Word: mcgahern
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...DIED. JOHN MCGAHERN, 71, Irish novelist whose early assaults on Ireland's religious and sexual hypocrisy were long shunned at home; in Dublin. After his 1965 novel The Dark was banned and he was forced out of his teaching job, McGahern moved abroad, living in England, France and the U.S. It was only after he resettled in his native Leitrim in the early 1970s that Ireland began to cherish his work, recognizing itself in his quiet portraits of a country riven by the pressures of the modern world...
...McGahern is one of Ireland’s most prominent contemporary writers, claiming an accompanying slew of awards and visiting fellowships. Most of his novels unfold in Irish villages, the sort of quiet rural places where one generation stays and tends the farm while the children leave to make a life in a faraway city. Don’t expect quaintness though: the villages are as modern-minded as Dublin or London. There is a lot of “post-” to the small lakeside village of By the Lake: post-World War II, post-migration, post...
...overarching presence of the lake sets the rhythm of the human year. The way McGahern describes the changing lights, the colors of the foliage, the life of the animals and the demands of planting and harvest is intuition distilled to intensity—a mellow intensity, so to speak. His careful attention to the way people more in their environment is evident even in the brief appearance of a London visitor: “He washed, walked around the lake, read a newspaper. The way he crackled the pages as he read created a space around the rocking chair...
...McGahern has created a vivid portrait of a peaceful corner of a demanding world. An uncomfortable conversation between Ruttledge and the leader of the local IRA chapter reveals the conflict between devoting oneself to the community and confronting the outside world. “Ruttledge knew that as he was neither a follower nor a leader he must look useless or worse than useless to this man of commitment and action. As far as Jimmy Joe was concerned he might as well be listening to the birds like an eejit on the far side of the lake...
...John McGahern...