Maggie O’Farrell (Coleraine, Northern Ireland, 52 years old) says that if she had to take a book to a desert island, a only book, this would be, without a doubt, the Ulysses by James Joyce. Published in 1922, vilified and, above all, loved and praised ever since – its formal value is such that it came to make one think of the end of the novel: for Ortega y Gasset its appearance made it clear that the novel had reached its ceiling, that it had to be abandoned for grow-, he Ulysses Joyce’s work, as Sally Rooney (Castlebar, 33) brilliantly explained in a lecture given on the occasion of his centenary two years ago at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, is so great that even in its misinterpretation it is capable of create. What exactly does it create? Possibilities, pathsliterally, according to Rooney, ways of being in the world, or understanding it. Light up. His appearance marked, in any case, Irish literature so profoundly that, around him, everything that mattered, from Flann O’Brien to Samuel Beckett, passed, at the beginning of another century, the 20th, through rupture, absurdity, a delightfully disproportionate formal experimentation, outside of any kind of margin.
Today, that inner self—mutable, uncatchable, supreme—that made form an artifact—the stream of consciousness as a game, an inevitable labyrinth, a perdition happy—, has become a collective self. For Luis Solano, editor of Libros del Asteroide, and therefore, for O’Farrell —who, he recalls, grew up in Scotland, although she must inevitably be touched by the Irish tradition—, and for Caroline O’Donoghue (Cork), author of a bestseller recently arrived in Spain entitled The Rachel FactorIrish literature today has more in common with the rest of the world than English or American literature, and that is the reason for its central role. Solano stresses in this regard “that the two authors favourite for the Booker this year were Paul Murray and Paul Lynch, two Irish authors”. “It is a literature of the self, which, although very anchored in reality, reflects universal experiences very well, because its localism is not as invasive as that of the North American, which is more focused on the woke up, and the British, so isolated by Brexit,” says the editor. new What they contain, however, has been brewing for a decade. Because when the crisis broke out in 2013, Ireland suddenly occupied a different editorial position.
If we go back to the English canon from the 19th century to the present day, the great names are mostly of Irish origin. Yeats, Wilde, Beckett, Joyce, Shaw, Flann O’Brien
The creation of small publishing houses, owned by editors who had previously worked for English publishers—and who had been fired and returned to Ireland where they had created their own imprints—as columnist Justine Jordan recounted in 2015, re-launched the island’s talent. Nobody had anything to lose. People were betting on what nobody had bet on before, or maybe not. And what started out as a way of surviving became a trend when Tracy Bohan, an agent at the Wylie agency, sold the first novel by Sally Rooney, then an unknown 26-year-old, to 12 countries. Rooney had published an essay that made Bohan think there was something there. By then, she had already made her debut in the magazine she shares with Colin Barrett and others. new Irish authors, The Stinging Flya showcase and at the same time a demanding launching pad for any self-respecting young Irish author, especially after Rooney’s success. Although it has been running since 1998, it was not until it took the form of a book in 2005 that it began to be considered part of what could change things. The place where those editors eager to find something different were looking.
“The truth is that both in oral tradition and in literature, the Irish have always been known for being great storytellers, and brilliant at finding new ways to tell them. If we go back to the English canon from the 19th century until today, the great names are, for the most part, of Irish origin. Yeats, Wilde, Beckett, Joyce, Shaw, Flann O’Brien. In fact: what would the English canon be without Irish authors?” ask Albert Puigdueta and Roberta Gerhard, editors in Spain of Rooney —who is about to publish a new novel, Intermezzoanother formal experiment, along the lines of “the stream of consciousness of Joyce and Woolf,” say its editors—, Emilie Pine, and Michael Magee, each, in their own way, representative of the different paths that Irish literature has taken today. There is a social portrait—“with authors like Magee, who are managing to talk about the Northern Irish conflict, a taboo until recently,” notes Puigdueta—and a generational portrait, which, in Rooney’s case, “starts from a classic English tradition inaugurated by Jane Austen. Austen spoke of the complexity of romantic relationships and social expectations in the 19th century, and showed the contradictions, vanities and defects of each of her characters. Rooney does exactly the same in her novels, but with the concerns and spirit of our time,” adds Gerhard.
The list of names that matter, and that have already landed in Spain, is endless —Claire Keegan, Audrey Magee, Donal Ryan, Jessica Andrews, Eimear McBride, the winner of the Booker in 2018 Anna Burns, Lisa McInerney, Tana French, Kevin Barry—, and it grows by the minute. Did it do so before this 21st century, when only John Banville and Colm Tóibín were so Are they known in the rest of the world? A glance at the number of names cited above is enough to answer. The form, in all cases, is important, not so much for the tradition from which they come – that lush, spectacular polyphony that O’Farrell would take to a desert island – but for the battle that each one fights in a world in which standing out is, perhaps more than ever, the only option to avoid being instantly forgotten. Something that Irish literature, today centered on the self, but always revoltingly new, and at the same time, in some kind of margin, the margin occupied by the one who is not in the center, who has never been considered a protagonist and can, therefore, invent, be free, find his place, has been good at from the beginning. And now, it seems, better than ever.
You can follow Babelia in Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Irish #Narrative #Unruly #SelfCentered
