May 3, 2022
Have you ever thought, Brendan, how many completely different lives there are to be lived if only one could choose?
JG Farrell, Troubles
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Have you ever thought, Brendan, how many completely different lives there are to be lived if only one could choose?
JG Farrell, Troubles
The heading on the Twitter account of someone called @bucketsofrain
And everyone would climb the stairs chuckling to their rooms and dream of aces and knaves and a supply of trumps that would last for ever and ever, one trump after another, an invincible superiority subject to neither change nor decay nor old age, for a trump will always be a trump, come what may.
J.G. Farrell. “Troubles”, 1970.
In War, No-one is Apolitical (Thoughts on Two Novels of JG Farrell)
In War, No-one is Apolitical (Thoughts on Two Novels of JG Farrell)
In my previous article, concerning the genre of what is ultimately pulp, soapish historical fiction, I discussed the idea that it is impossible for a work dealing with an elite and a dispossessed to be be apolitical. By extension, a work which downplays or mocks the downfall of an elite for comic value – by presenting socialists or reformists as figures of fun and inconveniences – can not…
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Saturday. ...the birds were so heavy with meat that they could hardly launch themselves into the air, the jackals could hardly drag themselves back to their lairs.
NYRB in Ireland
Taking a trip to Ireland any time soon? Here are some NYRB Classics that might help you along.
The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan: In 1798 Wolfe Tone, the leader of the United Irishman, along with 1,000 French Revolutionary forces landed in County Mayo to liberate Ireland from English rule. They failed, but Flanagan uses the events as the basis for his historical novel that veers between the voices of poets, farmers, landlords, priests, soldiers, Protestants, Catholics, English- and Irish-speakers. Hilary Mantel recommended it as one the greatest historical-fiction books of all time.
Troubles by J. G. Farrell: In 1919, after the end of WWI, a young English veteran goes to visit his fiancée in the grand Irish hotel her father owns. The hotel is falling apart —and despite the fact that his fiancée dies and civil war erupts around him, he can’t seem to leave. A very funny novel, somehow.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore: Ms. Hearne is a snobbish, priggish spinster living in Belfast who, for obvious reasons, doesn’t have many friends. She also doesn’t have any money, and a few other problems we won’t divulge here. Not a happy character but a very moving book.
Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage by Tim Robinson: The Aran Islands in Galway Bay are famed for their rugged beauty. Robinson spends the whole book (which isn’t short) describing the perimeter of Inis Mór (”biggest island”) in detail: explicating the geography, history, flora and fauna, myths and stories and personalities and language—and of course his own relation to his adopted and remarkable home-island. You’ll learn about Aran but it will also make you think about your own home and daily journeys around it.