A story about Joyce I’d never heard before

Posted on February 28, 2022 by - Blog

One story about James Joyce I hadn’t come across before – even when I was growing up in Cork – concerned a business trip he carried out to the ‘real’ Capital back in 1909. In league with some Trieste-based businessmen, Joyce had come searching for a suitable place to open a cinema. Finding no suitable premises in Cork however, he returned to Dublin where he subsequently opened the ‘Volta Electric Cinema’ in December that same year.

Sadly, although he displayed a level of entrepreneurship ahead of his time, Joyce’s lack of gritty business acumen meant that Ireland’s first commercial cinema was a failure, closing down in April the following year and sold at a loss a few months later.

I came across this story through a link to Cork’s Crawford Gallery where they’re marking the centenary of Joyce’s Ulysses with an exhibition called ‘Odyssey’ that examines Joyce’s connections to Cork and – more vaguely – a consideration of how odysseys or journeys have been portrayed in art over the years. The exhibition includes artworks from over thirty artists, including works of historical figures like James Barry and more contemporary artists such as Brian Maguire and Aoife Desmond.

The exhibition is centred around a six-minute documentary call James Joyce: Framed in Cork. This follows an investigation by a Department of English lecturer at UCC (University College Cork) of Joyce’s connections to the city.

You can find a link to the exhibition here at Joyce Exhibition and it’s on until the third of April). Even if you have no interest in the exhibition, I highly recommend the teas rooms for a catch-up friends.

As Joyce himself said:

What is better than to sit at the end of the day with friends – or substitutes for friends.

The Irony of an Irish Literary Icon

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - Blog

You’ll see a lot of publicity around the centenary of James Joyce’s Ulysses tomorrow (it’s a hundred years since it was published) but I’m already growing a little cynical about the inevitable over-the-top lauding of its praises and self-congratulatory hoo-balloo.

When Ulysses was first published in 1918 (for context, this was just two years after the Easter Rising), it was serialized in parts via an American Literary Journal until 1920 before being published in its entirety in 1922. The book was subsequently blacklisted and banned from publication due to its ‘obscenity’ (although there were many pirated copies) until the mid-1930s.

Joyce had already left Ireland by then however (in 1902) and he was very much an ex-isle by the time his ‘success’ kicked in. It certainly seems that he didn’t have much patience for much of Irish society at the time. He despised the Catholic Church, he was openly contemptuous of the various political movements (and there were a lot during that period) but he seems to have reserved a particular level of scorn for the Irish literary sector, most particularly for the romanticised (and very anglicized) Celtic Twilight representation of Irish culture as pushed by W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and other members of the Irish Literary Renaissance.

Joyce was essentially pilloried in Ireland for two decades by the established hoi-polloi and literary gatekeepers of the time but, in a sense, he had the last laugh. His huge success later in life means that today, it’s that exact same group of government-sponsored literary organisations who’ll be out there telling everyone what a literary genius he was. Most of them, will probably not even have read the book.

I’m sure if he was still alive, he’d appreciate the irony.

Update on Liath Luachra: The Seeking (The Irish Woman Warrior Series III)

Posted on April 24, 2020 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, My Writing

Liath Luachra: The Seeking has now passed 80,000 words – essentially the first eight chapters (and I’m currently working on Chapter 9). The book is planned for release later this year.

Above is a section of the new cover for this book. Below is the current draft of the back cover blurb.

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In the bleak Luachair valley, the woman warrior Liath Luachra’s seclusion is disrupted by a desperate plea to rescue a comrade’s abducted sister. Raising her ‘fian’ to pursue the raiders, this ‘Seeking’ turns out far more perilous than first imagined.

Pursuing a mysterious war party across ancient Ireland’s Great Wild, she soon finds herself confronted on every side. Old enemies seek to undermine her, new allies can’t be trusted and in the deep south-east, a dark threat rises, roused by a chilling spectre from her past.

Faced with horrors she’d thought long forgotten, Liath Luachra must revert to the worst part of herself to survive the phantoms of her past and present.

But you cannot stalk – or kill – a ghost.

INTERPRETING SECRETS, SIGHS AND SEX

Posted on September 9, 2019 by - Blog, Mise (Me), My Writing

It’s always fascinating to learn how other people have interpreted something you’ve created, particularly when it’s something as complex as a novel. I’m still a bit surprised at times when a reviewer comments on my books and adds an interpretation that I really didn’t have in mind when I was writing the story.
 
Facebook reminded me of a review I’d read on Beara: Dark Legends (which came out on Tintean Magazine) last year and, again, as I was reading through it, the reviewer’s interpretation/ experience seemed remarkably different (at times) to the one I’d imagined a reader would have.
 
That’s no real biggie, of course. The reality is that different people experience different things from the same art form. Thousands, if not millions of people can study a painting and see something completely different based on their own life experiences. The same is certainly true with respect to a story you tell them.
 
Years ago I wrote a short story entitled ‘Sex with Sarah’ which was basically about the moral corruption endemic in large government departments. Yes, there was some sexual content in there of course (actually, a lot) but, essentially as a mechanism to reflect that corruption (and, God, yes, I can be up myself sometimes!). For years (Years!) afterwards, people who’d read it would come up to me asking who Sarah (of the title) was. Most knew I’d worked in that sector for a while and recognised a lot of what I’d written.
 
All the same, it always struck me as quite funny that so few people were focused on the key message I was trying to get across. Most seemed more interested in getting Sarah’s contact details.

The Tailor and Ansty- A Review

Posted on December 7, 2017 by - Blog, Uncategorized

I first came across a copy of The Tailor and Ansty about 25 years ago when I was dossing in the basement of a large house in Bath (England). I’d been visiting my girlfriend for the weekend and the whole event had taken on a surreal nature as we’d broken up during a burlesque circus that was performing there. I ended up stuck, penniless, in a city where I knew no-one and had to spend a full Saturday night there before I could catch the train (and ferry) back to Cork. In the end, I was fortunate enough to find accommodation in the basement of a (very) large house in the centre of town, where a distant acquaintance was flatting.

I found the copy of ‘The Tailor and Ansty’ discarded on the floor of that basement with some old magazines. To be honest, I was a bit surprised to find that particular Irish book there – and a bit curious as well. Over the years, I’d heard it references to it at home but never fully in context, so although I was familiar with the title, I actually had no idea what it was about. I think, at the time, I simply assumed it would be similar to Joyce or Myles na gCopeleen.

With nothing else to do, I picked it up and read it.

The first thing that struck me was the easy readability. Cross had a lovely, nonchalant style that made it a pleasure to read from the very first page.

“In the townland of Garrnapeaka, in the district of Inchigeela, in the parish of Iveleary, in the barony of West Muskerry, in the county of Cork, in the province of Munster” – as he magniloquently styles his address, lives the Tailor.
His small whitewashed cottage, with its acre of ground, stands at the brow of a hill, at the side of a road which winds and climbs into a deep glen of the mountains bordering Cork and Kerry.

If you don’t know much about the story, it really is very simple and concerns Eric Cross’ record of his interactions with two elderly individuals: Timothy Buckley (the laid back and talkative Tailor) and his ever-nagging wife Anastasia (Ansty) in 1940’s Gougane Barra (West Cork). For me, it was something of a surprise to learn that not only was the setting close to where I’d lived and grown up but that the characters were (or, rather, had been) real individuals.

The book is gently humorous (very funny at times) and gives a beautiful insight into the lives of people in rural Ireland at a time when there was no entertainment apart from shaggy stories and philosophical musings. Mostly, the book concerns the Tailor’s amusingly erudite – if unscholarly – ramblings and various interactions between the couple and their friends and neighbours and their almost obsessive care of their single cow. Because of their age (the Tailor and Ansty were quite elderly and retired at the time Eric Cross knew them) both were very much set in their ways and, after over forty years of living together, had a polished routine of abuse and affection that comes through in the book. If you’re looking for action and high drama, you won’t find it here but you’ll not find a better antidote to modern life either.

Now that you know a bit about what the book, you might be surprised to learn the associated history. Back in 1942, when the book was first published, it ended up being banned by the Irish Censorship Publications Board as it didn’t align with de Valera’s view of what the new Ireland should look like (Ireland had only recently become independent). Neither did the old couples’ belief in the ‘fairies’ align with the spiritual purity demanded by the increasingly powerful Irish Catholic church. The book was described as ‘pornographic’, which was, of course, utter nonsense. That didn’t prevent a number of senior Catholic priests arriving to the Tailor’s house in Gougane Barra and forcing the old man down on his knees to burn a copy of the book.

In this respect, the Tailor and Ansty was really the first troubling signal of the potential abuse of power of the national government. It was also a warning shot for the self-justified cruelty associated with the worst of religious fanaticism (something that would eventually lead to the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries and abuse of children in Irish religious institutions).

Thirty years later, I still have the original copy I found on the floor of that basement in Bath. I’m still exceptionally grateful for finding it. Not only did it provide some timely (and well needed) distraction at a time when I needed it, it remains one of my favourite books to this day.

In case you’re wondering, I woke at dawn the following morning to get the first train out of Bath, although the whole surreal theme continued for a while. As I was making my way through the deserted – but strikingly beautiful streets – towards the station, I kept hearing an odd venting noise (something that sounded eerily like the breathing apparatus of Darth Vader’s helmet). I looked around several times trying to work out what was causing it but, on each occasion, could see absolutely nothing. Finally, something prompted me to look up and there, overhead, was a hot-air balloon in the shape of a large house, drifting low over the streets of the city.

It seemed like an apt end to the weekend.

This review originally appeared in Vóg (our monthly newsletter) in 2016.

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It’s always a bit of a thrill to see the physical end product

Posted on November 19, 2015 by - Blog, My Writing, Uncategorized

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It’s always a bit of a thrill to see the physical end product from your creative work. Even after five or six printed books, the tangible experience of holding the first physical copy in my hand still gives a bit of a buzz. Oddly enough, from experience, I also know that sensation fades pretty rapidly. Within a month or so, whenever I pick it up a book I’ve written, it always feel as though it’s someone else’s book.
I’m not quite sure why such ‘distancing’ occurs. In some ways it’s good in that I can actually pick up and read one of my previous books with a very objective eye. I recently reread Fionn: Defence of Rath Bladhma and the nice thing was that I actually quite enjoyed reading it. How weird is that?

I suppose I’ve never really thought about it too much until yesterday (when I picked up the physical sample copy of Liath Luachra – The Grey One from the printers we use here in Wellington). Now, I suspect that what happens is, once one creative project is completed, I just mentally “chuck it” as I move onto the next. This is probably good in that it actually makes me quite productive but it also means I no longer have such a strong sense of creative ownership of the works I produce. I suppose that just doesn’t become so important any more once you’ve delivered your first “creative baby”! With each new creative work you become a lot more pragmatic and substantially less precious about them.

Anyway, Liath Luachra – The Grey One is now available for pre-order on Kindle. It’ll also be available in hard copy from Amazon in the next 1-3 days.

For those who live in Wellington, I’ll have paperbacks available from sometime next week providing all goes to plan.

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By the way, the white paper to the right of the computer is the rough draft of Fionn: The Adversary. I’m taking a week or two off from it at the moment but, yes, I am working on it.