The Irish Novel 1960 - 2010

1980: Julia O’Faoláin, No Country for Young Men

The possibility of such spiritual reintegration is also borne out by Aunt Mary’s funeral, whose ritualistic and communal elements override in significance its religious dimension. In examining how ‘The superstitious, the poetic, the religious are all made safe within the social, given a tangible form’ (238), McGahern retrieves terms like ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ from their familiar, jaded, Catholic usage, and in doing so points to an Ireland becoming increasingly post-Catholic. And although in its tense, rather tendentious style, in the depths of its narrator’s existential emptiness, and the somewhat schematic quality of the narrator’s conflict, The Pornographer is probably McGahern’s least popular novel, it is not only an important work in his development. It also confronts with an intensity not often matched in the contemporary Irish novel difficult questions of being and becoming, as well as asserting that an enlightened citizenry is one that finds ways of taking those questions with the utmost seriousness. Supplementary Reading Denis Sampson, Outstaring Nature’s Eye: The Fiction of John McGahern (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), pp. 137–61 Éamon Maher, John McGahern: From the Local to the Universal (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2003) Stanley van der Ziel (ed.), John McGahern. Love of the World: Essays (London: Faber, 2009) Denis Sampson, Young John McGahern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Also Published in 1979 John Broderick, London Irish; Anthony Cronin, Identity Papers; Jennifer Johnston, The Old Jest; Brian Moore, The Mangan Inheritance; Seán O’Faoláin, And Again? 1980 Julia O’Faoláin, No Country forYoung Men Julia O’Faoláin (b. 1932), daughter of the writers Seán and Eileen O’Faoláin, was born in London. Her career has produced novels of two different kinds. There are her historical works such as Woman in the Wall (1975), dealing with medieval women and sainthood; The Judas Cloth (1992), set in the Rome of Pius IX; and Adam Gould (2009), whose subject in part is psychology’s early days. In contrast are novels with present-day settings focusing on women’s domestic and sexual experiences – Godded and Codded (1970; US title Three Lovers 70 THE IRISH NOVEL 1960–2010 (1971)); The Obedient Wife (1982) and The Irish Signorina (1984). O’Faoláin has also written several collections of short stories which, like her novels, cast a stylishly satirical eye on her characters’ illusions and deceptions. Her non-fiction includes an important volume of documents relating to women’s history, co-edited with her husband, Lauro Martines. In general, Julia O’Faoláin’s novels have not been particularly wedded to Irish national themes or interests. On the contrary, she may be one of her generation’s most cosmopolitan writers. Her work exhibits the flair and sophistication cosmopolitanism connotes, as well as a fascination with the power and pretensions of the European haute bourgeoisie. Judging by No Country for Young Men, these qualities alone seem insufficient to deal with the matter of Ireland, and to them is added an elaborate narrative that draws both on the foundation of the state and on its present-day legacy. The two-pronged approach has the effect of treating a storyline relying on historical information in an artistic spirit that borders on the buffo. The storyline shows O’Faoláin’s close acquaintance with Ireland past and present, while her aesthetic approach – style, tone, point of view – suggests a desire or need that her characters and their largely repellent antics and outlooks are kept at a distance. The general intent – as is suggested by the novel’s title substituting ‘young’ for ‘old’ in the well-known opening line from Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ – is subversive. And in a plot that proliferates diffusely, subversion is a key element, together with betrayal, concealment and unmasking. As a result, when all has been said and done, it is not easy to know if this is a country for men of any age, young, old or middling. None of the male characters emerges from the goings on with much honour. But then they didn’t have very much to begin with. Instead, what they have is power. There is the political power exerted by Owen Roe O’Malley, who uses his government position to undermine the government. He also happens to be fond of riding horses – one resonant instance of the novel’s presentation of modern Dublin as the haunt of the parvenu and ‘the green-room of Europe’ (66). And the outlook of the...