Two more short story anthologies reviewed, a lifetime ago.
At the risk of finding this review dwarfed under the Maileresque headline ‘Advertisements For Myself’, in other words, of being accused of what we used to call ‘blowing my own trumpet’, I should declare interests in relation to these two books which might be interpreted as vested, and could thus lead to conflicts. I do this only to forestall the even more grievous accusation of insider trading, an invidious fate which befell a more well-known namesake of mine from the world of high finance, who is, I wish to state, loudly and clearly, here and now, once and for all, NO RELATION (Neither, by the way, is an individual with criminal underworld connections, who happens to share my surname.) A story of mine will be appearing in next year’s Phoenix Anthology, and I was short-listed for this year’s Fish Anthology, but failed to make it into the final fourteen in the book. Also, I have entered the 1998 Fish Short Story Competition, from which the stories in next year’s anthology will be chosen. So I will leave it to the reader to decide whether my comments here are motivated by: a) gratitude for current success; b) a desire to flatter in the hope of future success; or c) pique at lack of success in the past. Needless to say, I consider myself totally impartial.
A couple of other points to be made are that with these books, as with any anthology of short stories, there are bound to be some contributions one likes more than others, some one loves, some one hates, some one feels indifferent to; and also that one’s assessment can change radically on a second or third reading. For these reasons, and because many of the contributors, especially in the Fish, are beginners, or at least have not published full-length collections, I will try to err on the side of praise and pass over in diplomatic silence what I feel deserves censure. Of course, this will amount to merely highlighting my own particular favourites, but adverse conclusions should not necessarily be drawn about those pieces which fail to get a mention.
Phoenix: Irish Short Stories 1997
Edited by David Marcus
(Phoenix House, £15.99)
This is the second annual anthology of short stories by Irish writers, edited by that tireless promoter of Irish writing, David Marcus, and published by Phoenix House. It contains sixteen stories, some by established or beginning to be established names, some by newcomers for whom this is the first time in print.
Among the ones which impressed me most were: ‘A Door in Holborn’ by Padraig Rooney, who is obviously a consummate lover of language and a master of atmosphere and the telling detail; ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ by Colum McCann, with its echoes of John McGahern’s ‘Korea’, and its delicate, almost surrealist surprises; and ‘Writing Cookbooks’ by Maxim Crowley, who is, on the evidence of this contribution, the possessor of a macabre imagination and subversive sensibility which, while uniquely his own, read like a riveting cross between the alienation of any of Beckett’s many anti-heroes with the Baroque obsessiveness of Peter Greenaway, especially as exemplified in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover.
Since its publication early last year, I have been extolling right, left and centre to anyone who cares to listen, the many virtues and merits of Mike McCormack’s debut collection Getting It In The Head. He is represented here by ‘The Angel Of Ruin’ which, while not the best story from his book, and probably chosen with the American market in mind, does give a sampler of the enormous talent displayed in Getting It In The Head, which in its turn gave indications that McCormack is a worthy aspirant to the mantle of Poe, Borges, Calvino, Ballard and Pynchon, and might one day be worthy to join that pantheon and live on the same plane inhabited by these God-like geniuses.
‘Eel’ by John Dunne, of this parish, is a pithy tale of domesticity and vasectomy. (There is a difference between men and women, and it is a vas deferens.) ‘Fortune-Teller’ by Shelia Barrett partakes of the succintness and deadpan tone of Alice Munro.
But the real stone classic here is the last, long, story ‘Heaven Lies About Us’ by Eugene McCabe. Sure, it’s set in the past, and it takes place against a backdrop of an Irish identity constructed around Catholicism and Nationalism which is all but dead and gone, but in its treatment of the genuine horror of child abuse and incest it reaches emotional depths only plummeted in fiction of the highest order. It is not its choice of theme which makes this story great (everyone is writing about child abuse these days), but the sensitivity with which it is handled and the powerful punch it packs. It should also be remembered that the Kerry Babies, Ann Lovett and the X case are events which cannot yet be consigned to ancient history, and that they have become deeply ingrained in the national psyche. I have not read any of McCabe’s other work, but on the evidence of this story alone he is a great writer, and I will be rectifying my omission as soon as possible.
There are traces in this book of what Beckett termed ‘antiquarianism’ (and the new antiquarianism is designed to please the expatriate Irish-American rather than the indigenous Catholic Nationalist audience), an elevation of the grand realist tradition at the expense of the more experimental tradition. In other words, one is more likely to discover a fledgling Corkery, O’Flaherty, O’Faolain or O’Connor here than a budding Joyce, Beckett, Flann O’Brien or Banville. Also, the book is ill-served by its cover, an embarrassing collage of a pint of Guinness, a statue of the Virgin Mary, a pair of hurley sticks and a harp on a tricolour. Are we, worryingly, meant to take these symbols seriously, or are they, one hopes, intentionally kitsch? (The best cover of an anthology of Irish writing undoubtedly has to be that of the Picador book edited by Dermot Bolger, with its photograph of Marilyn Monroe reading Molly Bloom’s soliloquy.) These criticisms aside, the Phoenix: Irish Short Stories series is one of the very best ventures of its kind, and this year’s volume will serve to bring some published writers to the attention of a wider readership, and some unpublished ones to the attention of publishers.
dog days and other stories
Edited by Clem Cairns
(Fish Publishing, £6.50)
This, too, is the second Fish Anthology, and consists of fourteen stories in all, these being the winner, runners-up and some of the short-listed entries for the Fish Short Story Prize. Unlike the Phoenix Anthology, entrants need not necessarily be Irish, and there were over a thousand submissions this year. Incidentally, the choice of the appealing cover painting by Amanda Addison was also arrived at by running a competition.
I have already commented adversely in the pages of this journal on an excerpt from Joseph O’Connor’s introduction to the book, which told us that ‘Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one morality of writing’. All I can say by way of apology is that Mr. O’Connor’s introduction reads much better and makes more sense in its entirety than it did in isolated snippets. However, I was surprised to learn that the above quotation is actually attributable to Ezra Pound. The search for such ‘fundamental accuracy’ is obviously what prompted him to include Chinese ideographs in the Cantos and to edit Eliot’s The Wasteland.
As chief judge, O’Connor’s aesthetic preferences are evident in the choice of winner, and in some of the other selections. These days it sometimes seems that unless one is writing in the dirty realist mode most usually associated with Raymond Carver or Richard Ford, one is never going to get anywhere. (This vogue can also be seen in ‘Transplants’ by Anthony Glavin in the Phoenix, which has been extended into a novel entitled Nighthawk Alley and just published by New Island Books, and in the collection Freak Nights by Ciaran Fagan, again published by New Island. Indeed, yet another example is O’Connor’s own soon to be published new novel, The Salesman).
It is almost axiomatic, as the Booker Prize has shown time and again, that the best story (in your opinion) never wins these kinds of competitions. Last year, the best story in the Fish Anthology (in my opinion) was ‘Virtuoso’ by Conor Farrington, but it didn’t win either. ‘Dog Days’ by Karl Iagnemma is a fine story, but it is very much of the now popular genre described above. My own preferences here would be: ‘Compound Interest’ by Tim Booth, an apocalyptic, post-nuclear dystopian vision, full of wannabe artists, computer hackers, designer labels and Zippo lighters, reminiscent of William Gibson - apparently it is the prologue to a novel entitled Altergeist, which I will be looking forward to seeing; ‘White Goods’ by Carmen Walton, which is cool, smart and perceptive; ‘Johnny Mok’s Universe’ by Frank O’Donovan, a tale of madness begetting madness; ‘Walking The Dog On Mars’ by Geraldine Taylor, a subtle study of obsessiveness and the role of chance in life; and ‘Letter to a Cat’ by Sheelagh Morris, a hilariously satiric send-up of middle-class mores and venality, which should give hope to taken-for-granted wives everywhere. ‘Florence - The Rough Guide’ by Pat Boran is also worth a mention.
The foregoing recommendations aren’t meant to imply that the other inclusions are turkeys. The great thing about both of these collections, apart from nurturing and providing a platform for emerging talent, is that if one doesn’t like one contribution, one is sure to like another. There is something here for everyone, or something for everyone who still reads books of short stories.
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