John McGahern
From Philosopedia
John McGahern (12 November 1934 - 30 March 2006)
McGahern (pronounced ma-GAH-ern), who chronicled the Irish rural life he knew well, was a short story writer whose six novels included descriptions of his native Irish Midlands.
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Biography
Born in Dublin, he was the eldest of several children. When he was 10, his mother died. From his father and former I.R.A. guerrillas, he concluded that he "hated nationalism" of any stripe and never praised the I.R.A. In his youth and with few books in his house, he is said to have discovered literature by reading works shown to him by two eccentric Protestant men living nearby in a shabby mansion. He learned about Shakespeare but preferrrd Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and the novels of Jane Austen.
After graduation from University Collge, Dublin, McGahern worked as a laborer and then as a teacher.
His first novel, The Barracks (1963), was about a terminally ill, unhappy married woman. It drew upon his boyhood and was set in a live-in police station where he temporarily lived with his father, who had become an officer after fighting with the I.R.A.
The Dark (1965) was banned by a conservative Irish government. It describes a boy with guilt feelings over masturbating, for he wants to become a priest - one scene suggests a priest makes sexual advances. Losing his teaching job as a result, McGahern moves to Paris, where Samuel Beckett and other Irish writers offered to campaign for the book. "When a book is published, it belongs to the reader, and the less the writer has to say about it, the better," McGahern said, declining their support.
His plots often told of farmers and the hard lives they and their families endured, told in a terse style that included references to the Roman Catholic Church and its hold on common people's lives. In describing their agonies, he ends his works with no happy endings. Some learn to live with the Catholic faith that makes them feel guilty about their sexuality, others leave such a melancholy existence.
Speaking in Albany at the State University of New York in 1996, McGahern said,
- Each of us has a private world, and the only difference between the reader and the writer is that the writer has the ability to describe and dramatize that private world. As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery.
Describing McGahern's life, New York Times reporter James F. Clarity wrote (31 March 2006),
- Mr. McGahern said he was "not a believer" and did not go to church. Writing in the London newspaper The Independent in 1995, he said he had been put off by the "almost total power" the church held over Ireland f the 1940s and 50's
- The ordinary farming people had to conform to the strict observances," he wrote, "and to pay their dues to the Church from small resources, but outside that they paid it little attention. They went about their sensible pagan lives as they had done for centuries, seeing it as just another of the fictions that they'd been forced to kowtow to, like all the others since the time of the Druids."
- In one interview, noting Ireland's reputation as a birthplace of great writers, he said the Irish people "write as badly as everywhere else."
- "I don't label myself as an Irish writer," he said, "but there's nothing else I could be. A writer reflects his society by getting one's language right. My only concern is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply."
- Acknowledging that many readers and critics found his work pessimistic, if not depressing, he offered a joke: "My favorite optimist," he said, "was an Amrican who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So far, so good.' "
McGahern died of cancer at Dublin's Mater Private Hospital.
Novels
- The Barracks (1963) - AE Memorial Award, McCauley Fellowship.
- The Dark (1965)
- The Leavetaking (1975)
- The Pornographer (1980)
- Amongst Women (1990) - Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literary Award (1991); GPA Award (1992); nominated for the Booker Prize (1990).
- That They May Face the Rising Sun (2001) - nominated for the IMPAC Award.
Non-Fiction
- Memoir (2005) - Published in the U.S.A. in 2006 under the title All Will Be Well.
Short Story Collections
- Nightlines (1970)
- Getting Through (1978)
- High Ground (1985)
- Collected Stories (1992) - the three previous volumes collected.
Plays and Other
- Sinclair (1971) (radio)
- Swallows (1975) (television)
- The Rockingham Shoot (1987) (television)
- The Power of Darkness (1991) (theatre)
