Living Belfast: Representations of the City in Glenn Patterson's Novels
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Living Belfast: Representations of the City in Glenn Patterson’s Novels D I S S E R T A T I O N zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.) eingereicht an der Philosophischen Fakultät II der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin von Veronika Schmideder Die Disputation hat stattgefunden am 21. August 2012 Präsident der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Prof. Dr. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz Dekanin der Philosophischen Fakultät II Prof. Dr. Helga Schwalm Gutachterinnen/Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Gesa Stedman 2. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schlaeger Table of Contents Introduction: Glenn Patterson’s Belfast .................................................................. 1 Spatial Perspectives ............................................................................................... 18 Theories of the Spatial Turn: Soja and Massey ................................................. 21 Spatiality in Literature ....................................................................................... 29 Spatiality in Northern Irish Literature ............................................................... 34 Representations of Belfast: A Threefold Analysis ................................................ 47 The Material Perspective ................................................................................... 47 Streets ............................................................................................................ 48 Houses ........................................................................................................... 58 Urban Environment ....................................................................................... 66 Borders, Interfaces, Segregated Spaces ......................................................... 72 Conclusion: The Material Perspective ........................................................... 81 The Social Perspective ...................................................................................... 83 Linguistic Markers ......................................................................................... 84 Multiple Perspectives .................................................................................... 88 Relationships and Narratives ......................................................................... 99 City Scenes .................................................................................................. 110 Memory and Remembrance ........................................................................ 114 From Binarism to Inclusion ......................................................................... 121 Gender, Sexuality, Ethnicity ........................................................................ 131 Conclusion: The Social Perspective ............................................................ 136 The Temporal Perspective ............................................................................... 138 Material Changes ......................................................................................... 140 Social Changes ............................................................................................ 162 Urban History .............................................................................................. 176 Conclusion: The Temporal Perspective ....................................................... 183 Conclusion: A Threefold Analysis .................................................................. 184 Comparative Perspectives ................................................................................... 185 Brian Moore’s The Emperor of Ice-Cream ..................................................... 187 Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street ......................................................... 200 David Park’s The Truth Commissioner ........................................................... 211 Conclusion: Comparative Perspectives ........................................................... 226 Conclusion: Glenn Patterson’s Belfast ................................................................ 228 Works Cited ......................................................................................................... 244 Introduction: Glenn Patterson’s Belfast The city always speaks, and with many voices. It has been a powerful image in literature since literature began. (Pike ix) Burton Pike addresses a longstanding fascination with urbanity, with its vibrancy and multiplicity that also form the heart of this thesis. It deals with the perception of city space in general and looks at the literary representation of one city in particular. Belfast is home to just over a quarter of a million people, and one of them is Glenn Patterson. The novelist’s prose revolves around his hometown. He considers the material, social and historical dimensions of the urban, establishing thus a powerful and multivoiced image of Belfast, a city that has suffered from monolithic representation for a long time. In an international context the numbers game makes Belfast a comparatively small and insignificant urban centre. In a more localized context however, Belfast constitutes the second largest city on the island of Ireland. It is home to a national legislative body and capital of the country of Northern Ireland. This political role and the civil unrest connected to it are the reasons Belfast has become disproportionally famous to a global audience over the course of the last forty years. The civil war that has claimed more than 3000 lives has dominated international media coverage of the city and shaped a one-sided image of it. The Troubles, as this civil war is named euphemistically but to common acceptance, erupted in the late 1960s against a background of a century-long history of social discord between members of the Catholic and Protestant faiths.1 What initially began as a protest for civil rights, as Catholics of Northern Ireland, inspired by the developments in the United States of America in the 1960s, took to the streets to demand better housing, equal job opportunities and the end of gerrymandering, soon erupted into violent fighting.2 In Belfast riots and street fighting became 1 While used as a categorisation faith has actually very little to do with the conflict that has been inscribed with political views and social issues. Patterson scatters comments on this matter throughout his prose. 2 As this thesis is a literary analysis first and foremost, I would like to keep the historical background relatively brief. With Making Sense of the Troubles David McKittrick and David McVea have written one of many books that deals with the topic in great detail and gives background information on the Troubles. 1 common occurrences and international media coverage projected pictures of a city at war. Working-class districts in particular were barricaded. Police and army moved in the streets heavily armed. So-called peace lines were erected at interfaces, cutting neighbourhoods off from each other. Bombing campaigns in the 1970s and 80s destroyed not only many lives but also many buildings in the city. Others were adorned with politically loaded murals. For a long time the Troubles constituted the main news out of Belfast, and representations of the city, not only journalistic but also literary ones, focused on this aspect of it. “Belfast was only big because Belfast was bad” (McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street 13). But Belfast also shares universal urban characteristics with cities across the world. They are all complex and heterogeneous, alive with their inhabitants and changing with them. One narrative alone does not suffice to tell their stories. Jean- François Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition defines postmodernity via its incredulity towards the grand narratives, and the city as a postmodern space mirrors this incredulity. One story is not enough to describe a city with many voices. Rather it is established through an abundance of micronarratives. The Troubles constitute only one of Belfast’s stories, but they do not suffice to represent the city. Glenn Patterson’s prose has been instrumental in establishing Belfast as a postmodern complexity in Northern Irish literature. In his seven novels to date, his journalistic writing and one book of nonfiction he has established himself as an inherently urban writer on the one hand and a modern- day chronicler of Belfast on the other hand. His texts provide kaleidoscopic views of the city in which he emphasises its multiplicity. This thesis delineates how Glenn Patterson constructs the city threefold, on a material, social and historical level. In connecting these three dimensions, he establishes Belfast as a multifaceted complex. In highlighting their flexibility, he addresses the city’s propensity for change and emphasises this as one of its most important characteristics. Patterson’s image of Belfast does not aim for completeness, but shows the city as a permanently developing network of interconnections. In Northern Irish literature in general the (still) prevailing trope of the Troubles tends to impose an image of stagnation and paralysis onto Belfast, projecting a one- dimensional picture of the city. Patterson’s emphases however counter the idea of 2 one all-encompassing narrative. Laura Pelaschiar describes his texts as a “macro- container of stories” (“The City as Text” 184), in which many voices, enhanced by multi-perspective narration, democratically coexist. In introducing new perspectives, Patterson continuously and repeatedly deconstructs binary oppositions