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AOTW: Joyce. Yeats. Beckett. Wilde. What is it about Ireland that's produced such a disproportionate share of great writers? What Irish writers have influenced you? Who, in your opinion, are the Irish writers people should read to get a good picture of Ireland's literary heritage?
Máire B. de Paor: A distinction must be made between Anglo-Irish writers, four of whom you mention, and Gaelic writers. I have been influenced by our great Gaelic poets from earliest times to our own day, by our hagiographers (writing in both Latin and Gaelic); by the writings of the late Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich (1923-1990), Breandan Ó Doihhlin (1931-), Máirtín Ó Caidhin, Liam Ó Flatharta, and a host of other writers.
Learn the Irish language properly for a start; then steep yourself in our literature and see for yourselves! This requires hard, rewarding work unadorned by sentimental 'greenery'! They, who on our nation's hearth made old fires burn. Guard her unconquered soul strong in their death.
Liam Clancy: Historically, the Irish were deprived of political and social autonomy, of education, of language. Basically they were kept down at a level of subsistence poverty and ignorance where it would be impossible to own a piano for instance or the tools for painting, writing, etc. This led to a strong storytelling and singing tradition because the only thing the English could not take was what you had in your head. Translations of the old Gaelic writing such as Raftery gives a wonderful insight into the mind of the Gaelic Bard.
Emma Donoghue: No idea. I suspect Kate O'Brien, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Doyle, in their very different ways. As well as the famous four you mention, I'd add Sean O'Casey, J. M. Synge, Kate O'Brien, Eavan Boland.
Andrew M. Greeley: The four named subjects and Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel. Tis the weather that produces the great writers. I don't think any of them have influenced me. In fact I am not conscious of any influences.
Regina McBride: Who can say why the Irish have love-of-language and beautiful-turn-of-phrase in their blood? Maybe it's because of all the rain and the overcast weather which tends to put people into states of revery; a state conducive to imagining. All the great Irish writers, particularly Joyce and Yeats have influenced me deeply. But the writer who I think of as a mentor and a mother, is Edna O'Brien (who I have never met). How can I describe the deep, mysterious affinity I feel for her? Her earthiness and her gorgeous lyricism?
Niall Williams: All writers influence me. Whether Irish or not. Some influence is good, some not. A writer becomes a writer because he was a reader. And on the river of books that pass through one mind some things stick and change that mind. It is, I think, as simple as that. Certainly there was a time I read Joyce and was dazzled and gobsmacked and wrote imitative sentences for a time. But so too with Beckett, Flann O'Brien, et al. Until you find your own voice you borrow others just so that you can express something. Why the place of Irish writers in the world? I have no idea. There are so many theses, the borrowed language etc., and I think best to leave the answer to the professors. Nobody writes better on Irish literature than Declan Kiberd. Read him.
Marita Conlon-McKenna: I think almost everybody in Ireland wants to write or tell stories, it's a compulsive national habit, and with so many doing it we're bound to get lucky sometimes. Seriously though there is and has always been, a huge value and worth put on the written and spoken word here and people's experiences, history, and imagination are all valued. This value on the word combined with our lack of reserve, our willingness to drop the guard and express our innermost thoughts without fear of being considered crazy or vain or stupid is probably what has contributed to the continuing huge swell of Irish Writing. Writers are an integral part of Irish culture not separate from it. Growing up obviously the stories of Oscar Wilde would have had an influence alongside the short stories of people like Frank O'Connor and Liam O' Flaherty. Paddy Kavanagh, how could you live in Ireland and not be influenced by his work. Walter Macken, James Plunkett and Molly Keane were all enjoyed. Now it is writers like John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Doyle, Colm McCann, Seamas Heaney and Eavan Boland and Christopher Nolan that are setting the pace and making us take stock of ourselves.
Eoin Colfer: Ireland has always been a land of artists. I think this is because of a combination of island culture and hardship. I think if you wanted to get a picture of Irish culture see the plays of Billy Roche and read Pat McCabe and Roddy Doyle.
Jamie O'Neill: Perhaps it is the playfulness the Irish have in their use of English. The English language is not a national treasure to us. It's a borrowed thing, a loaned vocabulary on an older Gaelic syntax. Picture it and you see peasants cavorting in the Big House. Word games --- which generally are reviled as the lowest form of humour --- in Ireland receive their proper due. You hear this in the banter of any Dublin pub: pun upon pun spiralling in wafts of surreality. We have a child's delight in vocabulary, as though the novelty had yet to wear off. Compare this to our reverent, Sunday approach to Gaeilge. English is a world language, and our speaking it has opened the world's treasury to us. Emigration --- the peculiar fact of Irish history --- has provided a readership that renders ours a world literature. A happy circumstance for any writer, but particularly for one from a small country, the last spit of a continent. There is a certain anarchy, too, in the Irish make-up, a lust for freedom, an anti-authoritarianism. And a corresponding love of rules --- the better to know how to break them, perhaps. This dazzles in the fireworks of Joyce, Beckett, Flann O'Brien, even in Wilde. Synge and Yeats are a different kettle. Their Irishness, though central, is not necessary to their work. Much of Yeats' magnificence, it seems to me, is in spite of his being Irish, or beyond of it. Then there's the shanachee tradition of story-telling, degraded now to little more than Kerry yarns, but it survived long enough to seed the Irish short story, justly famed in the works, for instance, of Sean O'Faolain and Frank O'Connor. Along with the god-greats mentioned, I would suggest the autobiographies of Sean O'Casey. Here is Dublin in all her glory, in all her dirt, at the dawn of a century, that most stirring time when cultural Ireland rewoke from her sleep. It's been a long-held wish of mine one day to arrange an annotated version of these books, sadly neglected as they are. But if it's not heritage you're after but the word new-wrote, you'll find the best of modern Irish writing in John McGahern (Amongst Women) and Colm Tóibín (The Heather Blazing). Here is language that is sober and restrained, a grown-up fiction for a century's disappointments.
Malachy McCourt: Shaw said he left Ireland because the competition was too tough. As a nation of talkers who throw words at the sky like paint pots full of rainbow colors it's difficult to get a word in edgewise --- so slow talkers have to leave the bloody place and learn to write. I love Oliver Goldsmith and the Sheridan plays and Tom Murphy's stuff. O'Casey and Synge represent the urban and rural life in stark contrast to the romantic ideas of Ireland embedded in the Irish American psyche. Yes read the early Yeats and the works of William Carleton and the stories of Frank O'Connor for the mystical, the magical, the lyrical, the savagery and murderous effects of life in Ireland.
Randy Lee Eickhoff: Ireland is a very social country, made even more so by the Irish language as is indicated in a traditional greeting and response: Dia geht. Dia es Muria geht. God bless you, which calls for the greeted one to reply, repeating what has been given and adding something to it: God and Mary bless you. One must remember constantly what has been said to him in order not to give offense. The ancient tradition of the seanchie --- the storyteller --- and the oral or bardic tradition is also accountable for the phenomenal success of the Irish writer as can be seen from the ancient schools that had stringent requirements for those who wanted to become storytellers or even Druids. It wasn't a simple matter of getting a harp and calling yourself a bard; that right had to be earned through a long apprenticeship that is similar to a college education today. Ireland's mythological past, as seen in Book of Leinster and Yellow Book of Lecan and Book of the Dun Cow, has been highly influential upon Irish writing. Yeats was quite correct when he insisted that Irish writing had to be founded upon the rich past and not simply be a copy of English writing.
I was influenced first by the poetry of Yeats and still find his influence coming out in my writings. Joyce came much later when I became mature enough to appreciate the humor and subtlety of his work. Lately, the nihilism of Beckett is making my work appear darker and darker. I suppose this has to do with my own illness and the fact that I am currently translating The Death Tales for Forge Books.
Which Irish writers should people read? That's a no-win question for anyone to answer and I am bound to offend someone by leaving off his or her personal favorite in addition to simply forgetting someone who has given me great pleasure in the past. But, I cannot see how people can consider themselves educated without reading those three plus Lady Gregory, McGarth and most of all today, John Banville, who is currently forging new roads for the future writers. I really think Banville should be shortlisted for the Nobel Prize.
I cannot think of anyone attempting to write without reading the poetry of Seamus Heaney and the delightful Brendan Kennelly. And what would be a list without Benedict Kiely and Patrick Kavanagh, John B. Keane, and Edna O'Brien? I think Flann O'Brien wrote one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century with At Swim Two-Birds and Sean O'Faolain and Liam O'Flaherty gripped the severity of the Irish rebellion with some of his work as well.
The modern work of Patrick McCabe cannot be missed but one that is a must-read would have to be Morgan Llywelyn, especially Lion of Ireland and Bard and, her very best, Red Branch.
Those beginning to dig deeply into the Irish consciousness cannot miss Iris Murdoch's books.
But then, I could go on and on and get no whereas one writer generally leads to another. Certainly, for one to understand Ireland's past, one needs to regard the myths and I hope my work in The Ulster Cycle contributes to that. We are what we read, we write what we are. It is a comfortable circle.
Morgan Llywelyn: We are a people with an ancient love of language and words, one deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche for over two thousand years. That is a very powerful influence. As a child I devoured the stories of Oscar Wilde, particularly The Happy Prince. As an adult I read his other work with a sense of awe. How I would have enjoyed having him at my dinner table! The poetry of Yeats touches my heart and always has done. Recently I have been reading his speeches to the Irish Senate and enjoying an entirely different aspect of the man. A number of contemporary Irish writers engage me. Among poets I would name Séamus Heaney, Robert Graecen, Michael Hartnett. Novelists such as Colm McCann, Eoin McNamee, Liam MacUistin (in Irish), William Trevor. Every year or so brings new creative treasures. The list of nonfiction writers I read, such as Tim Pat Coogan, is simply too long to include here.
Several years ago Forge published a book of mine entitled The Essential Library for Irish-Americans, which described those works I recommend as presenting an accurate picture of Ireland.
Martin Roper: I don't really know why Ireland has produced so many --- I used to think it was a myth but I realise there have been a lot for such a tiny country. I think you could fit Ireland into the State of Iowa a couple of times over and still have room for the hogs. I think (and I'm talking here more about the past --- not modern Ireland) being an insular, parochial society had something to do with it. It seems it was a stultifying, claustrophobic, mean-spirited place. And there were was the trouble with our neighbour. Losing our language and acquiring a new one. I think that creates vigour in the tongue. Being immature and ashamed of our sexuality. And censorship. All of these things may have contributed. But to be honest it's a mystery. Why have the Dutch produced such wonderful painters? Why did you give jazz to the world?
As for influences. My father gave me Joyce when I was a child. I think he did it to put me off writing as it's not a decent job. My young mind thought the stories rather boring and simplistic. If he could do it and be considered pretty good, well then so could I. It took be a little while to understand why the stories are a masterpiece. Joyce gives a writer permission to try anything, and fail. Beckett too. And to paraphrase Mr. Beckett, to fail again, fail better. I love the Russians and the French. Tolstoy. Chekov. Flaubert. They're timeless. And then the Americans. Henry and William James. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Let's not name them by nationality. Let's identify them by the beauty of the soul rising off their pages.
I think the writers you mentioned are a good bet. William Trevor. He has the same brilliance as Chekov. The Irish playwright, Tom Murphy. He's astounding. Sebastian Barry. Exquisite. Marina Carr, another gifted playwright.
Mary E. Lyons: A better question might be, why aren't any women writers mentioned in the list? I don't want to address a question that excludes women, so I'll mention contemporary works. I adore Nuala O'Faolin's books and John Banville is quite possibly the best living fiction writer in the English-speaking world. For the past month, I've been wallowing in books by Irish-American writers. Irish America: Coming Into Clover and Crossing Highbridge, a memoir by Maureen Waters, are two recent favorites.
Maureen Dezell: Writers have been widely admired from the days of traveling bards in Ireland, which remains a place where books and writing matter. Catholic schools, for all their faults, emphasize the value of reading and writing. Scribes and others who make their living in the creative arts don't pay taxes in Ireland. Seamus Heaney is a celebrity in Dublin. All good writers --- Irish and otherwise --- have influenced the way I think about writing. I'd advise people to read all of the above, plus Synge, O'Casey, Edna O'Brien, John Banville, Colm Toibin, Martin McDonagh, Brian Friel...And let's not forget the Irish Americans: Eugene O'Neill, WIlliam Kennedy, Maureen Howard, Alice McDermott, Frank McCourt, etc.
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