Search Results

In a further refinement of our journey with Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, let’s look at some of the meanings the story contains. To summarize the narrational style: Ms. Kushner develops two characters, one is Valera, the Italian motorcycle enthusiast who begins the book during WW1. He is shown in close third person, a “he” and reappears in a significant chapter at the end of the book Then there is Reno, a young American woman who is shown as an “I,” ostensibly telling us her story of meeting several artistic types in 1970’s New York and later, Rome. Reno performs what James Phelan calls character narration. Her view of the whole story and other characters is limited in that she cannot see inside the others but only report on their behavior. And she is a remarkably malleable character. She is passive; she seems to mute her own reactions to others, often in an attempt to get them to accept her. Early on, Reno moves to New York City, wanting to be an artist. She meets a series of rather odd characters who take advantage of her in different ways, ridiculing her, ‘splaining their understanding of the workings of the world to her. She has sex with some of them—there is an element here of her being taken advantage of, although she also enjoys the encounters. (I think). There’s a sense of her feeling on the outside of a world she wishes to be a part of. She meets Ronnie Fontaine and is smitten with him. They go to a bar with some others. “People crowded around them to say hello. I had the sudden feeling they would shed me. I was a stranger they had picked up in an empty bar, and I was irrelevant now that they’d found their place in a familiar scene…I felt that he and his friends were unravelling any sense of order I was trying to build in my new life and yet, strangely, I also felt that he and his friends were possibly my only chance to ravel my new life into something. “I was in the stream that had moved around me and not let me in and suddenly here I was, at this table, plunged into a world, everything moving swiftly but not passing me by.” Reno is willing to accept the bad behavior of others if they will befriend her. She learns to be who they want her to be. A key story in the novel concerns Reno riding her motorcycle to Times Square and finding herself by a theater that is showing Behind the Green Door, a pornographic film (it is, after all, the 1970s). This film is significant as other characters have told Reno she looks like the star of Green Door, Marilyn Chambers. Reno parks and goes inside, purchasing a ticket. She notes the audience is all male, “Each with a safety buffer of empty seats around him.” Reno sits in the last row, close to the exit. This scene is approached without any showing of Reno’s inner decision making. There follows a lyrical description of what Reno notices about the film as well as her sense that many of the other patrons are masturbating. “…we, the Times Square voyeurs, in the theater, and who knew what the men seated sparsely around me were up to…” There is a mechanical issue, the film stops, Reno and the others go out on the street. “I could have stood there watching and deciding for hours. There was no city actively guiding me, the shops and walking masses and traffic lights giving their deep signals of what to do, where to go, who and what to see, what to buy, how to feel, what to think.” Reno doesn’t judge the men in the theater, in fact, she feels a kinship with them, that they are all voyeurs. An interesting clue to the meaning of all this concerns her friend Giddle who has associated with Andy Warhol. Reno meets her as she works as a waitress in a cheap diner in New York City. Giddle reveals her idea that the most artistic act is to make your entire existence a work of art. Her life is artistic because she’s playing a role as a waitress. In other words, she’s not waitressing to earn a living, but to act out the life of a waitress. I believe our friend Nietzsche actually had a similar idea of making one’s life into art. Giddle’s story has all sorts of implications—that her secret life is hidden from ordinary folk, making her secretly superior. That she cannot really be known by others who see her as a waitress. That being a waitress, like any job, is a role that must be acted out. Is this our old friend a mise en abyme? Yup. That’s pretty much what Reno believes, that to be an artist, you have to act the part. Even if you doubt you’re an artist, you should act the part. I don’t want to deny this idea or criticize it. It is actually the case that most occupations require an apprenticeship—formal or not—that involves “acting” like the role you aspire to. Writers too, best beloved, go through a process of copying admired writers—whether or not they want to admit it. Yet, many people do these apprenticeships with a sense of purpose and authenticity that the character Reno lacks. She is a tragic figure who is always waiting for what she wants, believing if she can only fit well enough into the world of those whom she admires, she will win the prize. She does not judge others. She begins the story wanting to ride motorcycles and to be an artist, actually to combine the two. Motorcycle riding as a work of art. Does she get her wish? At the end, she rides motorcycles and is an artist of sorts. But there is a pervasive theme of waiting—that she’s waiting for particular people to be with her, to help her. Here are the last lines: “I’m alone at the base of the run, almost too cold to move. The answer is not coming. I have to find an arbitrary point inside the spell of waiting, the open absence and tear myself away. Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.” She has a sense that she must choose a point within her life that has up to now consisted in waiting, and break out of it. But things are left open. We don’t know if she can do this or not. ‘Kay, my friends. A provocative book. Are passive protagonists frustrating? An answer comes. Yup. But we must “move on” as well. Till next time. #TheFlamethrowers #RachelKushner #AlanBray

'Kay, my happiness continues! I'm very happy to report that Narrative Magazine will publish my story Forgotten Melodies in the new year. Many thanks to Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian, and everyone at Narrative. I will update with a link when the story is live.

I'm delighted to say that my short story Punched Out, has been short listed for the Hammond House International Short Story Awards. This is quite an honor, and I thank everyone involved. It looks like the story will be published in an anthology and maybe on their website. I will update with links.

As promised, my short story, The Vaccination, has been published on the Narrative Magazine website as their story of the week. I'm honored to be there, and thank everyone involved. Here's the link: https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stories-week-2022-2023/story-week/vaccination-alan-bray When you click, you'll see my handsome mug and the beginning of the story appear. Then there's a link to continue reading but you have to subscribe to Narrative. You may be reluctant to do this—even though you want to read the whole story—I know. But Narrative is a high-quality group and it's worth joining if you like good writing.

What is the narrational style of Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers? The first chapter begins in close third person and in simple past tense. “Valera had fallen back from his squadron…” This cues the reader that there is a narrator who is showing a story that has already occurred. This narrator—unnamed and apparently reliable—knows the story, knows the protagonist, Valera, inside and out, and also knows certain facts about other characters. “Copertini considered himself a better rider…” There are cues here that this story occurs during the first world war, “…they both volunteered for the cycle battalion in 1917.” “Combat was on the other side of a deep valley, near the Isonzo River.” “He heard the faint whoosh of a flamethrower…” (first mention of the book’s title). The second chapter is quite different, and this difference may be a bit jarring to readers who expect more of the story of Valera in WW1. It is entitled Spiritual America, and begins, “I walked out of the sun, fastening my chinstrap.” A shift to first-person narration, still in simple past tense. Soon enough, there are cues that the story has shifted in time and place. “On that day, riding a Moto Valera east from Reno, it was an issue of wanting to move across the map of Nevada that was taped to my gas tank as I moved across the actual state.” Very perceptive readers might notice that the character in Chapter One is a motorcyclist named Valera, and that the “I” character in Chapter Two is riding a Moto Valera motorcycle—but in America, not Italy. So there is a connection of motorcycles, and that is significant. We get a gradual sense that time has shifted in that the protagonist is wearing nylon underwear, and has been traveling on a motorcycle at a hundred miles an hour—both situations not present during WW1 (I think). But there are no clear markers as to what the actual date is. (It’s in the 1970s, we learn later). Valera, in Chapter 1, is male. When do we learn that the “I” in Chapter 2 is female? As discussed last time, the reader who knows Flamethrowers is written by a woman might conclude naively that the second protagonist, the “I,” is female, that the author is speaking. Then we have this passage, several paragraphs in, a description of an apparently heterosexual relationship. “He (Sandro) pretended I was placed in his life to torture him, when it was really the other way around. He acted smitten but I was the smitten one.” Then, “Women responded to this. They came onto him right in front of me…” Finally, the first usage of a female noun. He introduced me…”not as his girlfriend, but as a young artist, just out of school.” Even to the densest of readers, this establishes this second protagonist as female, and as not Valera, somehow older and transported to Nevada. An interesting fictional situation. The book begins with a narrator showing a story that has already occurred but then shifts to a first-person narrator, an “I,” who is looking back at herself from some future vantage point. Another facet of Flamethrowers’ structure is that it is composed of scenes that contain stories—both stories that the protagonist hears, and stories she tells herself. Of course, arguably, the whole thing is a story told to the reader but I’m talking about something a little different—perhaps stories within the story. The first such story occurs in Chapter Two when Reno provides some background on her life with a story about being raised by “Uncle Bobby.” Of course, this could be taken as essentially a background story on the protagonist—an origin story, if you will. But the next one, occurring a few pages later, concerns someone unknown to Reno except by hearsay. It is the story of Robert Smithson, a real artist who created the Spiral Jetty in Utah. Then we have the story of Flip Farmer, a fictional auto racer whom Reno idolized. However, the story includes details that the fictional Reno couldn’t have known. So who is telling the story? The Narrator, I guess. There’s a long, digressive story told by a character named Stanley Castle that is overheard by Reno (it’s actually a tape recording). It concerns, among other things, a husband and wife who act out a sexual game of the woman being an amputee. (?) And there is the curious section entitled, The Way We Were, which recounts the escapades of the “Motherfuckers” criminal gang in New York City. It is told by the narrator; there is no sense of Reno, the protagonist, having overheard the stories. What I hope is clear from this description is that the story may seem to be told by a first-person narrator, Reno, but is not. There is another narrator entity who tells the stories of Valera, who tells stories of characters that Reno is not privy to. This narrator is never named. Is “it” reliable? We don’t know, although there’s never a question raised of “it” being unreliable. ‘Kay, let’s wrap up for today. (Wait, wait, Mr. Big Shot! So is this narrator the implied author you go on about so much?) No, it’s not, best beloved. There is an actual unnamed narrator lurking in this story. A voice, a consciousness that knows things and shows them. It is a creature of the implied author, but they are not the same. Till next time. #TheFlamethrowers #RachelKushner #AlanBray

I'm delighted to say that my short story The Vaccination will be published in Narrative Magazine on December 12th. It's a tale of someone navigating not only the pandemic world but also personal emancipation. My thanks to Tom Jenks and Mimi Kusch and everyone at Narrative—it's been a great experience. I will post a link on the 12th.

“Valera had fallen back from his squadron and was cutting the wires of another rider’s lamp.” So begins Rachel Kushner’s 2013 novel The Flamethrowers. This first line follows a sentence-like title for the first chapter: “He killed him with a motorbike headlamp (what he had in his hand).” Preceding this is a dedication and a page displaying the Latin phrase: Fac ut Ardeat. This epigram is quite important to the process of making meaning of the story. It translates to English variously as “make my heart burn,” or “blaze it,” as in, set it on fire. The New York Times listed The Flamethrowers as one of the top ten books for 2013, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award the same year. Flamethrowers is a complex novel. The first thing I’d like to consider has to do with readers’ expectations as they approach the story. One important aspect of this is how did the reader learn of the book and become motivated to read it? I had seen advertising for Flamethrowers—just the cover image, rather striking, of a young white woman with blond bangs and what appears to be streaks of white paint below her eyes. Her mouth is covered by—apparently—a cross formed by two strips of white tape with the words, A NOVEL written on them. Interestingly, at the end of the Scribner’s paperback edition, Rachel Kushner includes an afterword chapter entitled A Portfolio Curated by Rachel Kushner. In it, she describes several photographs, including the cover image. Authors often don’t get to choose what images are displayed on the covers of their books, so this is of note. She says that the photo hung above her writing desk and provided inspiration. “I didn’t think much about the tape over her mouth (which is actually Band-Aids over the photograph, and not over her lips themselves).” She calls this, “a creature of language, silenced.” It would seem that the publisher added the words, A NOVEL. In the acknowledgments section, the image is credited as coming from the March 1980 issue of I Volsci, a newspaper of the Autonomia Operaia group—an automotive group that connects with the story. The author is a woman—has a woman’s name. The extensive advertising text talks about how the novel is a new offering by the author who had previously written a notable book. The text on the back cover states that, “The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist.” This was not written by Ms. Kushner, and we shall see if it proves an apt description of her novel. We shall see. I didn’t really have any particularly heavy thoughts about all this but remembered the book when a friend mentioned that he was reading the book and enjoying it. Fate nudging me? Perhaps. (Thanks, Bill). Now, some readers might come to this book because they read reviews of it and liked what they read. And there were a number of reviews; in fact, they contained a notable controversy. The New Yorker's James Wood praised the book as "scintillatingly alive" and commented that it "[succeeded] because it is so full of vibrantly different stories and histories, all of them particular, all of them brilliantly alive." The Guardian commented upon the book and its polarized reviews, remarking that while some reviewers such as Wood and novelist Jonathan Franzen have been vocal in their praise, other reviewers such as Adam Kirsch commented that the book was "macho," which explained "why it has been received so enthusiastically by the critics." However, Kirsch's overall review also contained praise: he wrote that Kushner had "a real gift for grasping the prose-poetry of ideologies." The New York Review of Books published a predominantly negative review by Frederick Seidel, which criticized elements of the book as unconvincing. The review remarked that the book was "tiresome, histrionic, hysterically overwritten" and was "desperate to show how brilliant it is". The review provoked a response from the Huffington Post's Nicholas Miriello, who published it through the Los Angeles Review of Books. Miriello remarked that Seidel's review was more interested in Seidel than the book itself and that it was "gallingly condescending" and "often inadequate." The New Republic in turn commented upon Miriello's response, suggesting that Seidel's opinions might have been more based upon differences in cultures between New York and the west coast. ‘Kay. A cynical individual might conclude that the book’s publishers were probably delighted with all the publicity. And it undoubtedly drew readers’ attention. An interesting digression here concerns the fact that Flamethrowers was written by a woman, Rachel Kushner. Her photo is on the back cover, and she clearly identifies as female. We can see from the above that some reviewers (Seidel) characterize Flamethrowers as being histrionic and hysterical, appellations often used to criticize women for being too emotional. And there is Kirsch’s comment that the book is macho—as if it tries too hard to be masculine—although I don’t think he meant this negatively. I have encountered other humans who assert they will only read books written by women, and I’m sure there are some who will only read those by men. As we read, are we aware of the author’s gender? More so at first, I think. And do women write in a different way than men? That is, does gender shape the way humans express themselves? Whoa, weighty question, my friends. (answer, please). I believe an author’s gender creates certain expectations in a reader—assuming one knows it before beginning a book. This relates very much to one’s own prejudices and to culture. Regarding Flamethrowers, I do not read it with much awareness that it was written by a woman. I do not believe there is a female or male style of writing, only the infinite variation of individuals. I do think an individual who is female, writing in our time and culture, will be influenced by her gender, her experience of being a woman. In any case, there is no statistical evidence for bias against female authors by readers of any gender. However, it should be said that publishers favor male authors and charge more money for their books. Female authors are often associated with the Romance genre—centered on a love affair, happy ending, a lessor development of character and story. Novels that are less sophisticated in their use of time and perspective. They sell. Why are female authors associated with this genre? My opinion—sheer marketing. That’s it. Publishers think women are more romantic. (You don’t send me flowers). Could a potential reader study a copy of Flamethrowers and conclude it is a romance novel? Probably not, best B. As noted above, it begins with an epigram in Latin, and the story itself begins with a murder, a rather brutal one. The reader who gets beyond this first chapter will discover the second chapter is set in a different time with a different character with no obvious connection to the first. And there’s that cover. Not very romantic, my friend. Literary, you say? Yup. We find ourselves in the deep forest of gender, no? Till next time. #TheFlamethrowers #RachelKushner #AlanBray

In Amongst Women, John McGahern—like any writer—tells the story using a particular narrational style. Let’s consider the opening paragraph: “As he weakened, Moran became afraid of his daughters. This once powerful man was so implanted in their lives that they had never really left Great Meadow, in spite of jobs and marriages and children of their own in Dublin and London. Now they could not let him slip away.” Who is the subject thinking this and then writing it? Well, it’s someone who not only has intimate knowledge of Michael Moran but also of his daughters. ‘Kay, let’s work with this. First, it’s not quoted speech—there are no quotation marks. If there were, would Michael Moran say such a thing? “As I weakened, I became afraid of my daughters.” Probably not, although he might think it in a deeply personal, perhaps pre-conscious way. He might have a vague sense of fear that his daughters plan to limit his freedom, but it would be unusual to think such a thing, let alone say it. If it’s not Moran, then it’s someone saying this about him, someone who knows him well and who can make meaning of his behavior. And since this is a book and the first sentence, it’s someone who is introducing the protagonist to the reader. There is no sense that it’s another character who is saying this—it’s not, “Rose thought, as Moran weakened, he became afraid of his daughters.” And there’s a judgement expressed. Whoever says this judges that Moran is weakening, and that he is afraid. The same goes for the rest of the paragraph. What’s described—that his daughters are so implanted in his life that they never really leave their childhood home—is exactly what Moran is shown as wanting. However, this desire—that his children not leave him—is never expressed directly in the story; it’s implied. McGahern does a nice job of portraying Moran as a complex man who does not only do bad things. It would be out of character for Moran to be shown as directly scheming to sabotage his daughters’ independence for selfish reasons. (‘Kay, he comes pretty close). And the daughters would be unlikely to render such a judgment on themselves. No, it seems to be some omniscient entity who is showing the story of these people along with an assessment of their behavior. Another example: (Nell Morahan helps Moran’s younger son, Michael, escape Moran’s wrath, and they spend the night together.) “All through the night they made love. The anxiety of his years soon gave way to tenderness and great gratitude. Each time that she thought that he was slipping into sleep he would come into her again. She received him as if he were both man and child, his slenderness cancelled by strength, his unsureness by pride; and she took him too each time as if she were saying a slow and careful farewell to a youth she herself had to work too hard ever to have had when she was young. Not until morning did they fall into a sleep of pure exhaustion and as soon as she woke she roused him and drove him to the part of the city where his sisters lived.” Beautiful writing, no? Would Nell—a relatively uneducated woman—think these things? No. Would Michael? No, he wouldn’t know Nell’s inner experience. This is the narrator describing that experience in poetic terms, something that occurs routinely in the book. So, we have the perspective of the narrator superseding the viewpoint character, in this case, Nell. The narrator does not necessarily agree with the characters’ perceptions; it shows them as sometimes accurate and sometimes fallible. And of course, the narrator is only a creature of the implied author. Heh, heh, heh. (Oh, no! Not this again, lots of people don't even believe in implied authors. But you just go on and on, blandly bringing "them" up). 'Kay. So, is this creature one of those omniscient narrators? Prrhaps, best B. “An omniscient narrator is all-seeing and all-knowing. While the narration occurs outside of any one character, the narrator may occasionally access the consciousness of a few or many different characters. “Some writers use this perspective to create a more “godlike” or deliberately “authorial” persona that allows them to comment on the action with the benefit of distance. This might take the form of sweeping descriptions of setting that help to establish the mood or atmosphere of a scene, or philosophical digressions that serve to develop ideas that only tangentially relate to the action of the story.” Yeah, I think we can say this style is present in Amongst Women. But the story does have a different feel than those classic eighteenth and nineteenth century novels that were grandly omniscient, often utilizing a narrator who was an actual realized character. (Moby Dick—Call me Ishmael, anyone?). Or at least a “we.” (The Red and the Black, Thomas Hardy’s work, Tolstoy). “We’ve” established that the narrator of Amongst Women is unnamed and infallible. In fact, it’s so unnamed that it has no pronoun. No “we” or “I.” (Yes, this blog makes use of a personified narrator, an “I,” a “we,” sometimes even named as Mr. Al, or Mr. Pretentious Bully. But, you say, this blog is not fiction. Oh, I forgot). I think the best technical definition of what’s going on in Amongst Women is that the narration is “third person limited omniscient.” This mouthful means it gets into the heads of some—not all—of the characters, and it maintains distance from the main characters by offering judgements of them. Telescopic, perhaps. Well. I think this concludes “our” discussion of this magical book. Next week, a new one—assuming the “old maestro” is sufficiently recovered from the Thanksgiving feast. Till then. #AmongstWomen #JohnMcGahern #AlanBray

Who am I? That’s a question that self-reflective people ask themselves again and again as they move through life. The answer is more than a name; it is a persona that includes personality traits, abilities, physical attributes, interests, and social roles. I am the author of this blog. I am tall, interested in writing and reading. I am a husband, a father, a dog owner. (a bully). If fiction desires to appear realistic, characters should be shown as having an identity, no? An interesting facet of Amongst Women is Moran’s search for (or perhaps rejection of) his identity, although the character is, it’s fair to say, not someone who would experience themselves as having an identity crisis. A good chunk of his identity consists in finding disappointment in who or whatever he tries to be. We know he had a successful career as a soldier, that he was good at it, but that he had a falling out with his superiors that led to his retirement. He discusses this in a conversation with his daughter, Sheila: “’They say you should have gone to the very top in the army but you were stopped. McQuaid always said they set out to stop you,’ Sheila said with borrowed vehemence. ‘I was stopped all right but it wasn’t as simple as poor McQuaid made out. In an army in peace time you have to arselick and know the right people if you want to get on. I was never any good at getting on with people.’” (Maybe that's his identity—not getting along with people. He doesn't want to be proud of this though). Too many voices in this blog. Moran refuses to speak of his military exploits and treats that part of his life (and identity) as done. Probably because he’s bitter about being passed over for promotion, he rejects his identity as a soldier and war hero. We know that his first marriage produced five children and that his wife died when the children were all under the age of ten. So we can infer that being a husband and father was and is an important part of his identity, as is being religious. In fact, his daily leading of his family in prayer has a ritualistic feel, as if this enactment is necessary to hold everyone together. It establishes and affirms his identity as leader of the family. But his family does not cohere in the way Moran wants. The reader perceives that the children will grow up and move away, establishing their own families; Moran perceives this as well, but to him this is a failure on his part, one he rationalizes by blaming the children for disloyalty. Another part of Moran’s identity is as a farmer and landowner. It is said he purchased his farm, Great Meadow, with the money he received on leaving the military. He labors long and hard on the land and expects his family to join in the work. However, once again this becomes a disappointment to him when he senses that, after his death, his children will not be interested in continuing his legacy. “Who cares?” he often says. This seems to be partly a heartfelt cry of despair that his achievements have been done in vain, and also an attempt to garner sympathy and compliance from his children. So, Moran had an identity as a soldier and rejected it. He has an identity as a father and husband but interprets success in this realm in terms of control and terror. He believes he’s a good father if his children obey him without question, and they won’t. And he has an identity as a farmer but feels his death will render this meaningless. In fact, he believes his death will render everything he’s done meaningless. If he’s not around to lead it, his family and his land will disintegrate. The end of the story shows his error in fearing this, that he has indelibly stamped his family with himself and that his influence, good and bad, will persist. After Moran’s funeral—death—perhaps his greatest fear: “But as the small tight group of stricken women slowly left the graveyard they seemed with every step to be gaining in strength. It was as if their first love and allegiance had been pledged uncompromisingly to this one house and man and that they knew that he had always been at the very living centre of all parts of their lives. Now not only had they never broken that pledge but they were renewing it for a second time with this other woman (Rose) who had come in among them and married him. Their continual homecomings had been an affirmation of its unbroken presence, and now, as they left him under the yew, it was as if each one of them in their different ways had become Daddy.” As a character, Moran is defined by angry rejection and dissatisfaction. Any pleasure he takes must be denigrated and fouled in an orgy of brooding. Pride is not allowed. In our post-Freudian world, we can speculate that this harshness toward himself has its roots in a harsh childhood, but the book does not indulge our curiosity on this count. The question of why Moran is the way he is remains open to the reader to answer. We know next to nothing about his upbringing but can imagine Moran had a very harsh inner critic who always judged his efforts as lacking. A tragic figure who causes much suffering. It was that old savant John Locke who identified self with memory and argued that identity extends to anything of a person’s past that he or she can remember. We are what we were. Perhaps it is again worth noting that there are significant parallels between Moran’s fictitious family and John McGahern’s real one, between Michael Moran himself and McGahern’s own father, who was a cold and brutal policeman. An important part of Amongst Women is that Moran is shown to be in error about who he is and his legacy, and this is accomplished by the narrational style which has an unnamed narrator telling the story and showing how Moran is mistaken about many things. This narrator is infallible; Moran is not. Till next time, my friends. #AmongstWomen #JohnMcGahern #AlanBray

Immediately after the section in Amongst Women that depicts the last meeting between Moran and McQuaid, there is a paragraph break. Then the reader is treated to fourteen pages of gorgeous lyrical writing telling the story of how Moran got together with Rose Brady. “Rose Brady had come home from Glasgow to nurse her father and stayed on irresolutely after his death, one day stretching into another…Sometimes she had too strong of a sense of being locked into the life of the farmhouse, even with the door open on the summer yard, her brother away in the fields, her mother stumbling about the place with buckets, leaning on the table or the back of a chair whenever she stood to talk. One evening, as an excuse to get out of the house, she went with a letter to the post office.” Lyrical writing is song-like, poetic, evocative. It does not collapse under an overabundance of metaphor and simile but has enough of these devices to distinguish it from more journalistic prose. In the above example, the first sentence describes why Rose in in Ireland, where she came from, what she’s doing. However, the next sentence expands in a lyrical bloom. It describes her feelings about staying at her widowed mother’s farmhouse but doesn’t say “The everyday routines of her family made her feel confined.” Instead, it talks about her being “locked into the life of the farmhouse—even with the door open. About her brother’s absence, her mother stumbling with buckets. She feels confined by life and wants to escape. This is quite important as it leads her to Moran. Moran represents escape. It is at the post office, that she encounters Michael Moran, of whom it is said she knew by sight but had never spoken to before. “He had been a widower for many years, she knew…She found him attentive, intelligent, even charming, but with a distinct sense of separateness and pride that she found refreshingly unlike any other other local men she had known.” “She was in her late thirties, lean and strong, too neat and plain of feature ever to have been beautiful but her large grey eyes were intelligent and full of wilfulness and energy. As soon as she got home she couldn’t resist bringing up Moran’s name…She saw her mother look at her sharply. ‘They say he’s one sort of person when he’s out in the open among people—he can be very sweet—but that he’s a different sort of person altogether behind the walls of his own house.’” Heedless, Rose returns to the post office each night, “each time managing to leave the post office alone with Moran…She was able to conceal her restlessness, the pacing about, the dream of a different beginning to a new life, her impatience with the old shapes that she had used for too long; she was not young and was old enough to perceive failure…she could not stay away from the post office…” The townsfolk, even Rose’s mother, become sarcastic and insulting about Rose’s efforts, criticizing her for being too pushy. Moran himself is ambivalent. “Rose Brady’s attention had been as unexpected as it had been sudden and welcome. It was as if she had fallen out of a generous sky. She was much younger than he, strong, not unpleasant to look at. He had reason to suspect that she had saved money and his life could glow again in the concentration of her attention. It was unlikely that such luck would fall his way again no matter how long he waited.” Moran tells his daughters he’s considering re-marriage. He calls on Rose, meets her family, and as he’s leaving, kisses her. (The old dog). He introduces Rose to his family. They plan to marry. “Rose wished that they could be married quickly but now that there was nothing in the way of it Moran grew cautious and evasive. She saw the way it was and moved differently.” Rose invites Moran and his family to her mother’s house and charms the Moran children. Soon after, she and Moran marry. Rose is, I believe a central figure in Amongst Women, equally so with Michael Moran, the obvious protagonist. We will get into the issue of how the narrational style of the story facilitates this—later. For now, I want to say I believe Rose is the redeemer of the Moran family, absorbing and re-directing much of Moran’s anger and meanness. She is “the good mother” who interprets and explains Moran’s misbehavior to his children. For better or for worse, she is “Daddy’s” apologist. And she devotes herself to taking care of all of them, including Moran—who is not exactly husband-of-the-year material. “Then one evening as she was tidying up the room he said as quietly as if he were taking rifle aim, ‘There’s no need for you to go turning the whole place upside down. We managed well enough before you ever came round the place.’ She did not try to answer or to turn it aside. It was again as if she had been struck…Then with the same shocking slowness, without a word, without looking at anyone, she went to the door, opened it and let it close softly behind her. There was complete silence.” Moran finally finds her in their darkened bedroom. “Are you awake at all there Rose?” “I’m awake,’ she said in a voice strained with hurt. ‘I’ll have to go away from here.’ ‘I never heard such nonsense,’ he blustered…’God, O God. Has everything to be taken like this? I never meant anything like that…I thought we’d finished with that forever’…He had been checked.” There is a pattern of Moran behaving badly and Rose showing how he’s hurt her, which leads to Moran apologizing with less and less reluctance. Gradually, he’s “tamed.” What is Rose’s motivation for this self-lessness? It’s not directly explained. It can be inferred that she is anxious to marry Moran, not so much because of who he is or because of any great love, but more because she does not wish to be an unmarried, aging woman who never experienced marriage and family. And I suppose it can also be inferred that she is invested in maintaining this marriage and family—almost at all costs. And Moran needs Rose. He seems to sense that, alone, he would not be a successful human. As his oldest son says late in the story, Moran needs to be among women (another meaning of the title). Men are threats—unless they aren’t, like Sheila’s husband, Sean, and then Moran can be affable in a controlling way. He cannot abide men who are like him—strong-willed, controlling. Most of all his eldest son, Luke. ‘Kay. It’s time to wrap up today’s post. Till next time, my friends. #AmongstWomen #JohnMcGahern #AlanBray

Last week, we started thinking about the structure of Amongst Women—the way it establishes a present time at the beginning when Michael Moran’s daughters have returned to the family home to break him out of a decline. “You’ll have to shape up, Daddy. You can’t go on like this. You’re giving us no help. We can’t get you better on our own.” Then the story moves back in time. From the present, which I believe occurs around 1960, it goes back to the last time Jimmy McQuaid came to visit Moran on Monaghan’s Day, this being the family event the daughters revive to help their father. This time is shortly before Moran marries Rose, apparently some ten years earlier from the book’s start. Some writers might employ a change of verb tenses and/or a new chapter to indicate this shift. McGahern uses a paragraph break and then the new section begins with the unnamed narrator’s voice: “The attempt to revive Monaghan Day was a gesture as weak as a couple who marry in order to retrieve a lost relationship, the mind having changed the hard actual fact into what was comfortable to feel.” “On the last Monaghan Day that McQuaid came to the house Moran was on edge…” So, no shift in verb tense to mark the movement into the past. There’s a summary of the previous section’s meaning, and then the shift is marked by naming the particular time and the event—the last Monaghan Day that McQuaid came to the house. This also serves to show a significant plot point—that the event of McQuaid’s visiting Moran every Monaghan’s Day came to an end. Jimmy McQuaid was Moran’s comrade in the Irish military fighting for Irish independence from the British. He has become a prosperous farmer—more prosperous than Moran and is Moran’s oldest friend. Every year, the fellas get together and reminisce. Moran serves McQuaid a bottle of whisky but does not drink himself, stating it doesn’t agree with him anymore. On this last time, they talk about an incident from the war when they attacked a British Army meeting and killed several high-ranking officers. McQuaid praises Moran’s leadership but the mood changes. Moran objects to McQuaid’s comments against the Catholic Church, and the men become sullen and silent. “…And there might never be another world.” McQuaid could not resist this hit at Moran’s religiosity.…”God stays out of it.” The reasons for the old friends arguing aren’t entirely clear—perhaps they dislike the men they’ve become. There may be some jealousy over McQuaid’s prosperity. Perhaps Moran has never been as good of a friend as McQuaid wanted. “Moran was too complicated to let anyone know what he thought of anything.” The tradition has been that McQuaid would spend the night but on this final evening, he announces he plans to go home. Moran remains by himself. “As soon as Moran saw McQuaid on his feet again he knew the evening, all the evenings, were about to be broken up and he withdrew back into himself. He would neither plead with him to stay nor help him with his leaving.” “In a cold fury he stood and sat about for a long time within…After years he had lost his oldest and best friend but in a way he had always despised friendship; families were what mattered, more particularly that larger version of himself—his family, and while seated in the same scheming fury he saw each individual member gradually slipping away out of his reach. Yes, they would eventually all go. He would be alone. That he could not stand. He saw with bitter lucidity that he would marry Rose Brady now. As with so many things, no sooner had he taken the idea to himself than he began to resent it passionately.” This passage shows several things: Moran denies he feels any regret over the quarrel with McQuaid. He shifts off this quickly and broods in a deeply angry way about his family, which he tells himself is the most important thing in his life but one which will abandon him. And it shows how Moran is an unhappy man who can only briefly feel happiness but then must denigrate and deny it. ‘Kay. Enough there, my friends. Next time, we’ll continue with the story of Moran and Rose’s coming together. A little romance, eh? Till then. #AmongstWomen #JohnMcGahern #AlanBray

This week, a new story, best beloved, Irishman John McGahern’s 1990 novel, Amongst Women. Great choice! Yay! Thank you. John McGahern is one of my favorite writers— Probably why you picked him. —and Amongst Women was the novel that brought him international acclaim. Short listed for the Booker Prize in 1990, it is the story of a large middle-class family in Ireland, the Morans, a family with an ageing and troubled patriarch, Michael, who was a soldier in Ireland’s Civil War in the 1920’s, the war that led to independence from Britain. The present of the story is in the 1960s. I believe some of John McGahern’s short stories approach the sublime—witness The Wine Breath, and Amongst Women is a fine addition to his oeuvre. His what? He writes about Ireland, about families, often about a particular family situation that he himself experienced, and which appears in Amongst Women: After the death of his wife, a father raises many children. He is cold and distant, controlling and abusive. After the children reach adolescence, the father remarries, and eventually, the now adult children must deal with his decline and death, just as he must deal with their ascendence and his mortality. It would seem that Mr. McGahern, who died in 2016, had some personal issues he was trying to work out in his writing, as this situation appears again and again. Art imitates life, as it were. I think this phenomenon is common for writers, but it is unusually clear in McGahern’s work. The title interacts with the story in several ways. Moran lives among women—his wife and daughters—as his sons shun him. However, the title also references the traditional Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary, which contains the line, "blessed art thou amongst women". HAIL MARY, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. This prayer is significant as Michael Moran leads the family every day in its recitation, and this recitation serves as a motif throughout the novel. Another reading would be that whereas in his military days, Moran was among men, now, at the end of his life, he is among women. The novel’s structure has a present which is not so much centered on particular moments in time but is more of a period of time, as revealed in the very first line—"as he weakened.” It’s not exactly imperfect time, meaning a time that re-occurs, but is not at all a discrete series of moments either. The present of the book is the time of Moran’s decline. It is contrasted with several moves back in time which contextualize what is happening with Moran and his family. It begins: “As he weakened, Moran became afraid of his daughters. This once powerful man was so implanted in their lives that they had never really left Great Meadow, in spite of jobs and marriages and children and houses of their own in Dublin and London. Now they could not let him slip away.” This memorable first paragraph not only outlines the story, but it also introduces the mysterious narrator. Who, you might ask, is speaking? The first sentence could be from Moran’s perspective; however, the rest of the paragraph could not be. The whole thing seems to be written by some other entity who is telling the story—the storyteller, if you will. (We will!) More on this, but the paragraph also raises several questions: Not only who is Moran and who are his daughters, but also why did he become afraid? And why would his daughters not let him slip away? The story provides the answers. The first section has to do with Moran’s three adult daughters returning to his house, the house they grew up in, in order to, on the face of it, revive Monaghan Day. Monaghan Day—Manchán's Fair Day—was a medieval celebration occurring on February 25. Its significance to the daughters is that it was the day each year that Moran’s old army comrade McQuaid would come by, and the two men would reminisce over their glory days fighting the British. After a falling out with Moran, McQuaid has died, but the daughters hope that having a celebration on this day again will spark some life into their declining father. “If we could revive Monaghan’s Day for Daddy it could help to start him back to himself. Monaghan Day meant the world to him once.” Moran is reluctant: “’What’s that got to do with anything?’ Just as he resented gifts he resented any dredging up of the past. He demanded that the continuing present he felt his life to be should not be shadowed or challenged…He went silent and dark and withdrew into himself, the two thumbs rotating around one another as he sat in the car chair by the fire. A quick glance between Rose (his wife) and the girls was enough…They began to busy themselves cheerfully with preparations for the meal, one or other of them constantly trying to engage Moran with this small thing or that, until he was drawn by their uncanny tact into the general cheerfulness.” Moran joins in the celebration, brightening as he talks “openly about the war for the first time in their lives.” “Then in a sudden flash that he was sometimes capable of, he acknowledged his daughters’ continuing goodwill and love, love that usually he seemed inherently unable to return. ‘Tonight we offer up this Holy Rosary for the repose of the soul of James McQuaid.’” However, the next morning, he frightens everyone by shooting a bird from his front window—a disturbing reminder of his violent past. The end of this first section contains an important foreshadowing. Moran’s wife, Rose, secretly buys a “brown Franciscan habit” and hides it from Moran. This will be his death shroud. ‘Kay, let’s continue next time. Till then. #AmongstWomen #JohnMcGahern #AlanBray