Will Irish Literature Survive Prosperity?

“Nobody writes like the Irish,” my father, a native Dubliner, says whenever we discuss literature. Naming great Irish writers of the past and present--Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Synge, Heaney--he identifies the sufferings, personal and cultural, that have fueled the work. He sighs when he comes to Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” to add an afterthought: “Sure, nobody suffers like the Irish.”

Suffering and Irish writing, he intimates, are hopelessly intertwined.

His is not an uncommon position, given how forcefully the tragic history of Ireland has made itself known. The small island nation has produced an array of literary jewels quite disproportionate to the size and population of the country. This gift is a topic of continuing note to scholars and critics, as is the literature’s often-troubled subject matter. Famine, foreign occupation, the ravages of alcoholism, poverty, the loss of kinfolk to emigration, together with the entrenched guilt of a doctrinal national religion--this is the stuff out of which Irish literature, even amid the comic strain, has traditionally been wrought.

That Irish writers have turned tragedy into literature is noteworthy; still, many cultures could make similar claims. What’s fascinating to consider, however, is what’s going to happen now that there’s so little to whinge about.

At the moment, Ireland is undergoing an identity crisis. The country known for having raised suffering to an art form is experiencing the unthinkable: good times. The powerful Irish economy, dubbed the Celtic Tiger, is the envy of other European nations; industry is thriving and domestic production is soaring. At the same time, the Catholic Church’s centuries-long grasp is weakening, freeing many from idiosyncratic Irish guilt, especially regarding sex.

The peace process is finally taking hold in the north, interest in Gaelic language and the cultural history of Ireland are burgeoning, and repatriation is occurring at an extraordinary rate, as is a wholly new phenomenon--immigration to Ireland. For the first time in its ragged, tormented history, Ireland is the cool place to be.

But if Irish writers have risen to such prominence as a result of their cultural suffering, what will become of the literature now that mini-malls are sprouting on the landscape and the country’s self-image undergoes a new-money face lift? Conversations with many in the literary field find that, for now at least, the new Ireland isn’t hurting its writers but may be altering their tone. Irish writing, particularly in novels, has taken on grittier urban themes but nonetheless is enjoying more popularity in America than ever. The voices of Irish women and playwrights are also being heard in greater numbers.

So the question is complex, one that seems to open layers of responses, yet no definitive answer. Perspective on the issue shifts noticeably between critics and authors, and shifts again depending on the side of the Atlantic from which the response originates. While U.S. scholars speak of a continuing renaissance in Irish literature, for instance, the Irish themselves, both writers and critics, see the current day in less glowing, if more constant, terms.

“There’s a whole different way of viewing Irish life as it’s lived at the moment,” says writer Dermot Healy (“The Bend for Home,” Little Brown, 1997). The effects of the robust economy, he says, are being reflected in the nation’s art--and not always in a positive light. There has already been a falling off in architecture, he says, a visual landscape being ruined, and many writers are becoming quite cynical of the Celtic Tiger.

Healy’s most recent novel, “Sudden Times” (Harcourt, 1999), may be illustrative of how literature is reflecting these changes. The novel has at its core the age-old dilemmas of crippling poverty, the influence of drugs and alcohol, and of Irish young men searching for work outside the country’s shores, as well as the dynamics of sin and guilt. As such, the tale treads familiar territory, but it does so in a way that is less than traditional. Relying on the poetry of daily language and short, snappy chapters to build a narrative mosaic, Healy creates a novel that is part Joyce, part Beckett, yet his contemporary take mixes irony and sincerity to produce something new altogether.

New Breed of Irish Writers Has Emerged

“In fiction, poetry and criticism, not to mention history and biography, it does seem that a new breed of Irish writers is emerging, or has emerged,” says John Banville, who is in a unique position to consider these questions. As the longtime (though now former) literary editor of the Irish Times, he is himself an iconic Irish novelist. His earlier work “The Book of Evidence” (Warner Books, 1991), which tells the story of a seemingly random murder in the form of a confession, was short-listed for the Booker Award, and his newest novel, “Eclipse,” has just been released by Knopf in the U.S. Reading his layered, dense prose, filled with stunning imagery and a slow-moving interior plot, one might reasonably consider Banville a member of the Old Guard of Irish literature, specializing in incredible turns of phrases and a pressurized use of language.

“Irish writing has tended toward the pastoral mode, even when the work was set in the city,” says Banville. “But now that Ireland has ceased to be an agrarian society, writers are having to come to grips with urban themes.” It is in this shift that he notes a clear deterioration of style.

“The new generation of writers in their 30s and 40s has for the most part given up the struggle with style, that struggle which was so productive for Joyce, Yeats and Beckett.” Urban themes require a more direct, fast-paced, impressionistic treatment, and work produced in this manner, he fears, “may prove transient--though it might be that newer writers are content to write for the present and let posterity take care of itself. If this is the case, it is a very significant shift.”

Dermot McEvoy, an editor with Publishers Weekly, says Irish writing is huge in the American market. “There’s more Irish writing being published this spring than ever, from cultural studies to novels, to historical novels to histories--even fantasy,” McEvoy explains. “Across every genre it’s big; much more so than even 10 years ago. We call this time of year the ‘green season’ because the Irish books are coming out fast and furious.”

Yet Banville, in his mid-50s, says that the classification “Irish” is “no longer the potent term that it used to be, not for writers, at least, though Irishness continues to fascinate foreign reviewers and critics.” From his perspective, “one looks in vain” in contemporary Irish writing for a true star. “There are a great many writers here, and much fine work is being produced. Certainly Irish writing is now more energetic, but there is a distinction to be made between energy and creativity. Or perhaps,” he muses, “I am simply showing my age.” Regardless, Banville says it’ll be 20 or 30 years before we can properly judge the contemporary work.

Current Irish writing is taking on broader subject matter--a reflection, perhaps, of the freedom rendered by prosperity and privilege. In a class on contemporary Irish literature taught by John Menaghan, director of the Irish Studies Program at Loyola Marymount, a glance at recent short stories reveals not a litany of poverty and oppression-filled narratives, but an ever-widening range of personal rather than cultural subjects, including suicide, sexually transmitted diseases, homosexuality, infidelity, as well as the story of a woman who doesn’t want to care for her grandchildren, “which in itself is a challenge to the image of the Irish mother,” Menaghan says. “It’s not exactly what you think of as typically Irish subject choices.”

Jamie O’Neill, a 39-year-old Irish writer, is riding the wave of excitement for Irish novels. A British magazine reported that O’Neill’s just been paid the highest-ever advance in the United Kingdom for an Irish novel. His forthcoming “At Swim, Two Boys” (Simon & Schuster) combines the old with the new in a story of homosexual love set during the time of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.

Recently released novels by Irish writers often weave in elements of the traditional to tell stories that are utterly unexpected. Patrick McCabe, for example, the author of “The Butcher Boy” (Doubleday, 1994), has a new novel out, “Emerald Germs of Ireland” (HarperCollins), that sets a tale of matricide and homicidal anger in the cozy world of pubs and small-town busybody neighbors. And Anne Enright’s novel of late last year, “What Are You Like?” (Atlantic Monthly Press), explores a young woman’s search for a missing part of herself that takes her across the Atlantic to New York City. Unlike the emigrant tales of old, with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground and a tear wiped away for having survived the journey to the New World, Enright presents the main character as a tourist, a woman whose home port will always be Ireland.

Likewise, Irish Times columnist Nuala O’Faolain stunned many with her “Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoirs of a Dublin Woman” (Henry Holt), a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. In it, she told of her struggles as an unmarried, intellectual woman in a male-dominated and church-led society and candidly explored issues of sex. O’Faolain continues to mine this rich territory in her newly released first novel, “My Dream of You” (Riverhead ), a sophisticated urban woman’s investigation into the phenomenon of passion.

The rules of engagement in terms of Irish literature have clearly been expanded so the new voices--particularly those of women--can now be heard. Poetry by Irish women is exploding, says Dillion Johnston, a visiting lecturer on James Joyce at Washington University in St. Louis and the director of Wake Forest University Press, the major publisher of Irish poets in the U.S. “Women poets are now emerging from some neglect,” he says, naming Eavan Boland, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill as a few of the female poets gaining long-deserved prominence.

And Broadway, says Menaghan, has become the new British colony, in part because of the success of Irish playwrights.

Country Is at a Crossroads

A curse or a blessing? one might ask of the crossroads at which this country finds itself. Certainly, no one would wish for a continuation of suffering and the silencing of female voices, but the harsher effects of the 21st century upon a nation that has, in some ways, maintained a rich, indigenous cultural history for centuries, is not altogether pretty. Is it possible we’re witnessing the final whimpering of a culture about to die?

“Not to worry,” says Healy, who takes the long view. “Sure, it’s only a couple of years since Seamus Heaney won the Nobel. There are more Irish novelists now than ever.” Though Healy agrees that prosperity may be causing an upheaval in the arts, he sees this kind of cultural dissatisfaction as nothing new. “Joyce left Ireland under similar circumstances and never came back.” Healy explains, going on to quote Joyce: “ ‘I go elsewhere to write the conscience of my race.’ Beckett the same. To a certain extent, that may be happening now. People will turn on this apparent wealth. It’s already happening. A lot of literature now has become less than celebratory.”

Menaghan thinks that after this spurt of creativity we may be in for a period of quietness from Irish writers, a lull similar to the period after Yeats and Joyce until the renewed violence of the Troubles in 1968 coincided with the more recent upsurge in literature. But that after that lull, watch out.

“Ireland has changed, arguably forever,” says Menaghan. “Still, the country’s had two periods of renaissance in its literature over the past 100, 150 years. One renaissance would have been phenomenal. Two is the sign of a tradition.”