Journal of the Short Story in English Les Cahiers de la nouvelle 53 | Autumn 2009 The Short Stories of John MacGahern Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/969 ISSN : 1969-6108 Éditeur Presses universitaires de Rennes Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 décembre 2009 ISSN : 0294-04442 Référence électronique Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009, « The Short Stories of John MacGahern » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2011, consulté le 03 décembre 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/jsse/969 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 3 décembre 2020. © All rights reserved 1 SOMMAIRE Foreword Linda Collinge-Germain et Emmanuel Vernadakis Preface John McGahern Introduction – The art of Under-Exposure:“Out of the Depths, into the Depths” Claude Maisonnat Reinvented, reimagined and somehow dislocated Fergus Fahey Reading John McGahern's "Love of the world" a fistful of images Liliane Louvel Homesickness in John McGahern's short stories "Wheels" and "A slip-up" Ellen McWilliams Love and solitary enjoyment in "my love, my umbrella": some of John McGahern's uses of Dubliners Pascal Bataillard "Fellows like yourself": fathers in John McGahern's short stories" Michael L. Storey “Absence does not cast a shadow”: yeats's shadowy presence in McGahern's “The wine breath” Bertrand Cardin Legends of the fall: John McGahern's "Christmas" and "The creamery manager" Bernice Schrank Violence and ontological doubt in "The stoat" Danine Farquharson Art, biography, and philosophy three aspects of John McGahern's short fiction as exemplified by "Gold watch", "Like all other men", and "The white boat" Michael C. Prusse "The road away becomes the road back": prodigal sons in the short stories of John McGahern Margaret Lasch Carroll "Getting the knack of the chains": the issue of transmission in "Crossing the line" Claude Maisonnat "The conversion of William Kirkwood" Arthur Broomfield "Along the edges": along the edges of meaning Claire Majola-Leblond "Korea" by John McGahern Douglas Cowie Evaluation in "High ground": from ethics to aesthetics Vanina Jobert-Martini "Grave of the images of dead passions and their days": "The country funeral" as McGahern's poetic tombeau Josiane Paccaud-Huguet Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009 2 Bibliography John MacGahern: A Bibliography Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009 3 Foreword Linda Collinge-Germain et Emmanuel Vernadakis 1 John McGahern, to whom the present issue of the Journal of the Short Story in English is devoted, has been a part of the Journal’s history since the first publication of a critical article on the story “Christmas” in the Autumn 1985 issue. In March 2000 the author himself, accompanied by his wife Madeline, was guest of honor at the Research Center’s Conference on the Irish and Irish-American Short Story held at Belmont University in Nashville and organized by John Paine and Corinne Dale, American editors of the Journal. The Angers Research group all travelled to Nashville for the Conference together with Liliane Louvel from the University of Poitiers, a specialist of John McGahern’s short stories and a personal friend of the writer. John McGahern attended all the presentations given during the conference with the exception of the five papers concerning his own stories for, as he put it, he never felt comfortable when his works were praised. All members of the research group were impressed by his kindness and generosity, by his easy manner and his genuine friendliness, including his quite unexpected and unprecedented invitation of all members of the group to a Nashville restaurant at the conclusion of the conference. 2 After this first encounter, John McGahern and his wife Madeline accepted the Journal’s invitation to be guests of honor at the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the JSSE in May 2003. During this visit he recorded “Korea” and passages from “Parachutes.” These recordings, along with the interview conducted during that same visit, appear in the Special 20th anniversary issue of the Journal (JSSE n° 41, Autumn 2003), dedicated to John McGahern. Meals together at Ben Forkner’s, Linda Collinge’s and at a traditional Loire Valley “guinguette” were additional occasions to strengthen ties between the McGaherns and the members of the Angers Research team. His passage among us was memorable. 3 The remarkable voice recorded that spring continued to reverberate during the Short Story Conference held in Cork in 2008. The participants in the Round Table discussion chaired by Charles May were led consistently to comment upon McGahern’s work and eventually unanimously agreed that John McGahern had given a particular resonating Irish voice to the modern Irish short story. Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009 4 4 We were very pleased to entrust Claude Maisonnat, professor of English Literature at the University of Lyon II, with the guest editorship of this Special McGahern Short Story Issue. As a specialist of the short story and having published several articles on John McGahern, he was eminently qualified to undertake this task. We thank him for so willingly devoting his time to this project and offer you the fruits of his labor. AUTEURS EMMANUEL VERNADAKIS Organisers of the Conference and Guest-Editors of this issue Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009 5 Preface John McGahern PREFACE 1 1 These stories grew in the mind and in the many workings of the material, but often began from as little as the sound of a chainsaw working in the evening, an overheard conversation about the price of cattle, thistledown floating by the open doors of bars on Grafton Street on a warm autumn day, an old gold watch spilling out of a sheet where it had been hidden and forgotten about for years. Others began as different stories, only to be replaced by something completely unforeseen at the beginning of the work. The most difficult were drawn directly from life. Unless they were reinvented, reimagined, and somehow dislocated from their origins, they never seemed to work. The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance. 2 Two such stories were ‘The Key’ and ‘The Stoat’. Over the years I rewrote them several times, but was never satisfied but still would not let them go. I was too attached to the material. I stubbornly refused to obey the primary rule that if a writer finds himself too fond of a rhythm or an image or phrase, or even a long passage, he should get rid of it. When I came to write Memoir, I saw immediately that the central parts of both ‘The Key’ and ‘The Stoat’ were essential to the description of the life we lived with my father in the barracks, from which they should never have been lifted. No matter what violences or dislocations were attempted, obdurately what they were. 3 Among its many other obligations fiction has to be believable. Life does have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens. Fiction has to be true to a central vision of life. 4 ‘Creatures of the Earth’ and ‘Love of the World’ are new stories. Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009 6 Introduction1 – The art of Under- Exposure:“Out of the Depths, into the Depths”2 Claude Maisonnat 1 What better way is there to introduce a collection of essays devoted to the short stories of John McGahern than to quote his own words about what he was looking for when he read: “The story was still important, but I had read so many stories that I knew now that all stories are essentially the same story in the same way as they are different: they reflect the laws of life in both its sameness and its endless variations. I now searched out those books that acted like mirrors. What they reflected was dangerously close to my own life and the society that brought me up, as well as asserting their own differences and uniqueness.”3 2 This insight into the arcanes of his own literary creation is all the more valuable to us as it is one of the rare occasions on which he ventured to cover the ground of aesthetic principles. Indeed, in his Memoir (2005) John McGahern proves quite reluctant to mention the subject at all so that, concerning his artistic creed, apart from the rare reviews of books by Irish writers4that he consented to write, we only have a few interviews at our disposal, but most important of all three very short reflexive pieces on his textual practice. The first one is his well-known essay on the image, the second a short preface written on the occasion of the publication of his revised version of The Leavetaking (1974/1984) and the third the short preface reprinted here.5 Brevity seems to be the soul of his ars poetica, but in his case brevity does not mean simplification or superficiality, quite the opposite in fact. 3 When he wrote the passage quoted above John McGahern did not specifically have in mind his short stories but books in general, yet the fact remains that his commentary on writing applies to both genres of which he was a self-conscious practitioner. If some critics believe that his fame will rest on his novels alone, the present collection of essays is based on the premise that there is no major difference apart from matters of space and concentration between the two genres, because they both rely on modalities Journal of the Short Story in English, 53 | Autumn 2009 7 of writing that emphasise poeticity over narrativity.