It's all McGahern today, all day; surrounded by notes and trying to put some order on them, to do justice to the man, to get the words right, as he'd say. I've been trying to think about realism and parochialism, the difference between them, about the difference, too, between goodwill and genuine engagement. About the ways in which McGahern will be remembered, about the ways in which he is read, and how they square up to the way he wrote, his intense craft and rigor, the brilliance and clarity of his work which was in no way accidental or quaint.
I got an email this morning from Ronan Gallagher, the Mohill-based filmmaker and writer. I recognised Gallagher's name because he wrote the most beautiful and vivid letter to RTE Radio after McGahern's death last year. I can almost remember the words of it even a year on.
Gallagher has made a short film about the opening of the John McGahern library at the Lough Rynn Hotel in Leitrim last November(the photo of McGahern above, by John Keaney from Carrick-on-Shannon, hangs in the library). The film is called Amongst Friends and you can watch it by going to the Lough Rynn website here. Lough Rynn is a gorgeous place, very peaceful, and they've worked a really understated and lovely restoration and conversion of the old castle, which I used to visit when I was a child.
Have a look at the film. It does start out a bit like a promo for the hotel, and the presence of Bertie Ahern and his cronies becomes quickly cloying (he's barely able to pronounce McGahern's surname, and his comment about the "smashing houses" in the locality rings grimly for anyone who's seen how the blight of new houses is ruining that county, as commented on here). But it gives an interesting glimpse of how deeply-felt the connection to McGahern was in the county where he lived. Which is a more complicated relationship than all of the good will and genuine affection can suggest, I think; again, it feeds into the question of how McGahern will go down in local memory; for his artistry or in terms of his personality and the pride his name came, in later years, to inspire locally. The things are certainly not mutually exclusive. But if the former is brushed over or merely paid lipservice to, in favour of the latter, I think it runs the risk of being a less lasting memory. I'm not saying this of this short clip; it's something I've been thinking about more generally since McGahern's passing.
And the film is worth seeing for the moving moment when Madeline, John's widow, speaks about how, when first she saw the room, she could see John's "wry smile" and his pleasure at the idea and the remembrance.
I also meant to update yesterday with a full list of the films and dramas made about McGahern's work, or inspired by it, or scripts written by him. The IFI event is screening four, but there are others, and radio dramas and of course his stage play as well. A couple of years back, the mobile cinema in Drumshanbo had a festival of most of the works on film, more extensive than the IFI event even, gathering short films and student films from all around.
There's a list, a full one I think, after the jump.
By McGahern
Sinclair, radio adaptation of his own short story "Why We're Here", broadcast on BBC Radio 3, 16 November 1971; published in The Listener, 18 November 1971, 690-2.
The Barracks, radio adaptation of his own novel, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 24 January 1972.
The Power of Darkness, after Tolstoy, submitted to the Abbey and rejected in 1972, produced as a radio adaptation on BBC Radio 3 in the same year (15 October), produced at the Abbey in 1991, directed by Garry Hynes. Published by Faber.
The Sisters, television adaptation of the short story by Joyce. Broadcast as part of Full House on BBC 2, 17 February 1973.
Swallows, television adaptation of his own short story. Broadcast as part of the Second City Firsts series on BBC 2, 27 March 1975.
The Rockingham Shoot, original television drama. Broadcast as part of the Screenplay: Next series on BBC 2, 10 September 1987.
The Pornographer, film script adaptation of his own novel, remains unproduced and unpublished.
By Others
The Barracks, stage adaptation, adapted by Hugh Leonard, first performed 6 October 1969 at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin. Directed by Tomas MacAnna
Wheels, film adaptation of the short story. Adapted and directed by Cathal Black, 1976.
The Lost Hour, television adaptation of The Leavetaking, adapted by Carlo Gebler, directed by Tony Barry. RTE, 1983.
The Key, television adaptation of a work of McGahern (possibly "Bomb Box", but unverified), adapted by Carlo Gebler, directed by Tony Barry, RTE 1985.
Korea, film adaptation of teh short story, screenplay by Joe O'Byrne, directed by Cathal Black. 1995.
Amongst Women, audiobook, read by Stephen Rea, Faber 1997.
My Love, My Umbrella, an opera version of that story, "Sierra Leone" and "Gold Watch". Adapted into a libretto by James Conway, score by Kevin O'Connell, first performed 9 October 1997 at the Stamford Arts Centre, England.
Amongst Women [2], television adaptation, screenplay by Adrian Hodges, directed by Tom Cairns. First Broadcast on RTE 1, 17 May - 7 June 1998.
Swallows, film adaptation of the short story, adapted and directed by Michael O'Connell. 2000.
Details from Stanley van der Ziel's annotated bibliography in the Irish University Review special on McGahern, 2005.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
McGahern on Film, online
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
John McGahern, A Year On
Americans are not hugely familiar with the work of John McGahern, as I discovered when he died last year. Even in a school of fiction, only one person I spoke to had heard of him, and some people thought I was talking about Frank McCourt...
Anyway, March 30th is the first anniversary of McGahern's death, and there's an event to mark the occasion at Ireland House, the property donated to NYU by the Glucksmans and dedicated to Irish studies. With writers like Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain living in Manhattan, I'm surprised it's not a different, more writer-centric kind of panel, but hopefully there will be lots of contributions from the audience. The event will be followed by a screening of the terrific, moving documentary made about McGahern in 2004 (from which the still above comes).
Still, it's the McGahern event in the IFI in Dublin on Sunday which I'd really love to attend. It's a programme called "McGahern on Film" and will screen three screen adaptations of McGahern's work, as well as a TV drama written by McGahern in 1987. I've never seen any of these films; they're extremely hard to track down. Hopefully the IFI event will spur the release of a McGahern on Film DVD. The IFI event is hosted by Colm Toibin, who will be superb talking about McGahern's fiction, his aesthetic and his inimitable mischief.
Well done to both Ireland House and the IFI for getting the McGahern tributes together. I think there's one happening in his native Leitrim a little later in the year, which sounds great also. If you're in New York, come. If you're in Dublin, go, and report back...
update: Speaking of Frank McCourt, here's something I just found, in an interview with McGahern from 2000. He's responding to a question which was partly about Frank McCourt, partly about Brian Moore.
"Angela's Ashes interested me more [than Brian Moore].I found it a very strange book, a mixture of farce and clearly honed American evocative writing and literary pretension. The pretension was its weakest part. A work it reminded me of was Synge's Playboy of the Western World, also a farce. It was farce as a great kick at misery and passive suffering. If it's not a farce, then the concluding chapter is in serious bad taste and the whole book a sort of porridge."
Friday, March 16, 2007
The Fish Award
Here's an example of the kind of rapid-fire literary posting I was talking about in the n+1/TEV post: for the first time in its history, the prestigious Fish Short Story Prize has been awarded to an Irish writer, Kathleen Murray from Dublin. The 2007 Anthology will take its title from her story, A Paper Heart is Beating, A Paper Boat sets Sail. She began writing when she took a course with the poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill in 2004; this was probably the one at the Irish Writers Centre, from which the anthology The Incredible Hides in Every House was produced. I like what Murray says about how she began writing - "I think good writing gave me the inclination to attempt to write" - and also about how she feels, having won the Fish award:
I feel that it is the story itself that has won though, not me, and I am pleased most of all for the story itself.
Monday, March 12, 2007
And Then We Came To The KGB
After the Irish reading, we legged it up to the KGB for another reading, because I'd read a lot about Joshua Ferris's new novel, And Then We Came To The End (check out the fancy website here), and I wanted to hear him read from it. Ferris was an engaging guest blogger on The Elegant Variation last week, which I chatted to him about when he found himself inescapably stuck beside me in the tiny, overcrowded venue. He seems like a nice guy - talked about how time-consuming blogging was, and how he only ever did it at night, and how he couldn't imagine trying to do it all the time, while working on his fiction too - and he hung my coat up, so I'll definitely be buying his book. Oh, and it also sounded very good (if a little cinematic) - it's about office dwellers, and narrated in that horrible, cloying "we" voice, the first-person plural, beloved of HR departments everywhere - a nice touch, which knifes straight into the deadening, depersonalising heart of corporate culture. Anyway, they weren't selling the book in the KGB, so I'll have to hunt down a copy, and I'll report back when I have read it. I'm sure it will be a lot better than the novel I read last week, Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name; I don't know how Colm Toibin and Nicole Krauss could blurb it with straight faces. He wrote it in four months -clearly after having gorged on To The Lighthouse - and it shows. I like his non-fiction a lot, but this...no.
Getting back to the KGB reading - which will eventually be available to hear, along with interviews, here - Ferris was preceded by two other very enjoyable writers, Liam Callanan, whose new novel All Saints I'm reading at the moment (it was on sale on the night) and really enjoying, and Elise Blackwell, who read from her novel The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, which is about the floods which struck Louisiana in 1927. The book was all but finished when Katrina hit last year, and Blackwell felt it had to be completely rewritten, and relocated, in the light of what had happened. So her narrator now tells the story of one flood on the eve of another.
