Did I really write that Nell McCafferty is an “iconic figure”
in Ireland? I’ve succumbed to one of the more tiresome of
current usages and I apologize. The number of purported “icons”
and “iconic figures” will shortly equal the population of St. Louis,
and I have contributed. Mea culpa.
There’s a lot of discussion following the readings at Cuirt. None of this
“That was a good reading” or “That didn’t do much for me” mush.
Readings of prose literary works are queer things. The vocal tradition
of poetry is obviously very much alive, but stories for a long time have
been composed for the printed page and are a long way from the oral
storyteller tradition. Cassette and CD recordings have reversed that
trend to some extent, but they’re still available only for certain works.
Readings can unleash subtly different versions of the work and punters
at Galway are eager to discuss them.
M.J. Hyand’s reading was composed of only three very short pieces,
one from her second novel Carry Me Down and two from an as yet
unpublished work. She spent much of her time on the Town Hall stage
talking about an uncomfortable reading she gave in Dublin and the composition
of her works and her strategy, which is not to plan but to discover what happens to her characters as she goes. Not until she’d worked on Carry Me Down for six months
with John Egan as a forty year old narrator did she realize that the heart of the story
was his memory of himself as an eleven year old. She revised so that the
boy John Egan became the narrator. It was an interesting revelation, but
the “reading” wasn’t as satisfying for me as I’d hoped. Still, I greatly admire
her work.
Ian McEwan, on the other hand, gave a marvelous reading from the opening
pages of On Chesil Beach, his new novel about two young innocents on their
wedding night. The narrator he created for us was one sympathetic to the
characters but not unaware of some of the humorous aspects of their particular
relationship. With a nuanced tone and using pauses for emphasis or irony,
McEwan made it a heartfelt rendering that showed the sadness of their
situation. In the question- and- answer period, not seen much at Cuirt,
novelist Jennifer Johnston asked if she were alone in feeling the sadness
throughout despite McEwan’s giving the humor a little emphasis in his reading.
At the festival club at the House Hotel later, novelist Mike McCormack
summed up the evening: “It was definitely a game with two halves.”
Filed under: Miscellaneous
