No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

I got a postcard of this Samuel Beckett lithograph at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It hangs above my bed in my room at home and I love it.

In Conversation: Roddy Doyle & Colum McCann

Today was another of those perfect New York days. It was the final day of the PEN World Voices Festival, which hosted a conversation between Roddy Doyle and Colum McCann at the French Institute Alliance Francaise. I bought tickets months ago – this was not something I was going to risk missing. And, as expected, they were both brilliant. After picnicking in Central Park, my friend (a fellow lover of all things Irish) and I sat starry-eyed in the audience, trying to soak up everything they said. A lot of ground was covered; the conversation flowed from what it means to be a contemporary Irish writer, to The Quiet Man, to Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, to Japanese translations, to Don DeLillo, to talking dogs, to Wife Swap. I only wish I took detailed notes.

Because McCann and Doyle are friends (reinforcing my belief that all the best contemporary Irish writers are part of a close-knit circle), the event truly was a conversation. Though it was really all about Roddy Doyle, with McCann asking him the questions, the dialogue that emerged from these questions meant that we learnt much about both writers. McCann mentioned that the first time he came across Doyle years ago, he was trying to sell copies of The Commitments outside of a Northside Dublin concert venue. And I was amazed to learn that The Commitments was first self-published. In this age, where the number of writers that are self-publishing books is skyrocketing and the stigma attached to them is decreasing, that is encouraging for writers to hear – the truly great stuff can be recognized, even if its not through the regular publishing avenues.

Doyle also talked a bit about the business of writing, from what it means to go on tour to how long it takes to write a work to what his favorite medium is (fyi, out of the many forms he writes in – short stories, novels, children’s books, plays, Young Adult books, and screenplays – it is the novel that is most important to him). As I often hear from authors, Doyle approaches his characters like Michelangelo approached a block of marble, seeing the figure inside that needs to be released; rather than creating them, he is giving them their voice on the page. He spoke of how he was interested to see how Henry Smart had aged when he began writing his most recent book (The Dead Republic is the third in his trilogy of Henry Smart books, preceded by A Star Called Henry and Oh, Play That Thing!). I was also amazed/ impressed to learn that he never reacts physically emotionally when writing his books (other than his sense of relief upon finishing a book) – I can’t imagine reading, let alone writing The Commitments without lots of laughter.

Following the discussion, both writers came out for a chat and book signing. I approached Roddy Doyle like a giddy 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert, mumbling something about loving his work and studying at UCD thanks in part to him, for which he graciously thanked me and signed (personalized!) my tattered copy of The Barrytown Trilogy. Colum McCann was no disappointment either; he was so friendly and personable, signing my copy of Let the Great World Spin (which I will write about soon – amazing book) with my name and a ‘Slainte.’ I will be sleeping with both these signed books very close to me for a long time.

So, at the end of a wonderful day, here is a short excerpt from The Commitments, which I reread frequently because it is just so much fun (and it can literally be read in under 2 hours, so if you haven’t read it and have 2 hours to spare, DO IT). And, of course, a musical bit from the film adaptation, the screenplay of which was also written by Doyle and is no less amazing.

"Where are yis from? (He answered the question himself.) Dublin. (He asked another one.) – Wha’ part of Dublin? Barrytown. Wha’ class are yis? Workin’ class. Are yis proud of it? Yeah, yis are. (Then a practical question.) – Who buys the most records? The workin’ class. Are yis with me? (Not really.) – Your music should be abou’ where you’re from an’ the sort o’ people yeh come from. – Say it once, say it loud, I’m black an’ I’m proud."

- The Commitments, 1987

FIELD WORK by Seamus Heaney

Earlier today, if the forces of the working world (a term I use loosely in my situation) hadn't conspired against me, I should have been at a reading by one of my favorite living poets, Seamus Heaney. He spoke at Hunter College, as part of their MFA program's Distinguished Writers Series, and I was invited to the free (!) event by way of my awesome boss (can't wait to hear about it tomorrow!). Though in the end I didn't get to see him, I did get to spend my commute reading from my newly purchased (and, alas, unsigned) copy of his collection of poems, Field Work.

Also, I didn't feel too horribly - I have seen him speak once before. This was at University College Dublin, when one morning a friend informed me that he would be speaking in her class that afternoon. Naturally, we dropped everything and went, and he was wonderful. In fact, I distinctly remember his reading of a poem from Field Work, "A Drink of Water." It is a beautiful, simple poem that he spoke of fondly, as a representation of his time in a sort of seclusion in the mountains of Wicklow (during which all of Field Work was written). Heaney really is an amazing poet (Nobel Prize-winning!) and I hope I get to see him again someday soon. Here is a short poem from Field Work, that seems somehow fitting in the Springtime:

Song

A rowan like a lipsticked girl

Between the by-road and the main road

Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance

Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect

And the immortelles of perfect pitch

And that moment when the bird sings very close

To the music of what happens.

-Seamus Heaney, 1979

On another note, I promise (mostly just to myself) that this space will soon be filled with more book discussions. I have a quickly-growing pile of books that have been read and are waiting to be written about, amongst them The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, The Year of Magical Thinking, The Emperor's Children, and Let the Great World Spin. Sometimes it is tough to get the motivation to write when I'd rather be reading my really good book - a problem (albeit a good one) that I seem to be encountering often these days.

(Cover via)

MOTHERS AND SONS by Colm Toibin (St. Patrick's Day Part 5)

My apologies for not continuing my St. Patrick’s week as intended; March has been a busy month. But we still have one day left of it, so here is my final bit of March Irishness: a book I finished (fittingly) on Saint Patrick’s Day itself, Mothers and Sons.

Colm Toibin’s Mothers and Sons is a collection of short stories centered around the infinite kinds of relationships that exist between mothers and sons. In his stories, these relationships range from an art thief trying to both provide for and escape his loose-lipped mother, to a widow trying to make a new life for her children, to a son seeking to escape his mother’s recent death through vice, to a son who seeks to understand his estranged mother through music (and beyond). All Toibin’s stories are delicately crafted, and in some way heartbreaking (and all, save for one, take place in Toibin’s Ireland). Even more so than many writers of short fiction that I have encountered, Toibin leaves his reader unsatisfied. So many of the stories finish at the cusp of something, whether it be action or decision or any kind of resolution. While I often find this frustrating (particularly because I get so quickly invested in Toibin’s characters), it largely makes the stories more powerful; what kind of concrete resolution could these characters find in their lives, anyway?

One of Toibin’s stories that struck me most was “A Priest in the Family,” the title of which is a reference to the old Irish phrase laying out what defined success. In it, a mother tries to cope with the shame of her son, a formerly well-respected priest and the holiest of her children, having been accused of and confessed to the child abuse that continues to plague the Catholic Church. The story doesn’t meditate on the actual horror of the event or its effect on the priest or the victim, but on the repercussions on the priest’s family and mother. It is his mother, his sisters, his nieces and nephews, who have to live with the shame of knowing what their neighbors think when they pass their homes, or how their picture of this formerly wholesome family has skewed. More and more this is a reality for many families; it is easy to forget that it is not only the victim whose life is changed.

So, though short, Toibin’s stories are some heavy and affecting stuff. He is a wonderful writer; I first appreciated him as the editor of my first Irish Literature anthology, then moved onto some of his fiction (I highly recommend The Blackwater Lightship – also, interestingly, about the relationship between a mother and son). He was recently awarded the Costa Award (formerly called the Whitbread Award) for his novel Brooklyn, which I hope to read soon. A great writer.

And so there goes March, and with it all St. Patrick’s celebrations. Worry not – there will still be plenty of Irishness in the future, irrespective of holiday or month.

(Cover via)

St. Patrick's Day Part 4: W.B. Yeats

It is very hard for me to choose one Yeats poem to include, so I'll probably put up a few more in the coming days (by my count, the end of St. Patrick's week is this Sunday when our town's parade happens). Of the many Yeats poems I often come back to, this is probably the foremost. Back for one of the many Irish Lit classes I took in college, I wrote a paper on Yeats and his interest in mysticism and the occult, and focused largely on this poem. For such a short poem, he packs much in. It was first published in 1921 (a turbulent time for Ireland), and is all at once a comment on the current state of society (both in Ireland and the larger world), a warning of things to come, a reference to an ancient past, and an invocation of mystical elements. Every word in it counts; the language of it builds and ebbs and creates a beautiful rhythm that reinforces these many levels of the poem. It is such an important poem, and so beautiful.

"The Second Coming"

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-William Butler Yeats, 1921

(Image via)

St. Patrick's Day Part 3: Thomas Cahill

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Over at the New York Times, Thomas Cahill (writer of How the Irish Saved Civilization) has a great op-ed today titled "Turning Green with Literacy." He writes about why we should really be celebrating Ireland and St. Patrick, something that is easy to forget here today as people are flooding the streets of New York drunk on Guinness in green sweaters and 'Kiss Me, I'm Irish' hats. I am in no way against these forms of celebration, but I heartily agree with Cahill's closing advice: "So on this St. Patrick’s Day, remember [St. Patrick and his compatrioys] as they would wish to be remembered. Read a book."

Here is an excerpt from the article, in which Cahill is discussing the way the early Irish, by embracing the spread of Christianity, made the creation and saving of books an art form. As he states, some of these early copies serve as forerunners to the illuminated manuscripts that would come centuries later and be a major part of the literary tradition. And as the early doodles prove, even the Irish of the early centuries were still wholly Irish.

"But they did more than this: they managed to infuse the emerging medieval world with a playfulness previously unknown. In the margins of the books they copied, the Irish scribes drew little pictures, thickets of plants, flowers, birds and animals. Human faces occasionally peek through the tangle, faces of childlike delight and awe. If you were a scribe copying out some especially ponderous philosophical Greek, the margin in which you could reflect on your own world served as a source of “refreshment, light and peace,” to quote the ancient Latin liturgy. These scribal doodles eventually became elaborate design elements, leading the way to Irish masterpieces like the Book of Kells."

Now I'm going to go celebrate twofold: by drinking Guinness and reading a book. Slainte!

St. Patrick's Day Part 2: Brian Friel's TRANSLATIONS

Plays, like the poems and stories often told through song, are part of the communal performance tradition that has long been an important part of Irish literature. The past century especially brought a resurgence in Irish theatre, beginning with the establishment of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin by Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats. With this theatre, its founders sought to create a national space for Irish writers and playwrights to gather and perform their works, thus sparking the Irish Literary Revival of the early 1900s.

One of the leading contemporary Irish playwrights to carry on this torch is Brian Friel, who has had a long and prolific career in theatre. He and Stephen Rea (the Irish stage and film actor, perhaps most memorable in The Crying Game, that great movie that is somewhat overshadowed by its shocker of an ending) collaborated often and went on to found the Field Day Production Company in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. The company would put out a number of plays dealing with Irish politics and the Troubles – a very apt subject matter in 1980s Ireland. The first play that Field Day performed, and arguably Friel’s most well-known play, is Translations.

Translations is set in a small rural village of County Donegal in the 1830s. As the title suggests, the play is about language and the problems that arise – linguistically, culturally, and otherwise – when people try to overcome language barriers. The Ireland of the play is very much old Ireland; the many of the town inhabitants speak only Irish and know nothing outside of Donegal. British officers arrive as part of the Ordnance Survey, and begin the process of translating maps and town and county names from the original Irish to English. Confusion ensues – sometimes humorously, sometimes tragically – but always to highlight the cultural divide between the English and Irish. It is a wonderful play, especially in its historical context. The problems between the English and Irish have been around for a very long time, so to see them portrayed in the early stages of the modern troubles (the 1830s was only a generation or so after the Famine, and a few decades before things would get really crazy in Ireland over the question of Independence) is to see the later progression of the problems with a better understanding. As thus far I have only read it, Translations is a play that I would love to see done on stage.

Plays don’t lend themselves very well to being quoted at length, so with that brief introduction I’ll just include an excerpt from near the end of the play that I particularly like – I won’t give too much context so as to avoid giving the play away, so just try to appreciate it on its own.

"Hugh [the old Irish teacher]: To remember everything is a form of madness. The road to Sligo. A spring morning. 1798. Going into battle. Do you remember, James? Two young gallants with pikes across their shoulders and the Aeneid in their pockets. Everything seemed to find definition that spring – a congruence, a miraculous matching of hope and past and present and possibility. Striding across the fresh, green land. The rhythms of perception heightened. The whole enterprise of consciousness accelerated. We were gods that morning, James; and I had recently married my goddess, Caitlin Dubh Nic Reactainn, may she rest in peace. And to leave her and my infant son in his cradle – that was heroic, too. By God, sir, we were magnificent. We marched as far as – where was it? – Glenties! All of twenty-three miles in one day. And it was there, in Phelan’s pub, that we got homesick for Athens, just like Ulysses. The desiderium nostrorum – the need for our own. Our pietas, James, was for older, quieter things. And that was the longest twenty-three miles back I ever made. My friend, confusion is not an ignoble condition."

-Brian Friel, 1980

(Image via Julliard)

St. Patrick's Day Part 1: Patrick Kavanagh & Luke Kelly

In celebration of of St. Patrick's Day, I will use this opportunity to make it Irish week here on The Sequestered Nook, and do my best to bring you a bit of Irishness every day. It would be an understatement to say that I love Irish Literature. For those few of my readers who don't know me personally, I'll briefly share the progression of my love for Ireland and its writers. My sophomore year of college I had a wonderfully inspiring Irish Lit professor (specifically, the class was called 'Conflict & Identity in Irish Literature'). So inspiring, in fact, that I realized that it was Ireland (not Rome as I had previously thought) where I wanted to study abroad. So, I spent a wonderful semester taking amazing courses (including Irish Folk Tales, Irish Music, and a class just on Ulysses) at University College Dublin and traveling around Ireland. I miss it a lot, and still love no genre or origin of books more than those of Ireland. The Irish really know how to harness tragedy, humor, love, and loss to make them into great literature and poetry.

To kick off Irish week, here is Patrick Kavanagh's beautiful poem "On Raglan Road." I especially love this poem because of the song that it became. The story is that Patrick Kavanagh ran into Luke Kelly (of The Dubliners) in a pub, and told Kelly that he would like him to set his poem to music. Music is such an inherent part of Irish culture, and especially its poetry that is so often told primarily through song, that this pairing is so naturally perfect. The poem is gorgeous on its own, but Luke Kelly's musicalization of it brings it to another beautiful level. Here is the poem:

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.

-Patrick Kavanagh, 1946

Here is Luke Kelly's song "Raglan Road." Honesty, sometimes I just listen to it on loop. So beautiful.

And, for reference's sake, here is another version of "Raglan Road" that I enjoy. It is by Glen Hansard of the the bands The Frames and The Swell Season and, more importantly, of the wonderful Irish film Once. It doesn't quite contain the emotion or transcendence of Luke Kelly's version, but it is still beautiful.

Stay tuned for more Irish greatness tomorrow!

(Image via UCC)

Happy (Belated) Birthday, James Joyce!

For Christmas, I got a wonderful literary desk calendar that I am obsessed with. It includes quotes, short bios, and birthdays of many famous and not-so-famous writers. Unfortunately, I didn't look at it yesterday and only realized today that February 2 was the great James Joyce's birthday. My love of Irish literature, and literature in general, naturally leads to a love of Joyce - undoubtedly one of the most important (if not the most important) writers of the last century. Here is the last paragraph of "The Dead," the final short story in Dubliners. It is one of my favorite Joyce pieces, and especially appropriate with all the snow that fell last night. Beautiful.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

-from "The Dead" 1914

(Image via Wikipedia)

'Politics'

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms' - Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics,

Yet here's a travelled man that knows

What he talks about,

And there's a politician

That has both read and thought,

And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war's alarms,

But O that I were young again

And held her in my arms.

-W.B. Yeats

Two for One: IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS by Tana French

I’ve never been much for mysteries or thrillers. Aside from the odd Alexander McCall-Smith or Agatha Christie novel (and a brief obsession with Helter Skelter – though I suppose that would be categorized more as True Crime), I have had very little experience with the genre. What drew me to French’s novels (In the Woods first, followed by The Likeness) was their Dublin setting. I’m a sucker for anything Irish, a pseudo-weakness that really worked out in my favor here. Both novels, which are related without quite being a series, center around the attempts to solve mysterious murders. The books, however, are not so much about the crimes themselves as they are psychological explorations of the detectives and their unexpected personal connections to these murders. With both books, French effortlessly weaves through literary genres and creates, with her unique characters and stories, works that are engrossing and difficult to classify.

In the Woods follows a case assigned to Detective Rob Ryan that unexpectedly leads him and his partner towards two decade-spanning murders. As a young boy, Ryan and his two best friends disappeared into the woods of a small town outside of Dublin. Hours later he alone was found – catatonic and uninjured, yet with a torn shirt and blood-filled shoes. Twenty years later, he still has no memory of those hours and his friends have never been found. As he attempts to solve the murder of a young girl in the very same woods, Ryan is forced to revisit his past and face what he fears most – his untapped memories. Though the mysteries of both murders are gripping (I was up until ungodly hours while reading this book), what is most powerful is seeing how the case personally and psychologically impacts all involved. French explores – with Ryan especially – the impact of memory on the psyche, the transient nature of human relationships, and the ability of the subconscious to determine our actions. As first person narrator, we see everything through Ryan’s eyes. Over the course of the case it becomes apparent what an unreliable observer he has become – he veers all over the place, from likable to unlikable, trustworthy to deceitful. French’s characterization of him, however, skillfully makes this unreliability part of his nature. These paradoxes, instead of being problematic, reinforce the latent effects of his past and directly lead to the troubles of his present.

I especially loved (of course) the Irish setting of the book. It wasn’t just, however, that the story itself took place in and around Dublin (or the fact that she often mentioned places and pubs I used to frequent when I studied abroad); French draws in so many ways from her Irish literary and cultural background. Throughout the book, and in The Likeness as well, hints of mysticism and the supernatural are always quietly present – rarely spoken of, but always there. These folkloric traditions that are so intrinsic to the Irish mindset – from the titular importance of the woods to the mystical undercurrents that are often invoked to explain unspeakable crimes – meet the characters at every twist and turn. And to think, this was French’s first novel.

Her second novel certainly didn’t disappoint – I liked The Likeness just as much as In the Woods, if not more. It picks up after the events of the first novel and follows Detective Cassie Maddox, Ryan’s partner. Several other incidental characters make appearances, but this is essentially Cassie’s book. Following her switch from Murder to Domestic Violence, she finds herself thrust into a bizarre undercover murder investigation with the discovery of the body of a young woman in the outskirts of Dublin. The circumstances that bring Cassie into the investigation are even more bizarre: besides looking nearly identical to her, this dead woman shares the name of Cassie’s former undercover persona, Lexie Madison. How often does one get to use the term ‘doppelganger’ in such a perfect context? As Cassie inhabits Lexie’s life (rules and ethics be damned), she is pulled into a strange world. She studies Literature as a postgraduate student at Trinity while inhabiting the eccentric Victorian-like lifestyle Lexie shared with her four very closely-knit (often strikingly so) housemates in their manor home in the country. As she tries to solve the puzzle of Lexie’s life (who was she really, and how did she get the name Lexie Madison?) and death while continuing to convince the housemates that she is indeed Lexie, Cassie gets increasingly drawn into this new strangely enticing world.

As we saw (though to a lesser extent) in In the Woods, Cassie is a strong character: smart and tough – perfect as a hard-ass detective – yet with personal vulnerabilities that, though they help her with the finer points of profiling and catching a killer, also slowly erode her mental stability in a case as complex as this. As with In the Woods, French explores the psychological effects of this case on Cassie. The more she settles into Lexie’s life, the more she becomes her – at the expense of her own life. Though we know better, we as readers fall into the same trap. I could see the mistakes Cassie was making in failing to distance herself from the case and suspects, yet I understood why she made these mistakes. Lexie and her housemates’ lives – with their deep camaraderie, endless poetry, philosophical discussions, constantly flowing whiskey, and magical country environs – is near irresistible. I was pulled into this strange world right along with Cassie, even as her inability to distance herself puts the case, the knowledge of what happened to Lexie, and Cassie herself in danger. As Cassie attempts to balance this lifestyle with solving the murder while undercover, the suspense of The Likeness kicks in and keeps you reading until you get answers.

By the time I finished both books, I felt as drained as the detectives solving these crimes. I got so wrapped up in them that I began to see everything as potentially dangerous or as a mystery that needed to be solved (I know now why I don’t read books like this more often). Aside from the skilled storytelling and accomplished writing of both books, I respect that French didn’t always feel the need to tie things up neatly at the end of the book. Some mysteries – small and large – are left unsolved, details are left vague, and questions are left unanswered (though, for the most part, not frustratingly so). This is an extension of something she manages to do throughout her books: to ground her stories in reality, somehow making the bizarre and sometimes unbelievable aspects of the stories plausible. I’m excited for the release of her next book (whenever that will be), whether it features Detectives Ryan and Maddox or not.