Thursday 30 August 2012

Guest Blog - Michael Good on Daniel Woodrell's short story collection The Outlaw Album


RTÉ News Editor  Michael Good has been reading some of our American writers - here's his thoughts on Daniel Woodrell's latest book


"The Outlaw Album", a collection of short stories by Daniel Woodrell is not for the squeamish or the faint hearted.

Take the first story. Boshell can't stand his neighbour who he finds patronising and insulting. So he shoots him with a squirrel rifle and buries him under a pile of stones. As if that wasn't enough, he digs up the body and beats it with a stick. Then because he thinks the
corpse is sneering at him he sinks an axe into its chest and throws it down a disused well. His wife is completely indifferent to what he's done but is reduced to uncontrollable tears when her pet dog is found dead.
 
Or the young girl who takes revenge on the uncle who has repeatedly abused and raped her by sinking a pick axe into the back of his head, turning him into a vegetable who she can then torture. But she is the one who ends up caring for him as a helpless 200 pound baby.

The lives are sad and empty, the violence is savage and often gratuitous. There is a lot of blood. People aren't just shot - they are clubbed or stabbed.  The writing is wonderful and strange. A hat is "crestfallen" and a cow is caught in a "sideways tree" after falling down a cliff.
 
Woodrell has rightly been compared to Cormac McCarthy. Read one of the stories and you'll want to read them all.

Daniel Woodrell will be reading with Declan Burke on Sunday September 9th @4.30pm at the Concourse in County Hall Dun Laoghaire. Tickets are €12/10 concession

To listen to a recent radio interview with Daniel Woodrell on Newstalk click here

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Guest blog - Professor Mary Corcoran and Michael Good read The Privilages by Jonathan Dee


Professor of Sociology Mary Corcoran and RTÉ News Editor  Michael Good have been reading some of our American writers - here's their reaction to The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

"Privileges" Jonathan Dee - Michael's thoughts
This is the story of Adam and Cynthia, the New York golden couple who have everything - more money than anyone could ever spend, beautiful children, and a wonderful effortless lifestyle - everything except a conscience.

They are the people we are supposed to hate. Adam cannot stop getting richer and richer. We're never sure exactly how he does it but we know it has something to do with the world of derivatives and hedge funds - and we know that it's illegal. And we also know that he probably get away with it.

But this book is a great deal more than a cynical rant against excess. It is the story of a love that is epic and unwavering. It is an elegant book, sometimes angry, often very funny and always engaging

 

Mary Corcoran's thoughts about The Privileges

It is really difficult to respond to this book. It comes garlanded with praise from the literati, and deservedly so. It is a beautifully crafted read. At the same time, it left me curiously dissatisfied. But perhaps this is the intention of the author. It is a morality tale of sorts but there is not a moral as such to the tale. The story traces the ascendancy of a golden couple Cynthia and Adam Morey (The mores??) from their wedding day right up through their 23rd anniversary. Theirs is a story of enduring love against the backdrop of massive accumulation of wealth, serial movement up the property ladder, exotic holidays, preternaturally beautiful children, private jets and so on. The book has many reference points in contemporary literature: from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (the golden all American couple) to Franzen's The Corrections (dysfunctional familial relationships) to Lanchester's Capital (obscene, even immoral money-making in the city). 
The opening chapter is wonderfully well written introducing a cast of characters and scenarios that are instantly recognizable. However, the couple-Cynthia and Adam- who are preparing for their wedding are eerily mature and in control. They display total certitude about their choice of each other as life partners and stand ready to embrace their destiny. They are much more like a mid twentieth century rather than a twenty-first century twenty-two year old couple. They are just not like everybody else.

We fast forward seven years to find Cynthia and Adam struggling with the vicissitudes of marital life. The paragraph which opens this chapter is particularly beautifully written: "Time advanced in two ways at once: while the passage of years was profligate and mysterious, flattening their own youth from behind as insensibly as some great flaming wheel, still somehow those years were composed of days that could seem endless in themselves, that dripped capriciously like some torment of the damned." Rarely has a writer so brilliantly captured the paradoxical quality of time: even while it seems to drag in the quotidian, it is stacking up in years and decades. But Cynthia and Adam seem untouched by time- they are the coolest parents, with the coolest kids who attend the coolest schools. Cynthia has decided to stay home to raise the kids and Adam is busily pursuing the good provider role, shades again of mid-twentieth century which seem somewhat out of place with the 21st century. Then we fast forward again several years to Cynthia and Adam at mid-life, stupendously rich and heading up a Foundation in order to dispense their largesse. The Moreys adult children start acting up or acting out, but money eases their pain and insulates them from the consequences of their actions. Cynthia Morey spends some time with her dying father, the only period in the novel where she comes close to emoting in a recognisable, authentic way. There is not a single person in this novel that is particularly likeable. The key protagonists are serious and vacuous at the same time. Sure Cynthia and Adam remain in love, but I would struggle to describe it as 'epic' as the cover notes do. There's no self-deprecation or laughter or humility or genuine playfulness in their relationship. Instrumentality constantly trumps expressiveness.

The book is compelling from start to finish. But I remained unsure of the central premise. A waspy young American couple make it rich through somewhat nefarious means. They get really, really rich, and use their money to better the lives of 'vague others' (public schools in New York City, workers in Chinese factories). The money is also usefully deployed to insulate their own gilded offspring from any real engagement in reality. Reading it I wanted them to get their comeuppance.. I wanted Cynthia to realise that she really couldn't treat people around her- her mother, her stepsister, her father's partner- with such chilling indifference and superiority. I wanted Adam to be caught out for insider trading and forced to do the 'perp walk'. I wanted their kids to realise their privileged status and be better people for it. But for the protagonists of this novel, there are no consequences. And maybe that is what Jonathan Dee is telling us: consequences like taxes are for the little people. Really really rich people are really really different to the rest of us.

Many thanks to Professor Mary Corcoran and Michael Good  for sharing their thoughts with us.
Jonathan Dee will be appearing at the Pavilion Theatre on Thurday September 6th @6.30pm with Joseph O'Connor. Tickets are €12 & €10 (Concession).
 Click here to book now.


Wednesday 8 August 2012

Guest Blog -Sinéad Moriarty


My eighth book, This Child of Mine hits the bookshops tomorrow. You would think that by book eight, I would be calm, serene and taking all this publishing 'lark' in my stride. Instead I find myself even more nervous and apprehensive than ever. That is the thing that has surprised me most about being a writer. Instead of growing in confidence, you actually second guess yourself more, doubt yourself more and dread each publication date more. Why? In most jobs you grow in confidence with experience...but writers don't. 
All the writers I have met and spoken to feel the same way. I think that is what drives us. Complacency would kill our creativity. I believe that this doubt and fear is what urges us on, forces us to push ourselves into unknown territories, to take on subject matters and characters that we are almost afraid of and daunted by. We want each book to be better, we want to make our readers happy and satisfied with the time they spend reading our words. And so....as usual I have the strong urge to jump on a plane to an unknown destination to hide until my book comes out and the reviews are over. But instead I stay, bite my nails, sweat it out and try to remember why on earth I thought that writing for a living was a good idea!

Sinéad Moriarty 2012 

Thanks to Sinéad Moriarty for doing a blog post for us. Sinéad is one of the several  fab authors that are taking part in A PASSION FOR BOOKS: An Evening for Readers and Writers. Come along if you want to take part in a very special evening hosted by some of Ireland and the UK's favourite writers. 
Venue: Kingston Hotel, 
Date: Thursday September 6th @ 8-10pm, Price: €10/€8 Concession
Tickets on sale now.