landing phone, yelling into it about how he'd ordered three dozen. Armagh roses and what crooks they were, and how they'd lost him as a customer, and there was I in the room with a fist over my mouth to smother the laughter. "You may not be educated," said I, "but you're a merchant at heart. You'll go far." It ended up with the flower shop saying they'd send more, and they did. I was driven to go out to Woolworth's and buy a two-shilling plastic vase because I knew the paint tin would topple if one more flower was put in.

He didn't propose bed for at least six dinners, and that shook me. I didn't know whether to be pleased or offended. He was blind drunk the night he said we ought to, and my garret was freezing and far from being a love nest. The roses had withered but weren't thrown out, and I had this short bed so that his feet hung out at the bottom. I lay down beside him - not in the bed, just on it - with my clothes on. He fumbled around with my zip and of course broke it, and I thought, I hope he leaves cash for the damage, and even if he doesn I'll have to go to a technical school to learn how to stitch on a zip, it's that complicated. I knew the bed was going to collapse. You always know a faulty bed when you put it to that sort of use. So he got the zip undone and got past my vest - it was freezing - and got a finger or two on my skin, just around my midriff, which was beginning to thicken because of all the big dinners and sauces and things. I reckoned I ought to do the same thing, and I explored a bit and got to his skin, and the surprising thing was, his skin was soft and not thick like his face. He began to delve deeper, very rapacious at first, and then he dozed off. That went on for a while - him fumbling, then dozing - until finally he said, "How do we do it?" and I knew that was why he hadn't made passes sooner. An Irishman: good at battles, sieges, and massacres. Bad in bed. But I expected that. It made him a hell of a sight nicer than most of the sharks I'd been out with, who expected you to pay for the pictures, raped you in the back seat, came home, ate your baked beans, and then wanted some new, experimental kind of sex and no worries from you about might you have a baby, because they liked it natural, without gear. I made him a cup of instant coffee, and when he went to sleep I put a quilt over him and put the light out. I sat on the chair, thinking of the eighteen months in London, and all the men I'd met, and the exhaustion of keeping my heels mended and my skin fresh for the Mr. Right that was supposed to come along.

I knew that I'd end up with him, he being rich and a slob and the sort of man who would buy you seasick tablets before you traveled. You won't believe it but I felt sorry for him, the way he worried about not being educated, or being fooled by florists, or being taken for an Irish hick by waiters. Never mind that they're Italian hicks. I could tell them all to go to hell because I had a brazen, good-looking face and was afraid of none of them, not even afraid whether people liked me or not, which is what most people are afraid of, anyhow. I know that people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love, too, only more so.

The Books: "The Lonely Girl" (Edna O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien.

Here's my post about The Country Girls Trilogy as a whole, and Edna O'Brien as a writer. The Lonely Girl is the second book in this famous trilogy - it was published in 1962. And again, like the first in the trilogy, it was banned. This one is even more shocking - because Caithleen, the main character, the "I" of the book, has an affair with a married man. And there's sex and stuff, and sex vs. religion - all of the hot Catholic topics. Eugene is the name of Caithleen's love - and if I'm recalling correctly (it's been a while since I've read the book), the romance blossoms for quite some time before it is revealed that he has a wife. The wife, I believe, is in California. Caithleen discovers a letter from her, I think. Sorry so vague - it's been years. And there's also a child in the picture, which complicates things even more. Eugene, obviously, is not presented as a prince among men ... but he's also not a blackguard villain. Life is a bit more complicated than that, and Caithleen gets sucked into a domestic drama, and because Eugene is her first and all that - she has no perspective. She can't be like Baba, her more worldly best friend, and stroll away saying, "Oh well!! Lesson learned!" Caithleen's family somehow finds out about the situation, and pretty much kidnap her. She is trapped at her house out West, and she is harangued, and harassed - her letters are opened, she is not allowed to go anywhere without a chaperone - a priest is called in for an intervention ... Caithleen, more than anything, yearns for an escape. Who might be looking for her? If someone called the house, would she get the message? How will she get out of here? Edna O'Brien has made no secret about the fact that her family was pretty awful - not just ignorant but openly malevolent towards her and who she actually was. Literature itself was seen as suspect - so, oh well. That means they can't have a relationship with their daughter, since literature is all she cares about. O'Brien really delves into the flash points of culture and sex and religion in The Lonely Girl - and, again, found herself in trouble. Her book banned, everyone furious at her ... But here we are today, talking about The Lonely Girl, and Edna O'Brien is still writing, so I suppose revenge is sweet.

Here's an excerpt from the "kidnapping" section of the book. I love the bleakness of her imagery ... and how she totally captures the brown and grey desolation of the west of Ireland. She writes simply, there aren't a hell of a lot of extra words or flowery passages - but it's still so evocative, I think.

EXCERPT FROM The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien.

I had been thinking of some way of escaping, but the thought of their chasing me made me frightened.

"This vale of tears," my aunt said desolately. Burying the calf had saddened her. Death was always on her mind. Death was so important in that place. Little crosses painted white were stuck up on roadside ditches here and there to mark where someone had been killed for Ireland, and not a day seemed to pass but some old person died of flu, or old age, or a stroke. Somehow we only heard of the deaths; we rarely heard when a child was born, unless it was twins, or a blue baby, or the vet had delivered it.

"Th' evenings will be getting long soon," I said to my aunt to cheer her up, but she just sighed.

We ate dinner in the kitchen. We had salty rashers, a colander of green cabbage, and some potatoes reheated from the previous day. While we were eating in silence, a car drove up and around by the side of the house. My aunt blessed herself as she saw a stranger help my father out.

"Grand evening," my father said as he came in and handed her a brown paper parcel of meat soggy with blood. The stranger had had some drinks but did not stagger.

"You're settling down!" he said to me. I tried to ignore him by concentrating on peeling a cold potato.

"I met Father Hagerty over in the village, he wants to have a chat with you," he said.

My heart began to race, but I did not say anything.

"You're to go and see him."

I put butter on the potato and ate it slowly.

"D'you hear me?" he said with a sudden shout.

"There, there, she'll go," my aunt said, and she linked him into the back room. The stranger hung around for a few minutes until she came out, and then asked for a pound. We had no money, but we gave him three bottles of porter which had been hidden in a press since Christmastime.

My aunt put them in a paper bag and he went off, swearing. We had no idea where he came from.

We sat by the cooker and listened for my father's call. At about nine o'clock he cried out and I ran in to him.

"I think I'm going to die," he said, as his stomach was very sick. The news cheered me up no end - I might get away - so I gave him a dose of health salts.

We went to bed early that night. I slept in the room opposite my aunt's, and when I had closed the door I sat down on the bed and wrote a long letter to Baba, for help. I wrote six or seven pages, while the candle lasted. I had already written a postcard, but had no answer. It occurred to me that maybe they had told the postmistress to keep my letters.

A wind blew down the chimney, causing the candle flame to blow this way and that. There was electricity in the house, but we were short of bulbs. I hid the letter under the mattress and undressed. The sight of my purple brassiere made me recall with longing the Sunday morning Baba and I had dyed all our underwear purple. Baba read somewhere that it was a sexy color, and on the way home from Mass we bought five packets of dye. Sneaky old Gustav must have been peeping through the keyhole of the bathroom, because suddenly Joanna had rushed upstairs and pushed the door in.

"Poison color in the basin," she shouted as she burst in.

"You might have knocked, we could have been doing something very private," Baba said.

"Poison water," Joanna said, pointing to the weird-colored water in the basin. Our underwear turned out very nice, and some boy asked Baba if she was a cardinal's niece.

I kept a jumper on in bed. We were short of blankets. I had only an ironing blanket over me and a quilt that my aunt had made. The candle had burned right down to the saucer as I lay on my side and closed my eyes to think of Eugene. I remembered the night he asked me to do some multiplication for him. He knew all about politics, and music, and books, and the insides of cameras, but he was slow to add. I totted up the amount of money he should get for one hundred and thirty-seven trees, at the rate of thirty-seven and six per tree. He had sold some trees to a local timber merchant, because the woods needed thinning. There were blue paint marks on the "sold" trees, but he said that at night the timber merchant had sent a boy along to put paint marks on extra trees.

"Nearly three hundred and fifty pounds," I said, reckoning it roughly first, the way we were taught to at school, so that we should know it if our final answer was wildly wrong.

"And out of that he'll make a small fortune," Eugene said, detailing what would happen to the tree from the time it was felled until it became a press or a rafter. I could see planks of fine white wood with beautiful knots of deeper color, and golden heaps of sawdust on a floor, while he fumed about the profit which one man made.

I went to sleep wondering if I would ever see him again.

In the morning my aunt brought me tea and said that the priest had sent over word that he was expecting me. I dressed and left the house around eleven. My father had stayed in bed that morning and Mad Maura ran to the village for a half-bottle of whiskey, on tick.

Always when I escaped from the house I felt a rush of vitality and hope, as if there was still a chance that I might escape and live my life the way I wanted to.

It was a bright windy morning, the fields vividly green, the sky a delicate green-blue, and the hills behind the fields smoke-gray.

It's nice, nice, I thought as I breathed deeply and walked with my aunt's bicycle down the field toward the road.

I did not go to the priest's house. I was too afraid, and anyhow, I thought that no one would ever find out.

I went for a spin down by the river and with the intention of posting Baba's letter in the next village.

The fields along the road were struck into winter silence, a few were plowed and the plowed earth looked very, very dead and brown.

If only I could fly, I thought as I watched the birds flying and then perching for a second on thorn bushes and ivied piers.

I cycled slowly, not being in any great hurry. It was very quiet except for the humming of electric wires. Thick black posts carrying electric wires marched across the fields and the wires hummed a constant note of windy music.

At the bottom of Goolin Hill I got off the bicycle and pushed it slowly up; then halfway I stood to look at the ruined pink mansion on the hill. It had been a legend in my life, the pink mansion with the rhododendron trees all around it and a gray gazebo set a little away from the house. A rusted gate stood chained between two limestone piers, and the avenue had disappeared altogether. I thought of Mama. She had often told me of the big ball she went to in that mansion when she was a young girl. It had been the highlight of her whole life, coming across at night, in a rowboat, from her home in the Shannon island, changing her shoes in the avenue, hiding her old ones and her raincoat under a tree. The rhododendrons had been in bloom, dark-red rhododendrons; she remembered their color, and the names of all the boys she danced with. They had supper in a long dining room, and there were dishes of carved beef on the sideboard. Someone made up a song about Mama that night and it was engraved on her memory every after.

Lily Neary, swanlike
She nearly broke her bones
Trying to dance the reel-set
With the joker Johnny Jones.

"Who was Johnny Jones?" I used to ask.

"A boy," she would say dolefully.

The Books: "The Country Girls" (Edna O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Country Girls Trilogy, by Edna O'Brien.

Published in one volume, the three books known as "The Country Girls Trilogy" - were what put Edna O'Brien on the map. Her first novel was "The Country Girls", published in 1960. True to Irish tradition, her book was banned. Not just that book - but all the subsequent Country Girls books, as well as many of her other books. O'Brien just wasn't "playing nice" with Irish sensibilities, and wrote openly about sex and the life of Dublin girls, and marriage, and religion - and so stepped right into hot water. As a young girl, Edna O'Brien read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and it changed her life. She didn't know what she wanted to do - but it had to be something to do with literature. She recently wrote a biography of Joyce (one of my favorite quotes from it: "He would carry his work 'like a chalice' and all his life he would insist that what he did 'was a kind of sacrament.' Father, Son and Holy Ghost along with Jakes McCarthy informed every graven word. On a more secular note he liked blackberry jam because Christ's crown of thorns came from that wood and he wore purple cravats during Lent."), and I believe at one point she also wrote a book about the marriage of James and Nora Joyce. Her artistic mentor, the star she followed. There's a funny line in The Country Girls - Kate and Baba, the two best friends, hang out in Dublin in pubs (and this is 1950s Dublin) - and at one point Baba pulls Kate aside and says, "Stop asking the boys if they're read James Joyce's Dubliners." Like - that is NOT a good courtship technique!

Edna O'Brien has been asked (of course) if the books are autobiographical. It's about two girls from the country, who go away to a convent school together, before moving to Dublin - as single girls - to get jobs, and have love affairs, and eventually get married. These experiences make up the whole trilogy. Edna O'Brien was born in County Clare (to a family who sounds horrendous, frankly - judgmental, rigid, lots to rebel against) - and she also went to a convent school before moving to Dublin where she got a job in a pharmacy. She eventually became a pharmacist. She also got married, to a writer - who (according to my dad) was jealous of his wife's burgeoning gift with the pen ... a nightmare ... O'Brien published her first book ("The Country Girls") in 1960. So anyway. Of course she is asked repeatedly if the book is autobiographical. In one interview she replied, "The novel is autobiographical insofar I was born and bred in the west of Ireland, educated at a convent, and was full of romantic yearnings, coupled with a sense of outrage."

The books are not long litanies of how horrible the men in the country girls' lives are - but there is definitely a sense of isolation, and separation of the genders - which makes intimacy nigh on impossible. Men and women cannot connect. There's the whole sex thing, too. The girls are, of course, Catholics, and have been raised in a homogenous rigid world, where the Church dominates everything - their education, their emotional lives, everything. But when sex starts to come up, all of their teachings are thrown into a tizzy ... can it be reconciled? Kate and Baba don't just want to get married in order to solve the sex problem. They try to struggle it out, in affairs which are pretty terrible at times - questionable - married men, awful people sometimes ... but there is the struggle between living your own life FIRST, and then "settling down" ... can you be a happy individual in a marriage? Remember, this is the late 40s, early 1950s - when choices were much more limited - and those who were NOT just yearning to get married had a helluva time making their way. Square pegs in round holes. The books are now seen as high works of feminist art (although I hesitate to label them because it might turn someone off - but hey, I'm just reporting the facts here - and the fact is that these books are hailed as major events in the history of 20th century feminism) - although many feminists had a problem with Edna O'Brien's stuff because the main focus of the characters in the books was usually on men. So as you can see, Edna O'Brien doesn't completely please anyone. She seems ornery enough that that would make her happy. If you please everyone, you certainly can't be an artist of any import. She grew up in an environment where her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey's plays in Edna's bag, and burned it. Okay? So her mother was an ignorant ridiculously rigid and awful person - who must have been horrified at the free spirit she had given birth to. Sorry, I don't know them - but Edna has spoken about that upbringing herself. And so to fight against that, to fight against family, church, tradition ... well. I'm thinking of Joyce here, right? The age-old Irish artist's fight. To live freely, and write what they want.

O'Brien has said that she wrote her first novel The Country Girls- the first in the trilogy - like a bat out of hell. She just sat down and it streamed out of her. The book reads that way, too. A confident beautiful detailed personal stream of prose - exquisitely rendered at points - events moving us on, things happening, things halting ... Kate and Baba in the country, in the convent ... Who really cares if it's autobiographical or not? What ever happened to just getting into the story? I like the first of the trilogy the best - with Kate and Baba as teenagers and young women, making their way. To me, it is most evocative. The writing!! When they end up getting married, life becomes a drag ... and so do the books a bit. But still: it's a major Irish work, controversial to this day (and you have to wonder: why? It must be seen in the context of the time to get how controversial it was - girls talking about their breasts, and sex, and money ... going behind closed doors to hear what girls talk about when no men are around.) I mean, I won't trivialize it by calling it Sex and the City Dublin-style - because there's way more going on here - but there is a level of everyday reality, the ins and outs of life, the pubs, the dates, the dances ... that seems pretty tame in comparison to coming-of-age stories nowadays. BUT. This is about girls. Coming-of-age stories about boys can have their controversies as well (as James Joyce found out) ... but girls are always a more touchy matter, especially in a patriarchal conservative society. So Kate and Baba - who are not in any, way, shape or form - slutty girls ... have experiences, nonetheless (with married men, with birth control, with sex) - that must have been tremendously shocking at the time. Knowing Edna O'Brien's family situation, it is clear that writing, for her, was a blazing act of rebellion - and it shows. This isn't maudlin "Yellow Wallpaper" stuff - or that terrible story about the woman who drowns herself at the end (I read that book and thought on, oh, about page 2 - "Jeez, hope this lady drowns herself soon. She's a drip.") ... The Country Girls is vibrant slice-of-life stuff, with writing that verges on poetry.

I highly recommend these books to anyone interested in good writing. Also anyone interested in landmark moments in Irish literature.

Edna O'Brien said recently in an interview:

"I wrote The Country Girls in three weeks having blown the 50 quid advance. I was young, married with two small children, and whenever I met people, I was spouting poetry. I had this thing that writing was real – I mean other people's writing – literature, great literature, not rubbish. There's so much rubbish written now, so much garbage, and it's extolled. But writing was to me animate; it was real; it was as real as the people I knew.

"I only thought of one thing – the country, the landscape, my mother, the people I had left. Now I was dying to leave, this is not nostalgia, and I feel permanently, in life, quite isolated. I both belong very intensely to that place where I come from and I'm running from it still. So when I sat down to write, I was extremely emotional and yet the language is not emotional; it just came out. I didn't have to call on memory. To use the cliché – it wrote itself. And that is sometimes true for a first book.

"I knew there'd be a storm. I was accused of betraying my country, my locality, my sex. The nuns in my convent went bonkers with rage. But the books survived. I suppose that's what counts."

Here's an excerpt from The Country Girls, the first in the trilogy. As you can see, it's a simple tale, told simply ... but it broke new ground nonetheless, and paved the way for a more honest and true depiction of Irish womanhood. Edna O'Brien was a trailblazer and it's never easy for such people!! They always get the brunt of the criticism! But she's right - "the books survived" and "that's what counts".

EXCERPT FROM The Country Girls, by Edna O'Brien.

"Will you fit on the brassiere, Miss Brady?" the shopgirl asked. Pale, First Communion voice; pale, pure, rosary-bead hands held the flimsy, black, sinful garment between her fingers, and her fingers were ashamed.

"No. Just measure me," I said. She took a measuring tape out of her overall pocket, and I raised my arms while she measured me.

The black underwear was Baba's idea. She said that we wouldn't have to wash it so often, and that it was useful if we ever had a street accident, or if men were trying to strip us in the backs of cars. Baba thought of all these things. I got black nylons, too. I read somewhere that they were "literary" and I had written one or two poems since I came to Dublin. I read them to baba and she said they were nothing to the ones on mortuary cards.

"Good night, Miss Brady, happy Easter," the First Communion voice said to me, and I wished her the same.

When I came in they were all having tea. Even Joanna was sitting at the dining-room table, with tan makeup on her arms and a charm bracelet jingling on her wrist. Every time she lifted the cup, the charms tinkled against the china, like ice in a cocktail glass. Cool, ice-cool, sugared cocktails. I liked them. Baba knew a rich man who bought us cocktails one evening.

There were stuffed tomatoes, sausage rolls, and simnel cake for tea.

"Good?" Joanna asked before I had swallowed the first mouthful of crumbly pastry. She was a genius at cooking, surprising us with things we had never seen, little yellow dumplings in soup, apple strudel, and sour cabbage, but how I wished that she didn't stand over us with imploring looks, asking, "Good?"

"Tell jokes, my tell jokes?" Herman asked Gustav. He had taken a glass of wine, and always after a glass of wine he wanted to tell jokes.

Gustav shook his head. Gustav was pale and delicate. He looked unemployed, which of course was proper, because he did not go to work. He suffered from a skin disease or something. I was never sure whether I liked Gustav or not. I don't think I liked the cunning behind his small blue eyes, and I often thought that he was too good to be true.

"Let him tell jokes," Joanna said; she liked to be made to laugh.

"No, we go to pictures. We have good time at pictures," Gustav said, and Baba roared laughing and lifted her chair so that it was resting on its two back legs.

"There no juice at pictures," Joanna said, and Baba's chair almost fell backward, because she had got a fit of coughing on top of the laughing. She coughed a lot lately, and I told her she ought to see about it.

"No juice" was Joanna's way of saying that the pictures were a waste of money.

"We go, Joanna," Gustav said, gently nudging her bare, tanned arm with his elbow. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his jacket was hanging on the back of his chair. It was a warm evening and the sun shone through the window and lit up the apricot jam on the table.

"Yes, Gustav," Joanna said. She smiled at him as she must have smiled when they were sweethearts in Vienna. She began to clear off the table and warned us about the good, best china.

"Ladies come nightclub with me?" Herman asked jokingly.

"Ladies have date," Baba said. She lowered her chin onto her chest, to let me know that it was true. Her hair was newly set, so that it curved in soft black waves that lay like feathers on the crown of her head. I was raging. Mine was long and loose and streelish.

"More cake?" Joanna asked. But she had put the simnel cake into a marshmallow tin.

"Yes, please." I was still hungry.

"Mein Gott, you got too fat." She made a movement with her hand, to outline big fat woman. She came back with a slice of sad sponge cake that was probably put aside for trifle. I ate it.

Upstairs, I took off all my clothes and had a full view of myself in the wardrobe mirror. I was getting fat all right. I turned sideways and looked around so that I could see the reflection of my hip. It was nicely curved and white like the geranium petals on the dressmaker's window ledge.

"What's Rubenesque?" I asked Baba. She turned around to face me. She had been painting her nails at the dressing table.

"Chrissake, draw the damn curtains or they'll think you're a sex maniac." I ducked down on the floor, and Baba went over and drew the curtains. She caught the edges nervously between her thumb and her first finger, so that her nail polish would not get smudged. Her nails were salmon pink, like the sky which she had just shut out by drawing the curtain.

I was holding my breasts in my hands, trying to gauge their weight, when I asked her again, "Baba, what's Rubenesque?"

"I don't know. Sexy, I suppose. Why?"

"A customer said I was that."

"Oh, you better be it all right, for this date," she said.

"With whom?"

"Two rich men. Mine owns a sweets factory and yours has a stocking factory. Free nylons. Yippee. How much do your thighs measure?" She made piano movements with her fingers, so that the nail polish would dry quickly.

"Are they nice?" I asked tentatively. We had already had two disastrous nights with friends that she had found. In the evenings, after her class, some other girls and she went into a hotel and drank coffee in the main lounge. Dublin being a small, friendly city, one or the other of them was always bound to meet someone, and in that way Baba made a lot of acquaintances.

"Gorgeous. They're aged about eighty, and my fellow has every bit of himself initialled. Tiepin, cufflinks, handkerchief, car cushions. The lot. He has leopards in his car as mascots."

"I can't go then," I said nervously.

"In Christ's name, why not?"

"I'm afraid of cats."

"Look, Caithleen, will you give up the nonsense? We're eighteen and we're bored to death." She lit a cigarette and puffed vigorously. She went on: "We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside hotels. We want to go places. Not to sit in this damp dump." She pointed to the damp patch in the wallpaper, over the chimneypiece, and I was just going to interrupt her, but she got in before me. "We're here at night, killing moths for Joanna, jumping up like maniacs every time a moth flies out from behind the wardrobe, puffing DDT into crevices, listening to that lunatic next door playing the fiddle." She sawed off her left wrist with her right hand. She sat on the bed exhausted. It was the longest speech Baba had ever made.

"Hear! Hear!" I said, and I clapped. She blew smoke straight into my face.

"But we want young men. Romance. Love and things," I said despondently. I thought of standing under a streetlight in the rain with my hair falling crazily about, my lips poised for the miracle of a kiss. A kiss. Nothing more. My imagination did not go beyond that. It was afraid to. Mama had protested too agonizingly all through the windy years. But kisses were beautiful. His kisses. On the mouth, and on the eyelids, and on the neck when he lifted up the mane of hair.

"Young men have no bloody money. At least the gawks we meet. Smell o' hair oil. Up the Dublin mountains for air, a cup of damp tea in a damp hotel. Then out in the woods after tea and a damp hand fumbling up your shirt. No, sir. We've had all the bloody air we'll ever need. We want life." She threw her arms out in the air. It was a wild and reckless gesture. She began to get ready.

We washed and sprinkled talcum powder all over ourselves.

"Have some of mine," Baba said, but I insisted, "No, Baba, you have some of mine." When we were happy we shared things, but when life was quiet and we weren't going anywhere, we hid our things like misers, and she'd say to me, "Don't you dare touch my powder," and I'd say, "There must be a ghost in this room, my perfume was interfered with," and she'd pretend not to hear me. We never loaned each other clothes then, and one worried if the other got anything new.

One morning Baba rang me at work and said, "Jesus, I'll brain you when I see you."

"Why?" The phone in the shop and Mrs. Burns was standing beside me, looking agitated.

"Have you my brassiere on?"

"No, I haven't," I said.

"You must have; it didn't walk. I searched the whole damn room and it isn't there."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm in a phone booth outside the college and I can't come out."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm flopping all over the damn place," and I laughed straight into Mrs. Burns's face and put down the phone.

"Oh, darling, I know how popular you must be. But tell your friends not to phone in the mornings. There might be orders coming through," Mrs. Burns said.

That night Baba found the brassiere mixed up in the bedclothes. She never made her bed until evening.

We got ready quickly. I put on the black nylons very carefully so that none of the threads would get caught in my ring and then looked back to see if the seams were straight. They were bewitching. The stockings, not the seams. Baba hummed "Galway Bay" and tied a new gold chain around the waist of her blue tweed dress.

I was still wearing my green pinafore dress and the white dancing blouse. They smelled of stale perfume, all the perfume I had poured on before going to dances. I wished I had something new.

"I'm sick o' this," I said, pointing to my dress. "I think I won't go."

So she got worried and loaned me a long necklace. I wound it round and round, until it almost choked me. The color was nice next to my skin. It was turquoise and the beads were made of glass.

"My eyes are green tonight," I said, looking into the mirror. They were a curious green, a bright, luminous green, like wet lichen.

"Now mind - Baubra; and none of your Baba slop," she warned me. She ignored the bit about my eyes. She was jealous. Mine were bigger than hers and the whites were a delicate blue, like the whites of a baby's eyes.

There was nobody in the house when we were leaving, so we put out the hall light and made sure that the door was locked. A gas meter two doors down had been raided and Joanna warned us about locking up.

We linked and kept step with one another. There was a bus stop at the top of the avenue, but we walked on to the next stop. It was a penny cheaper from the next stop, to Nelson's Pillar. We had plenty of money that night, but we walked out of habit.

"What'll I drink?" I asked, and distinctly somewhere in my head I heard my mother's voice accusing me, and I saw her shake her finger at me. There were tears in her eyes. Tears of reproach.

"Gin," Baba said. She talked very loudly. I could never get her to whisper, and people were always looking at us in the streets, as if we were wantons.

"My earrings hurt," I said.

"Take them off and give your ears a rest," she said. Still aloud.

"But will there be a mirror?" I asked. I wanted to have them on when I got there. They were long giddy earrings, and I loved shaking my head so that they dangled and their little blue-glass stones caught the light.

"Yeh, we'll go into the cloaks first," Baba said. I took them off and the pain in the lobes of my ears was worse. It was agony for a few minutes.

We passed the shop where I worked; the blind was drawn, but there was a light inside. The blind wasn't exactly the width of the window; there was an inch to spare at either side and you could see the light through that narrow space.

"Guess what they're doing in there," Baba said. She knew all about them, and was always plying me with questions - what they are and what kind of nightgowns were on the clothesline and what he said to her when she said, "Darling, I'll go up and make the bed now."

"They're eating chocolates and counting the day's money," I said. I could taste the liqueur chocolates Mr. Gentleman had given me long ago.

"No, they're not. They're taking a rasher off every half pound you've weighed before going up to confession," she said, going over and trying to see through the slit at the corner. I saw a bus coming and we ran to the stop thirty or forty yards away.

"You're all dolled up," the conductor said. He didn't take our fares that night. We knew him from going in and out of town every other evening. We wished him a happy Easter.

On John McGahern

Me: "He didn't write many books, did he?"
Dad: "No. He spent all his time paring them down, cutting out everything that didn't fit. There's no fat in his books."

Amen. Finished The Pornographer today in a rowdy Irish pub, got my beer and a book ... found myself in tears at the end. He's sneaky, that McGahern. He doesn't overdo it. He doesn't overstate it. But when he makes his point, you are stripped bare of any defenses, and left naked, shivering, resentful, and yet grateful.

So no. He didn't write that many novels. He was too busy cutting the fat out of them. How many many writers I can think of who could learn from his example.

Thank you, Dad.

The Pornographer, by John McGahern

I'm tearing through The Pornographer, a novel by John McGahern. I posted about it yesterday. I am mortified by the book. Not the frank sex scenes, which I love - he writes them quite well (not to mention the interesting subtle differences between the "real life" sex scenes and the erotic stories written by our narrator ... You know, the difference between sex as performed by gymnasts and sex as performed by regular people with issues and problems and inhibitions, etc.) - but the character of Josephine - the woman Michael becomes involved with (pretty much against his will) is pushing ALL MY BUTTONS. Josephine! My God! The thing is is that I know she is pushing my buttons because I see myself in her, a dark mirror ... and I do not like what I see. I would never ever behave like Josephine behaves, I have far too much coldness and steel in me - and I would rather walk away from a situation than debase myself by asking for what I need (you can see the dysfunction - this is why pride is a sin, people) ... but the desire to behave like Josephine behaves, my experience of rejection (and not even rejection - but potential rejection) - is all out in the open with this woman, and it is excruciating to read. Excruciating!! I find myself siding with Michael repeatedly. I am as cold as he is. Cut this lady loose, Michael. Cut her loose. You were honest with her, and she chose not to listen. So she's an idiot. Get rid of her. Do it quick, like ripping off a Bandaid. Because Michael, lemme tell you, the woman is a nightmare. RUN FOR THE HILLS.

But it is not that simple, of course it isn't. And my response to Josephine, and Michael's response to her ... perhaps might be indicative of our own personal truths, our own sense of boundaries, etc ... but I imagine that McGahern is going for a deeper point here. About intimacy and the inability to connect. Sex feels like connection, and it actually is connection. But when two people are having two separate experiences -during the act of making love - then that's a problem. Actually to call it "making love" is a misnomer. If one person is "making love" and the other person is "having sex" you're gonna have some issues. Josephine is 38 years old, and a virgin. She is highly competent at her job, and she loves it. Michael writes porn stories for a magazine, and hides that fact from everyone. When she discovers the truth, at first she is intrigued. But as they get deeper involved, and he starts pushing her away, she becomes convinced that it is the writing of the porn that has ruined his soul for love. He needs to give it up. And looking at Michael's coldness, his ability to detach - regardless of the consequences - I don't know, maybe Josephine has a point. Michael doesn't sit back and write his porn stories with detachment, they work him up ... as they are meant to work the reader up. But what is he ultimately left with? McGahern does not take a judgmental stance towards porn, or those who love it. He is quite egalitarian, which I like. He's a male writer who can write about women (not all of them can, many of the great male writers suck at trying to write women) ... Women are not monolithic to McGahern, they are not "other" (that's my main beef with a lot of male writers and how they write about women - I'm looking at YOU, Don DeLillo) ... they may be mysterious to the gentlemen involved with them, but they are not so completely beyond the pale in terms of their life experience. Josephine is a nightmare to read - the story, after all, is totally from Michael's point of view. We only feel his increasing sense of entrapment (and this chick sets her sights on him instantly ... I guess that's what happens when you take a 38 year old virgin's virginity ...)

She's pushy. She's demanding. She is immediately in love with him. Michael senses the danger, he senses that Josephine's power 'comes from outside' - meaning: there is a hollowness there, and when he rejects her, as he WILL do, she will be destroyed, because she has built him up as her only reason for being. Michael can sense, from afar, how Josephine is creating a relationship with him out of wholecloth - even though he only wants to take her to pubs, and go back to his place. Doing "date" things, like going to the movies, or doing things during the day ... he's not into that. She keeps pushing him. I ache for her. I ache with embarrassment for her. I want to tell her to back off. She mentions her two friends, two American girls, and Michael can sense the HOURS of girl-talk that has been devoted to him. Michael's no dummy. He knows how women operate. He knows how they make shit up because they want it to be true.

But he got more than he bargained for with Josephine, who will not disappear so easily. This isn't a Fatal Attraction story. She doesn't go off the rails (at least not yet) ... but it's hypnotic, in the fact that I can't wait for her to disappear, I can't wait for Michael to go back to his real life, which consists of doing nothing but writing porn, wandering the streets aimlessly on his days off, picking up girls, having sex, moving on ... Like: why do I want him to go back to that? And yet - I certainly couldn't "approve" of him accepting Josephine - it couldn't work! His coldness amazes even me, and I actually think it's something to be proud of. He does not lead her on. He says straight off, "I am attracted to you, and I want to have sex with you. That's not love." She doesn't understand that at ALL. He reiterates the point. He knows he has to break it off. She gets all excited when she's with him, she can't stand it when he needs "a day off" - like, she wants to be with him all the time. Meanwhile, Michael is in the middle of a family crisis - with his beloved aunt dying, and all of that stuff going on ... he needs SPACE. "I'll see you this weekend," he says to Josephine, after their date on Tuesday. She is dismayed. "All that time without seeing you?"

Frankly, I want to slap her upside the head.

But let me be clear: I want to slap her upside the head because I'm embarrassed, yes, and I want her to protect herself more, play it cool, not be so openly needy ... but then I look at my life, where I have played it cool to such an extent that I am alone, I have hidden my neediness from men so well that they think I don't need them or even really like them, frankly. So who is better? Should Josephine go MY way? Why, cause it's been such a ringing success for me?? Honestly.

What button is being pushed by reading about a woman actually saying, "I love you. I want to be with you. I want to be IN your life ... i don't want to just be the girl you get a drink with and then go home and screw ... I want to be part of your life ..." ?

I don't know, but SOME button is being pushed.

At the same time, I think Michael has been perfectly clear with her - and if any guy ever says to me, "I think we need to take a break" I will know what that means, and I will walk away, and never look back. But that's not Josephine. She will not give up so easy. She fights for it. She is annoying, yes, and we see her through Michael's eyes - which is a distortion ... but I admire the fight.

Be careful what you wish for? Yes, but also the maxim could be: Be careful who you sleep with ... you might awaken a monster. I said that to the doppelganger, lo, those many years ago, in the horrible 2002 aftermath: "Guess you just flirted with the wrong girl, huh. Lesson learned." He gave me the weirdest look, almost like I had slapped him, and nodded and said, "Yeah. I guess so."

And yet I never lose sight of Michael's journey, too - in the book. I yearn for his freedom, I yearn for her to just ... go away. Life (and love) is never that simple.

Bravo, Mr. McGahern.

Here's a killer excerpt. The last paragraph knocked me on my ass. I still haven't gotten up.

"We only know each other a few weeks, and things are happening far too fast for me. I'm fond of you," I could hear the lie slithering on the surface of thin ice. "But I'm not in love with you. I want us to call a halt, for a time anyhow, to these regular meetings."

"I see you have it all worked out, just like one of your plots."

"I haven't it all worked out, but I want to give it a rest. We'll drop it for a month or so and see how we feel then. And for that time both of us are free."

"But I love you ...."

"If you love me, then surely you can do that much for a month."

"You're letting nothing through and you can really swing them."

"Swing what?"

"Reasons. Figures. You have it all figured out, haven't you? There's hardly need to even talk."

"I want to rest it for a month," I said doggedly.

"It'll be no different in a month."

"We'll see."

"I feel I have enough love for the both of us to begin with. It's that horrible stuff you're writing that has you all twisted and unnatural. I'd care so much for you. There's so many other decent natural things you could do."

"I suppose I could run a health food shop or a launch on the Shannon River," I said angrily.

"You don't understand. I love you. I only want the best for you."

'Well then, the best for me is that we agree not to see one another for a month."

"I don't suppose there's any use suggesting that we go back to your place and talk about it."

"No. There's no use. You know what that'll lead to, and we'll be only deeper and deeper in."

"There was a time when you were anxious enough for that," it was her turn to be angry.

"We both were. I'll get a taxi for you or I'll walk you home. Whichever you prefer."

"Walk me home," she said.

"I'm grateful, even flattered by your love. But you can't do the loving for the both of us," I said to her at the gate.

"O boy," she said bitterly. "I waited long enough to sure pick a winner," and I shook her hand and left before she began to cry.

I too had stood mutilated by another gate, believing that I could not live without my love; but we endure, as the first creature leaving water endured, having first tried to turn back from the empty land. Having drunk from the infernal glass we call love and knowing we have lived our death, we turn to love another way, in the ordered calm of each thing counted and loved for its impending loss. We learn to smile.

The Pornographer, by John McGahern

I'm reading The Pornographer, a novel by John McGahern. I read his By the Lake last year (excerpt here), and his Amongst Women is one of my favorite books (excerpt here) - so I decided to go back and fill in the blanks in the McGahern canon, including his memoir All Will Be Well.

Here's an interesting post about McGahern, thoughts about who he was as a writer, and what he meant.

Anne Enright, winner of the Booker Prize last year for The Gathering said about McGahern, and Irish writers in general:

I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this. I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true. John McGahern was an immensely angry, dangerous, and subversive writer. But he was domesticated by the Irish academy incredibly fast. There's the idea of the "authentic Irish" that he keys into.

Subversive not like peep-show subversive. But subversive as in revolutionary. He said what nobody wanted him to say. Which was the truth, as he saw it, about life on the ground in Ireland. He was sacked from his job. His first novel was banned in Ireland. Eventually, they came around - and he was more famous in Ireland than he ever was abroad (although, in the wake of his death, that has much changed). He is one of Ireland's greatest all-time writers. His stuff is haunting. He uses a gentle pen - nothing firebrand-ish about him. You lose track of where you are when you are reading his books, the atmosphere is so all-encompassing. And for the most part, it seems like he is just describing what happened ... The depths of his books are not immediately apparent. He does not make a big obvious deal about his themes. But they are there, and they resonate in the reader long long after you finish the book. I mean, the silence of that house in Amongst Women was deafening - and it seems like I can hear it still. And the characters he creates leave an indelible mark. He's one of the best. And yes, you might miss how angry he is, and how courageous. Nobody thanked him at the time, for just telling the truth, as he saw it, about the Church, and sex, and politics in Ireland. He was pilloried. I guess he could take comfort that he was in good company (ie: Joyce, another writer who was run out of town on a rail after telling the truth about Dublin and Dubliners). He has the last laugh, I suppose - any list of great Irish novelists usually has him in the top 5, and small wonder. He is a very local writer - which I wonder is one of the reasons why his fame did not spread much further outside Ireland? But his very local-ness reminds me of two quotes:

Thomas Hardy, who was also accused of being "provincial" - and writing about the same 10 square miles of ground - had this to say:

"A certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done."

And then a quote from photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, who had this to say about photographing Marilyn Monroe:

She's American and it's very clear that she is - she's very good that way - one has to be very local to be universal.

Both of these quotes seem to me to be applicable to John McGahern, and his particular and specific power as a writer. He is Irish. His books could not take place anywhere else. You can hear the brogues in his language (much more than you can in, say, Banville's stuff). McGahern writes in a brogue. And yet by being "very local" he has become "universal". And his stuff, which has a "certain provincialism" also becomes "the essence of individuality". You cannot remove his people into other lands, and have them retain the same sense of truth. Ireland is a character in his books, although it is rarely mentioned. LIke I said, he does not dwell, he does not use a giant hammer to make his points ... and in that way, he is the most subversive writer of them all. Because it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is he is doing or saying - and so he drove the officals mad! "We KNOW this is subversive, dammit ... but we don't know WHY!! He's up to no good, that's clear!"

I mean, sometimes it is obvious why - he was very open about sex and writing about sex - and just look at the title of this book!! Hugely confrontational! The Pornographer? In 1970s Ireland? What are you, nuts? You can't say that!!

But he does.

In The Pornographer we meet Michael, a quiet man who makes his living writing erotic stories for an underground magazine. He writes trash. He is given the names of the characters by the editor of the mag - "Okay, so this one will be about The Colonel and a little tart named Mavis ..." and off he goes. He doesn't even have to worry about plot - that is given to him as well. But the sex is all his to write. It's graphic stuff. "Fuck me fuck me O Jesus fuck me" cries poor Mavis as she humps the Colonel in Majorca. Michael lives a rather aimless life, it seems (I'm early on in the book) - and is, at the moment, taken with caring for his aunt, who is dying in a nearby hospital. Her husband won't come to visit her. The book opens with Michael taking his uncle (his aunt's brother) to see his sister in the hospital. His uncle is a country man, a working man - a true McGahern type, rural, rough, nobody's fool, and highly practical. He makes appointments with a couple of different distributors in Dublin, to get machinery parts, while he's there. There's this absolute stunner of a sentence:

My uncle saw his own state as the ideal, and it should be the goal of others to strive to reach its perfect height. For me to disturb its geometry with any different perspective would be a failure of understanding and affection.

Wow.

Michael tells no one what he does for a living. It's vague. He's a "writer". He had a failed love affair which seems to have made an impact. He asked her to marry him, she said no. And now he is left in the lonely quiet aftermath.

Here's an excerpt - a connection being made between the ritual of the mass and the ritual of sitting down to write. Of course, sitting down to write porn. Ah, McGahern. I love your subversive self.

There was no sound when I opened the door of the house and let it close. Nor was there sound other than the creaking of the old stairs as I climbed to the landing. I paused before going into the room but the house seemed to be completely still. I closed the door and stood in the room. Always the room was still.

The long velvet curtain that was drawn on the half-open window stirred only faintly. A coal fire was set ready to light in the grate. The bed with damaged brass bells stood in the corner and shelves of books lined the walls. Books as well were piled untidily on the white mantel above the coal grate, on the bare dressing table. Beside the wardrobe a table lamp made out of a Chianti bottle lit the marble tabletop that had been a washstand once, lit the typewriter that rested on a page of old newspaper on the marble, lit an untouched ream of white pages beside it. I reflected as I always did with some satisfaction after an absence that the poor light of day hardly ever got into this room.

I washed and changed, combed my hair, and washed my hands again a last time before going over to the typewriter on the marble, and started to leaf through what I had written.

We used to robe in scarlet and white how many years before. Through the small window of the sacristy the sanded footpath lay empty and still between the laurels and back wall of the church, above us the plain tongued boards of the ceiling. It seemed always hushed there, motors and voices and the scrape-drag of feet muffled by the church and tall graveyard trees. Kneelers were no longer being let down on the flagstones. The wine and water and hand linen had been taken out onto the altar. The incessant coughing told that the church was full. The robed priest stood still in front of the covered chalice on the table, and we formed into line at the door as the last bell began to ring. When it ceased the priest lifted the chalice, and we bowed together to the cross, our hearts beating. And then the sacristy door opened on to the side of the altar and all the faces grew out of a dark mass of cloth out beyond the rail. We began to walk, the priest with the covered chalice following behind.

Among what rank weeds are ceremonies remembered, are continued. I read what I had written, to take it up. My characters were not even people. They were athletes. I did not even give them names. Maloney, who was paying me to write, effectively named them. "Above all the imagination requires distance," he declared. "It can't function close up. We'd risk turning our readers off if there was a hint that it might be a favourite uncle or niece they imagined doing these godawful things with"; and so Colonel Grimshaw got his name and his young partner on the high wire joined him as Mavis Carmichael.

This weekend the Colonel and Mavis were away to Majorca.

"Write it like a story. Write it like a life, but with none of life's unseemly infirmities," Maloney was fond of declaring. "Write it like two ball players crunching into the tackle. Only feather it a little with down and lace."

I am not sure what is to come - I'm really looking forward to the book.

The Sea, by John Banville

Another excerpt from The Sea, by John Banville. I am beginning to realize the essential bleakness at the heart of the book. I think I resisted it, although it was apparent that it would not be a laugh-riot. This is a man grieving for his dead wife, and also haunted by some event in his childhood - that, frankly, it is taking him forever to reveal. I'm on page 145 with only 50 pages to go and I still don't know what it was that happened back then that had such an impact. I know it's coming ... but he's only giving it to me in drips and drabs. He had a crush on Mrs. Grace ... and then transferred his love to the daughter, Chloe. They were 11 years old and were "going out". Nothing earth-shattering ... but you can tell that, on some level, time stopped for Max Morden - NOT when his wife died, but long long ago, in childhood. As he says in the first paragraph of the book "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide." The Grace kids were "the gods". They had the same chaotic power of the Gods of old, the same dominating aspects ... the same mix of benevolence and cruelty. So I don't know what happened back there - the book goes back and forth (sometimes 3 times in one sentence) between Max now - who has moved to the town where he holidayed as a young kid, the scene of whatever it was that happened with the Graces ... He has moved back here because he is at a loss at what to do after the death of his wife. But he also needs peace and quiet to work - and it is inconceivable that he could get anything done at his home, where he lived so long with his wife. But it is also apparent that he has moved back here to come to