The accelerating commodification of irishness

Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Corpsey said:
The other thing you encounter reading about Yeats, Joyce, Beckett is the contrast between the Catholic and Protestant Irish. Perhaps they have different "minds" too. Joyce was Catholic, Beckett Protestant, for example.
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try The Stray Sod Country where the cultural frameworks are explored through inter-faith marriage
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
Corpsey said:
I read Clockwork Orange a long time ago, like everyone on here I suppose

Never have read his novels, no. The ones that are highly recommended by other people are very long. "Earthly Powers" and his recreation of Shakespeare "Nothing Like The Sun". @jenks must have read them.

I'm currently reading Proust so I've got my hands full.

He also wrote a book on DH Lawrence which I started but didn't get far with (doesn't help that I've not ready any DHL).
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Yeah I’ve read a few. Earthly Powers is the pick of the longer ones. Bizarrely enough he reminds me of Genesis P Orridge - a brilliant self mythologiser who lives to insert himself into a story about someone more famous than he is.
I think his attitude to literature is the great broad sweeping statement - the Irish can’t write a straight novel quoted above. Of course it’s nonsense - anymore than the English can only write straightforward realist prose. But anything said with confidence can sound convincing - just look at this board.
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
Corpsey said:
The other thing you encounter reading about Yeats, Joyce, Beckett is the contrast between the Catholic and Protestant Irish. Perhaps they have different "minds" too. Joyce was Catholic, Beckett Protestant, for example.

I like finding out a writer is formed by their country/class/time, although perhaps its a bit philistinic of me to care
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What I think about this is that again it has the feeling of truth rather than actually being true. Someone like McGaherne is about as different from Flann O Brien as you can get. Wendy Erskine and William Trevor both short story writers but again stylistically and subject matter totally different - the lust goes on. I’m sure some will say - ahh, country v city, east coast v west, Cork is a law unto itself etc etc

What I think is more interesting is that those who had/have a religious background do seem to carry the book with them - if you’ve sat in enough church services - Mass or whatever the Protestants call theirs - you can’t help but notice the whole thing is seeped in story telling, metaphorical and figurative language, poetry of varying degrees of quality, music (sometimes dire, sometimes ethereal) - I do think this can help make a writer, it’s just so much part of their culture and often from the cradle onwards.
 
version

version

Well-known member
They had Burgess on an episode of After Dark with Andrea Dworkin back in the day. I wasn't sure how it would go, particularly with the way he's introduced, but they didn't seem to get along too badly. It wasn't an Oliver Reed and Kate Millett kind of disaster.

 
shiels

shiels

_
jenks said:
What I think about this is that again it has the feeling of truth rather than actually being true. Someone like McGaherne is about as different from Flann O Brien as you can get. Wendy Erskine and William Trevor both short story writers but again stylistically and subject matter totally different - the lust goes on. I’m sure some will say - ahh, country v city, east coast v west, Cork is a law unto itself etc etc

What I think is more interesting is that those who had/have a religious background do seem to carry the book with them - if you’ve sat in enough church services - Mass or whatever the Protestants call theirs - you can’t help but notice the whole thing is seeped in story telling, metaphorical and figurative language, poetry of varying degrees of quality, music (sometimes dire, sometimes ethereal) - I do think this can help make a writer, it’s just so much part of their culture and often from the cradle onwards.
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Yes! It shows up whether you like it or not
 
shiels

shiels

_
I remember a teenage atheist arrogance. But as yoi get older you realise how much you’re steeped and stewed and how its inescapable.
 
version

version

Well-known member
jenks said:
What I think is more interesting is that those who had/have a religious background do seem to carry the book with them - if you’ve sat in enough church services - Mass or whatever the Protestants call theirs - you can’t help but notice the whole thing is seeped in story telling, metaphorical and figurative language, poetry of varying degrees of quality, music (sometimes dire, sometimes ethereal) - I do think this can help make a writer, it’s just so much part of their culture and often from the cradle onwards.
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I read some criticism of DeLillo a few years back saying he gave everything "the atmosphere of a catholic mass in old latin".
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
You wouldn’t kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected the wrong way.
 
version

version

Well-known member
Is there anyone who could be firmly marked out as a secular novelist along these lines? Someone who's managed to skirt or shed the religious influence on their style.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
ver$hy ver$h said:
Is there anyone who could be firmly marked out as a secular novelist along these lines? Someone who's managed to skirt or shed the religious influence on their style.
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Despite having no Bible to draw on the Bible's writers wrote possibly the most biblical work of all.
 
shiels

shiels

_
jenks said:
What I think about this is that again it has the feeling of truth rather than actually being true. Someone like McGaherne is about as different from Flann O Brien as you can get. Wendy Erskine and William Trevor both short story writers but again stylistically and subject matter totally different - the lust goes on. I’m sure some will say - ahh, country v city, east coast v west, Cork is a law unto itself etc etc

What I think is more interesting is that those who had/have a religious background do seem to carry the book with them - if you’ve sat in enough church services - Mass or whatever the Protestants call theirs - you can’t help but notice the whole thing is seeped in story telling, metaphorical and figurative language, poetry of varying degrees of quality, music (sometimes dire, sometimes ethereal) - I do think this can help make a writer, it’s just so much part of their culture and often from the cradle onwards.
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McGahern is beautiful. He pulls so much out of the everyday simplicity. I’m reading amongst women at the moment and just finished the dark. They are essentially the same thing, the complicated traumatised Irish da.
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
shiels said:
McGahern is beautiful. He pulls so much out of the everyday simplicity. I’m reading amongst women at the moment and just finished the dark. They are essentially the same thing, the complicated traumatised Irish da.
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You can hear the Irish in the prose - the rhythm and rise and fall of that rural accent. It’s mesmerising. I think Clare Keegan is the same. Slowly telling you a small story that is actually devastating.
You get a different garrulous Irish voice in something like Pogue Mahone and in some of O’Brien. The tall tale teller which probably has its roots in the Citizen In Ulysses.
I think Wendy Erskine’s Welsh Belfast voice is great. She says she gets her stories from listening to cabbies telling her stories and you can hear that confidential tone in there.
I lent my copy of Barrett’s Young Skins to a colleague from Cork and he said it was uncanny listening to the voice - made him homesick.
 
version

version

Well-known member
shiels said:
Don’t know if that’s possible we’re all in the stew together are we not
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This is why I find it an interesting thought. You look at someone like Joyce who has Stephen talk of 'flying by' the various 'nets' in Portrait, but he invariably fails to escape from these things, partly because they're just part of you and partly because opposing something reinforces its presence.

shiels said:
All of his dialogue is like that too, not natural, lectures. But I do really like him
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shiels said:
Like Ballard you’re not going to him for real people you’re there for another world
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Yeah, I don't have a problem with DeLillo's style. I recognise what they're describing though, it just isn't a negative for me.
 
shiels

shiels

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jenks said:
You can hear the Irish in the prose - the rhythm and rise and fall of that rural accent. It’s mesmerising. I think Clare Keegan is the same. Slowly telling you a small story that is actually devastating.
You get a different garrulous Irish voice in something like Pogue Mahone and in some of O’Brien. The tall tale teller which probably has its roots in the Citizen In Ulysses.
I think Wendy Erskine’s Welsh Belfast voice is great. She says she gets her stories from listening to cabbies telling her stories and you can hear that confidential tone in there.
I lent my copy of Barrett’s Young Skins to a colleague from Cork and he said it was uncanny listening to the voice - made him homesick.
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Have you seen the quiet girl? Claire Keenan’s foster… what you’re saying about a small story that’s devastating, Jesus Christ, everyone walk out of the cinema was crying
 
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