THE SECRET READING (part II)

A comparison between Reading in the Dark (Seamus Deane, 1996) and The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry, 2008)

The individual, society and Nature. BCN

I missed you terribly, you my sweet little bloggie :) I've been busy with exams; fortunately, the process was over yesterday, from 8am to 7pm jailed in the examination building. Disgusting, humiliating experience. Maybe I should blog about it on its own post, because I do not want to tarnish my gorgeous Secret Reading with ugly thoughts. External circumstances, as always: the exams were rather easy but, as always, the civil servants are a shame to society... because they are society. In any case, Sebastian Barry, I missed you terribly too. I have to kindly thank you for taking my circumstances into account and not having sent your signal for me to start On Canaan's Side yet (I take special pride in consuming my favorite artists' latest work some months after their publication... patience always pays off :)). So this is the continuation of The Secret Reading I had to split in two in the previous post. Let's briefly remember where we were at. I ended the post with a quote by Barry's Roseanne in which she deconstructs the binary society/individual. I think –I interpret those lines as that– an individual always has the last word when in a battle against society; the individual always wins, at least morally, that's what matters. Now we are ready to go back to The Secret Reading... 

Another common ground the main characters of Reading in the Dark and The Secret Scripture share as narrators is that they are outsiders. For one reason or other (remember that my blog is spoiler-free...wink-wink!), they are in the margins of society. Roseanne's marginalisation is progressive, or rather, intermittent; Deane's is probably inherent since he is born, living in a foreign country, in occupied territory with discriminatory tendencies towards the Irish:

DERRY. April 2012

“This was border country (...) Even when no one could be seen, we felt we were being watched”(...) At the other end, the Free State began (D: 49)

But politics and history aside, he also feels displaced from within his own private sphere, his family. Both internal and external marginal forces intervene when society sees his family as a “marked”one (D:27). Both authors seem to illustrate in their respective novels that “[p]eople in small places make big mistakes. Not bigger than the mistakes of other people. But that there is less room for big mistakes in small places.” (D:212). All this factors stimulate Deane's quest for identity, first to collect all the jigsaw pieces, then to put them together. In my opinion, one of the most delicious features of both novels is the love of nature. The celebration of Mother Nature as the rejection of religion. More clearly in Deane's, but Roseanne –in spite of her strong faith in a Christian God– is no less devoted to Goddess Earth; she summarises paganism is these lines: 

“The human animal began as a mere wriggling thing in the ancient seas, struggling out onto land with many regrets. That is what brings us so full of longing to the sea.” (B:144)

The Giant's Causeway...
Finn McCool, the Fianna and the Grianan.

The sea is life-giving. The fetus in its mother's womb is like a fish in the sea. There is an innate, an ancient –to use Barry's adjective– connection of human beings to the sea. Additionally, a 75%-80% of our body is made of water. Water calls for water. Nature is female because it gives birth to beings. Her blood is the water. This fertility is found in female human beings and birth-giving involves fluids, the fetus in the womb. Barry is a sublime feminist. Okay, I have to be careful with this word. It is so annoyingly relative! Depending on the era you are talking about or from, it can mean one thing or another. I mean feminist in the sense that he analyses, and ultimately condenms, society as a construct made by man for man in which women are subjected to the whims of man. There is no clearer example than Roseanne's case. To further sustain my argument, her heroine is referred in the novel as “a force of nature”(B:17). As far as Deane is concerned, his intense bound with Nature is brought forward by the Grianan. “[T]he sleeping warriors of the legendary Fianna”, waiting to be called upon. And look here, another exciting implication. The Fianna are buried in green Irish soil, they are Éire, the ancient Celtic nation, they are Nature, they are Ireland. Same as Barry, Deane takes us back to pre-civilization, to something more primitive, more ancient, wiser... Nature. THE SEA. Notice that Deane also treats 'woman' and 'water' as synonyms! 

Mosaic @ Garden of Remembrance DUBLIN

"When I shouted, my voice ricocheted all around me and then vanished. I had never known such blackness. I could hear the wind, or maybe it was the far-off sea. That was the breathing Fianna. I could smell the heather and the gorse tinting the air, that was the Druid spells. I could hear the underground waters whispering; that was the women sighing".(D:57)

Seamus Heaney @ Temple Bar, DUBLIN.

Deane's mother is described in the novel as having “a touch of the other world about her” and also let me tell you that Deane is another marvelous feminist. In the chapter that gives name to the novel, “Reading in the Dark”(19), the narrator reveals that the first novel he ever read was a book from her mother called “The Shan Van Vocht, a phonetic rendering of an Irish phrase meaning The Poor Old Woman, a traditional name for Ireland” (D:19). As you can see, the comparison between Nature and Woman expands and we have a triangle thanks to the Ireland implication; traditionally, all the greatest poets have developed the image of Ireland as a woman. Even Seamus Heaney keeps drawing on this tradition, in his poem“Act of Union”, describing this union with Great Britain as a forced marriage, etc. I love the implications that Deane arouses here, listen: in her mother's book, the son finds his mother's maiden name handwritten there. His reaction is the following: "They seemed strange to me, as though they represented someone she was before she was the mother I knew" (D:19). This intense triangle awakens all the more interesting ideas in my head, like the notion that probably Deane's mother can be read/works as a symbol of Ireland.The exploitation and violation of Ireland by the British governments and forces as the ill-treating of woman by the patriarchal society expected of officially Catholic Ireland. The Emerald Isle, Éire, the virgin green soil, Mother Ireland, Mother Earth, Goddess Earth. The Poor Old Woman, after the forced marriage with the British tyrant (“And I am still imperially / Male, leaving you with pain” S. Heaney). Deane's mother's maiden name, pre-society. See? An Irish woman of her times was a double victim: of Irish history, and of British too. A sublime novel never wears out. It never wears you out either. Never exhausted, always new things to learn and explore! To sum this paragraph up, Deane and Barry are amazing feminists, to achieve that they turn to Nature. Out of civilization. Out of religion. Out of politics. 

Reflections: Garden of Remembrance, DUBLIN.

To end this list of features that Deane's Reading in the Dark and Barry's The Secret Scripture share, let me add a shallow one: the front covers of my copies. They are the ones in the picture I posted in the previous post. Misty mysterious emotions were aroused when I first laid my hands on them. Reading in the Dark: the old worn-out picture in a broken-glass frame speaks directly to you. About broken families? About conflicted childhoods? Cracking Ireland? If the first time you see the cover you know that Seamus Deane is from Derry and was a direct witness of The Troubles, the image of the broken glass will awaken even more implications. As if all that shallow beauty wasn't enough, on the back-cover we have some lines by Seamus Heaney himself, another Derry-man. According to him, the novel is “(...)a swift, masterful transformation of family griefs and political violence into something at once rhapsodic and heartbreaking”. These lines confirm your initial suspicions as regards your novel expectations based on the book´s outward design. Nevertheless, you could never do justice to this novel in words, not even a Nobel Prize like Mr Heaney himself :) You've got to feel it. As regards the cover of The Secret Scripture, since I hate repeating myself, I will kindly redirect you towards a previous post in which you can read me talk about its overwhelming beauty.

Union Jacks clouding the Irish sky... (BELFAST, Sept 2011)

Having reviewed all the points in common, it is time to draw the portrait of each author individually. I have to confess that despite the long list of similarities, their profiles as Irish authors of fiction could not be more disparate. Despite the generalizations I have previously discussed, and the labels I have created to draw Deane and Barry together, each of them is unique in his own way. With such charismatic similarities, the differences, as you can imagine, are abysmal. Deane, as the dedicated literary critic he is, gives top priority to form. For Barry, as the crafty creator of delicate, stimulating and often problematic narratives that he is, plot takes precedence. Unfortunately, I think The Secret Scripture, as far as formalistic devices is concerned, is not very original, nor successful. Maybe if I had read it in isolation, without having read Deane's novel first, I would have not paid much attention to this aspect, as usual. To tell you the truth, I'm more of a lover of content than of form! Nevertheless, I have to excuse Mr Barry for that :) Maybe I am getting biased towards him since he is haunting me since Dublin, you know :) but a tale of the proportions of The Secret Scripture is difficult to contain in a kind of narrative other than the diary form. I think the author took his time and dedication to decide why this form and not another. I suspect Barry must have thought that the content had such an intense life of its own that if he paid too much attention to form originality, the content might lose gorgeous weight or, eventually, crumble. In sum, Roseanne had to speak to the reader directly:

“Dear reader! Dear reader, if you are gentle and good, I wish I could clasp your hand. I wish – all manner of impossible things. Although I do not have you, I have other things. There are moments when I am pierced through by an inexplicable joy, as if, in having nothing, I have the world” (B 24)

DALKEY, Dublin.

Imagine The Secret Scripture in a Reading in the Dark form. Very risky. Besides, we have to bear in mind that, arguably, Barry's goal was to re-write Roseanne:

"We were driving through Sligo, and my mother pointed out a hut and told me that was where my great uncle's first wife had lived before being put into a lunatic asylum by the family. She knew nothing more, except that she was beautiful. I once heard my grandfather say that she was no good. That's what survives and the rumours of her beauty. She was nameless, fateless, unknown. I felt I was almost duty-bound as a novelist to reclaim her and, indeed, remake her." (Interview: The Guardian)

Ballintoy, Northern Ireland.

I love this explanation. Barry's project is to set Roseanne's micro-narrative against the backdrop of the Irish metanarrative of the 1920s and 1930s. The structure of his novel reminded me of Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is very similar, same style: juxtaposation of diaries. Obviously the final product tastes a bit artificial. I would say that in Dracula it gets more real, it is more reasonable. Nonetheless you cannot escape from that synthetic flavour. But in The Secret Scripture, the form lacks freshness, it is too traditional. In any case, the author must have chosen the journal form to present Roseanne's story without filters. Besides, it was the only way of presenting the conclusion of the story, when all ends meet. A bit Dickensian, isn't it? But life is like that, I bear witness!

Approaching Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark formalistically, I have to take my hat off, to solemnly bow, to kneel down before him. It is fresh. So minimalistic but meaningful. So straightforward. Every chapter takes the name of a word or a phrase that condensates its mood or theme. Some of the chapters are so short... I suspect that's a sweet little trick from Deane to get us totally hooked on the novel. As a matter of fact, it is necessary that he irremediably creates the atmosphere for our textual desire on him... his novel is full of gaps –remember those gaps we discussed in a previous post? The novel works by insinuations, impressions, hunches, impulses, suspicions, premonitions... the non-spoken rather than what it is actually said. It is no coincidence that the novel opens with the following sentence:

“On the stairs, there was a clear, plain silence.” (D:5)

Bloody Sunday Memorial, DERRY.

Because of that, it is important to be constant in your reading. It is a very short novel with very short chapters. It is better to read it in a week. So you can remember all the little details of the beginning at the end. Also, because there is a lot of guesswork expected from the reader. But everything is very well summarized at the end, just in case. I have the feeling that Mr Deane is more of a reader than of a writer and that's why he took so much dedication to dream up that particular form for his novel, for the story of his life. The short titles and chapters also allow him to jump forward and skip years. We all have years in which nothing really happens. That's realism. The novel's peculiar form is a triumph because you do not notice the span of months or years in between chapter and chapter as something detrimental to the reading, to its understanding. On the contrary, it gives dynamism, it keeps it flowing, despite of the gaps in years. To tell the truth, the structure of the novel is very simple, but a supreme victory. Also, his supreme gift for words melts you. Again, very simple style but able to take you just anywhere. In spite of all the violence, family secrets and other dramas, our narrator filters the reality with dreamy eyes. The mentions and descriptions of the Grianan are remarkably beautiful for instance. Reading in the Dark is an excellent novel: the victorious form is accompanied by a beautiful-but-sad plot that makes you close the book with a deep sigh, yearning for more. (Then it is when you decided to initiate The Secret Scripture and you have not stopped sighing ever since :)) Before the end, just let me add: more points in common, although weaker, see “rats” and the bombing of Belfast during WWII.

Garden of Remembrance, DUBLIN.

This post is an adaptation of an e-mail I once wrote for the lovely person who gave me these two books as Christmas gifts. I have let it flow, so, obviously, the thing has overflown again, which means there will be more Deane and Barry posts –this time, separately– but maybe in the coming months, not next week or the following. Wow, it it unbelievable that despite the length of this post I got the feeling I have talked about each novel quite superficially. See, that is why I admire Deane so much, he has the divine quality of saying so much in so little space. So poetic (note to myself: check out his poetry!).This blog is not just about literature. But I admit that is the subject I write best about. So it is time to practice and develop other fields! As a matter of fact, even if this is a literary post, it talks about life, as you have seen. Life is literature; literature is life.

“The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death, it ends.”

 (Opening lines from Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture)

THANKS FOR READING ♥

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• BARRY, Sebastian. The Secret Scripture. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2009
• DEANE, Seamus. Reading in the Dark. London: Vintage UK, Random House, 1997.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE SECRET READING

A comparison between Reading in the Dark (Seamus Deane, 1996) and The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry, 2008)

I am afraid I am not done with Mr Sebastian Barry yet. Besides, I am enjoying keeping him Mr Mysterious, so I predict many Barry for months! Yay! I always leave my research on him at the point I am most yearning for more. I love that feeling. It requires self-control but great pleasure too, after the waiting is over. He has such a lengthy and intense career but here I am, tasting him by little spoonfuls. Since I started this blog a couple of weeks ago, I have only talked about literature and about Ireland – as central issues. But this blog is completely theme-opened, because it is a reflection of/on myself week after week. So it could be said that you can easily track where I am at by peeping into my little blog!...“No one even knows I have a story.” (B:4). Okay, now that you have seen this strange combination of signs between the brackets, it is time to explain my quoting system for this blog. Basically, I simplify all the formalities and just put the initial of the author's surname and after the two dots the page on my copy of the novel. At the end of the post you will find the details of each edition. So, if you find a "B" it means the quote is extracted from The Secret Scripture, as it is the case now; but a "D" before the two dots would mean Reading in the Dark.

Phoenix Park, Dublin.

Anyway, so this post could undoubtedly be said to be the continuation of the previous one. As a matter of fact, that one turned out to be a mere introduction for what was going to come next, this post maybe? Although I never dive into a new post without a neat, handwritten outline of the topic I am going to develop, once I begin typing, the thing gets really crazy! I can already tell by my short experience here so far! The explanation is – sorry if I repeat myself!– I want to keep it real! Needless to say, when dealing with literature it is essential to know your theory and cultural history but all those big words are just empty shells if you are not able, or not wanting to, assimilate them into your own inner discourse, your own narrative. That is, talking about these concepts so that anyone can understand it; that is, no academic training is required here.

Temple Bar, Dublin.

So, as I was saying, my initial purpose was to take a closer look into The Secret Scripture and I also promised to make a Barry/Deane comparison. So, please, if you are so kind as to allow me a couple of minutes so I can take a deep breath, maybe I would find myself as courageous as to dare going into such thrilling issues! Listen, my imaginary world up there in my little head is the loveliest thing in the world. Everything makes sense, perfect sense! But when I go down to the world we share, it all crumbles, so I have to leave it behind. This blog is an approximation, an effort to put that loveliest_world_ever forward so I can share it with you. So I can make the two of them meet...my two worlds – the private and the public – and also my world and yours. But, bear in mind...

"(...)I, being poor, have only my dreams; 

I have spread my dreams under your feet; 
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

So, here we go again... back to Sligo! Oh, look, even the geography is favourable and encourages me to tackle the issue with a little help from Seamus Deane. Sligo must be just a couple of hours away from Derry. Even though I hate repeating myself, in this case I prefer that than leaving a textual gap in these lines you are reading. So first just let me make a little summary of why Deane and Barry are so tightly together in my private imagery. I received Reading in the Dark and The Secret Scripture as presents for Christmas. I read one book following the other. First, Deane; then, Barry. During the unforgettable Barry reading process, I filled my book with many “DEANE” pencil marks. The similarities were of many kinds: plot, characters, themes, historical references. 

Dalkey, Dublin.

But there were some contrasting characteristics too. I confess: I have not checked out any academic information or googled this possible Deane/Barry comparison-contrast. As I said in the previous post, I am of the opinion that one works best when free. I am basing my writing essentially on my reading of the texts, on the notes I made of them, on my knowledge of literature in general, of Irish literature specifically. The final magic touch: my wacky romantic imagination :) I believe any writer of fiction gives you a novel, the baton, and now it is your turn to continue the race. Because all novels are unfinished. If finished, it is rubbish, not a novel. We are constantly fighting to find words. The right words. The wrong ones. For many different situations. Transcendental or trivial. To fill in the gaps. The others' and ours. We are surrounded by them. Gaps of knowledge, gaps of memory, gaps of emotion. But probably the greatest one –of which most people are unaware of although we are the victims of it every day– is the insurmountable gap that exists between soul and language, mind and language, the pre-linguistic and language. Nature and Man (the masculine gender, of course. Nature is female, Artifact is Man, to tame the first. Good! A new topic for a future post!).

Temple Bar, Dublin.

The novel, as the extension of life it is, is of course no more gapless! The correct way of reading a novel is filling in these gaps. Moreover, the way you fill in these gaps defines you. So, at the end of the day, it is the novel which reads you. Needless to say, the filler of those holes will necessarily be different from person to person. Every single human being is a filter of reality, and as such, the way we approach a particular novel would result in as many readings as readers. That is why we celebrate literature! Literature puts human beings at the same level, we are all filters of reality. A novel provides the raw materials for us to a.) dream b.) be critical c.) change our life d.) … change the world! It empowers us. When we read a novel we produce a reading, a meaning that will be as equal and great as any other's. Because everything in life depends on perspective. A person who is sitting on the first row at the cinema does not see the screen in the same way as a person who is on the back row on the furthest left. Life works like that, too. As I said somewhere in this blog before, a sublime novel marks the difference when it never leaves you alone. Double meaning here! Alright, it is food for the mind and soul, there is no space for desolation but also it keeps coming back to you. It haunts you. It reminds you of forgotten obligations. Of uncomfortable thoughts. Of celebrating the greatest pleasures of life. 

Derry.

So all this long talk just to say that I am responsible for the contents exposed in this blog, they are creations of my own humble genius, and that if someone does not agree, or is bothered by them, deeming them absurd conclusions because s/he thinks the author did not intend that, I would just say that real History is made up of histories, a lesson these two novels do not cease to remind us. Even though my excessive imagination can be clearly seen to be at work in my writing, the raw material my rambling is based upon is the written word on the books. What then comes into play is the filler of the gaps: I provide an interpretation of what is not said –deliberately or unconsciously– and why. To read between the lines, to put it clearly. But remember that at the end of the day I will be writing about myself, not about Reading in the Dark and The Secret Scripture, because I just cannot come out of my skin. Every single word I utter is conditioned by my personal experience. That is another great lesson to extract from these two novels. So, do you wanna read me? :)

Ballintoy, Co Antrim.

To begin with, it is better to state the obvious first. Both Seamus Deane (Derry, 1940) and Sebastian Barry (Dublin, 1955) are Irish authors dealing with an Irish theme in the two novels we are discussing here, Reading in the Dark and The Secret Scripture, respectively. Both also aim at rewriting Irish history. If you allow me the comparison, this process is very Faulknerian. For instance, in William Faulkner's Light in August the author implies that to make sense of the present we inexorably need to go back to the breaking up of the country, the American Civil War. I am not saying American and Irish histories are similar, but what I would really dare to say is that the history of the Western (=Christian) World is. As a matter of fact, if you need to make sense of the disastrous and painful current situation of Spain, you also have to go back to a point in our history where the country suffered the agony of being split in two. And I guess the list of examples could go on and on. Despite the fact that both Deane and Barry locate the first pages of the novel in the present of the narrator who is talking, the core of the story, the conflict in their lives, makes the narrators travel in time back to the 1920's. The Treaty. Division. Curiously enough, Barry, writing within and about the Republic (or Free State), chooses a narrator from the Protestant side of the conflict, whereas Deane's narrator is an Irish boy from a Catholic area of Derry, outside the Republic.

Michael Collins, Merrion Sq, Dublin.

This peculiarity aside, both novels work as a sharp critique on and a denunciation of the institution of the Irish Catholic Church. Both narrators have in common that they belong to a “marked family”. We will be dealing with this later, so for a moment let's go back to straight facts. Seamus Deane was born 15 years before Sebastian Barry and the novels discussed here are also separated by a span of a bit more than a decade, 12 years. However, as you know, I think they are inextricably related. They are similar but they differ in their personalities. Each author has its own literary profile and voice. That is what makes these two novels so interesting, specially reading them together. They provide a different perspective on the same period and national preoccupation. Ultimately, both novels reach the same conclusions: the celebration of the little (hi)stories that form History. There is not a History with a big capital letter, but (hi)stories. Furthermore, Deane and Barry seem to agree that memory and silence shape human lives. Note the sharp contrast between silence and noise in this extract from Reading in the Dark:

Free Derry

 “Now, as the war in the neighbourhood intensified, they both sat there in their weakness, entrapped in the noise from outside and in the propaganda noise of the television inside” (D: 231)

Here the narrator describes his home during a visit from Belfast where he attends university. Silence and (silenced) memory have dominated his parents' pasts, before their marriage and after. They remain in that silence despite, or because of, the horrifying turmoil of The Troubles outside and the brainwashing uproar supplied by the media inside. To go from the present to the past we need memory. For this reason, Deane and Barry make memory a central concern in their respective novels. To penetrate into memory, both authors explore such aspects as “(...) versions of memory, the absolute fascist certainty of memory, the bullying oppression of memory” reaching the conclusion that, after all, memory is “a type of indiscretion of the mind.” (B: 185). The narrator in Reading in the Dark collects through the novel the broken pieces of memory their family let slip. The novel is a quest for identity. He has to reconstruct the family story, to make the unspoken speak. To fill in the gaps. To read between the lines.

Derry

“Some of the things I remember I don't really remember. I've just been told about them so now I feel I remember them, and want to the more because it is so important for others to forget them.” (D:225)

I think the most heartbreaking part we find in Deane's text is for the reader to be witness of the growing apart of mother and son. From the moment it starts you know it is just going to get worse before it gets any better. So, that is why the narrator's quest is to put all the jigsaw pieces together. The family's secret is getting her mother further and further away from him. The mother knows that he knows something so she just avoids him. He knows she is ignoring him. All that process takes place in silence. The child has to fill in the gaps. Meanwhile, the mother is tormented by memory, by stories, by histories, by History.

“But she didn't like me for knowing it (...) I hated him not knowing. But only my mother could tell him. No one else. Was it her way of loving him, not telling him? It was my way of loving them both, not telling either. But knowing what I did separated me from them both.” (D: 187)

Free Derry.

As regards Barry, he has two narrators, Roseanne and Dr Grene. The way they talk to us is through their diaries so we have here again the theme of memory. Their current private lives are marked by guilt, because of the past. Is there a way of changing the past at all? Well, maybe there is. Talking about it. Or better yet... writing about it! Deane and Barry give us private (hi)story that sheds light on the most obscure period of Irish modern history. The trickiness of memory!

"A choice, an election, was to be made between what actually happened and what I imagined, what I had learned, what I kept hearing." (D: 182)

Both writers make silence an indispensable characteristic of memory, as I have already mentioned before. They are practically synonyms. Two sides of the same coin, but never antonyms, that's for sure. The bleeding heart at the core of both narratives turns out to be “[t]he mystery of human silence and the efficacy of a withdrawal from the task of questioning” (B: 309). According to Dr Grene, Roseanne “has helped herself, she has spoken to, listened to, herself. It is a victory” (B:290)

Bogside, Derry.

I think the main point that made me stop and think about the possible similarities between Reading in the Dark and The Secret Scripture is the mother figure. Both Deane's (okay, the narrator is unnamed but it is known that it is autobiographical...) and Roseanne's mothers suffer seriously from mental health. In contrast, or as a consequence, the fathers act motherly. Okay, I'll dissect that in a second, but let's go back to the mothers first. I guess it is not coincidental that they are so alike. They are a critique on the claustrophobic conditions for women in Ireland during the time discussed in the novels. A woman could only have one life, the married one, and at home. Deane's mother ends up devoured by the past (“That's what punishment does; makes you remember everything” D:193) and guilt and regret and present frustrations, stasis (Doris Lessing's “To Room Nineteen” anyone?). Roseanne's mother's fate is no better. It is worse, to tell the truth. Her daughter, our heroine –because she has her own flaws, she is not perfect, that's why she is human– unfortunately, is of no help, quite the contrary. Her story might probably be sadder than Roseanne's. In short, the mother figure comes to epitomize women as victims of a male-oriented and misogynistic Ireland obsessively controlled by the demented Catholic Church. History has proved no better for this institution. In my opinion, Barry –since his text is more recent– really wanted to talk in his novel about the Catholic Church and its bloody role in the most important chapters of Irish history. I mean, in 2008 and still today in 2012 we keep on hearing about the most serious/most heinous crimes committed by this institution with (practically) no condemnation by Rome. It was a topic that was significant, relevant to the context of the publication of the novel . Again, present and past are the same thing. We will discuss more about that in the Nature Vs. Society segment okay? :) 

GPO, Dublin.

But what about the fathers? Men in any Christian society are also manipulated, of course. They do not choose to be patriarchal, they are brainwashed since childhood, the same as many women still nowadays accept they are dependent on men and enslaved by the beauty standards set forth by the media. I found Roseanne's father very motherly. Her mother is practically no mother at all, but the father is more a mother than a father (here meaning “father” as defined by Christian standards, same for “mother”). Her father is a central element in the development of the story, an – the – essential piece of her own heart too.

Derry

As regards Deane, the thread of narrative that softens your heartbreak a bit –from witnessing the abysmal distance between mother and son– is the bond father-son, the father figure as a whole. He is not the prototype of the Catholic father figure. He takes care of his wife when she is getting ill and at no point condemns her. Both narratives ultimately came out to be father narratives; both stories are family stories in which the father is an essential piece for them to make sense of themselves, to find their own private –family– and public –society– identity. However, in spite of the fact that these two fathers are inscribed into a Christian faith –Protestant for Roseanne, Catholic for Deane– their roles as fathers are free from the rules of their churches. They are not patriarchal: they love their sons and that's enough guide for a father to be one. As a matter of fact, we do not have many –or unfiltered– information on Roseanne's parents, so I am just analysing them by Roseanne's words. Within the context Deane and Barry are locating their narratives it is very important to analyse  how religion shaped both private and public lives. For these two stories, it proves to be a force that rather than enlighten your life, ruins it. Politics in Ireland are unfortunately inextricably related to religion. As regards Derry, Deane declares that “[p]olitics destroyed people's lives in this place.”(D: 204). For Roseanne, life works in a similar fashion: “Sligo made me and Sligo undid me” (B:4). However, Barry goes further away and his beautifully wise Roseanne reaches the conclusion that if that was to be true, 

“then I should have given up much sooner than I did being made or undone by human towns and looked to myself alone. (…) I was young I thought others were the authors of my fortune or misfortune; I did not know that a person could hold up a wall made of imaginary bricks and mortars against the horrors and cruel dark tricks of time that assails us, and be the author therefore of themselves.(B:4).

TO BE CONTINUED...the original text has been split in two.

"Some moments stay with you for a lifetime"

Phoenix Park.

As I said in the previous post, I was already planning my April visit to Ireland in November or so. Hence, I received a thick lovely package of Irish novels as a Christmas gift. Half of them were well-known classics. When I opened the parcels and saw the covers, I could easily recognize the names, the faces, even predict the themes. But two of them were a real mystery to me! They were contemporary, needless to say. OK, at this point I have to confess I am – or have been – more of a reader of classics than of contemporary fiction. I am working to change this. It is essential to possess a well-grounded base; otherwise you cannot walk steadily on the contemporary Earth, because nothing will make sense. But if you do not pay enough attention to your surroundings, your contemporaries, you will be lost, too. But there are so many classics, and some of them so thick, and they sound so contemporary as well that I always end up caught up in a whirlwind within a labyrinth of melancholic trees from which I do not want to escape. Yeah, escapism, that's the word! But once outside the labyrinth I realise that labeling is always stupid. A book is a book.

Christmas 2011

However, I admit the first time I visited Ireland – last year – I was not able to recognize the name of any single Irish contemporary fiction author. Well, only Neil Jordan, but for his movies. That was another great discovery... Jordan the novelist! Anyway, that was very frustrating. But now that I think of it, maybe a contemporary novel can change your life more profoundly than a classic one. Its challenge is bigger. It has to both carry the weight of the past – the tradition – and provide feedback on the coexisting world, helping you find your place in the here and now. I don't know. I am just guessing. Having said that, let's mention the name of these previously mysterious men: Seamus Deane and Sebastian Barry. Okay, the first maybe 75% of a mystery – I knew him as a literary critic – but from the second one I only kept the surname when I started to read his novel. Silly me kept calling him “Stephen”. I deliberately did not want to google him, nor look at his picture, nor read his biography. You always work best when you are free. Thanks to my effort of keeping him Mr Mystery, my re-visit to Dublin some weeks ago was a bit uncanny! 

My room.

Well! The introduction took me longer than expected. And I even had to cut it down in two to add a lovely picture so that the paragraph is more reader-friendly. The reader, always the reader! After many years of academic claustrophobia, just let me announce to you that the introduction is over and that it is not necessary to include here a thesis. In a very Deane-esque style, I'll define with a word or phrase each paragraph. 

SPOILER-FREE - I have one essential rule before entering the reading process of any novel: both the back-cover or/and the introduction(s), if any, are to be read after the whole process is finished. You cannot imagine how many novels have lost part of its dazzling weight just because I accidentally read these sections first. Damn it! So, I have to say that I was so proud of myself as regards The Secret Scripture! It was just me and the text. With no intertexts whatsoever, no Barry bio, no reviews, no plot summary... no filters whatsoever. You know, the first time you pick up Ulysses, you inevitably know about Nora, about Lucia, about his exile, about his religious views. I think sometimes when dealing with authors like Joyce or Wilde you wish you knew less about their private lives. Prejudices increasing; imagination diminishing, no matter how much the author does to stimulate it. I just cannot stand critics and readers who are paranoid about finding the real-life parallelism to every single line of the novel. Having said that, if I had to choose one word to describe, not the novel, but my whole The Secret Scripture experience, I would choose *magic*. Roseanne more than once describes herself as a cailleach. 

Trees in Belfast.

"(…) as always not an easy task for an ancient cailleach like myself. A cailleach is the old crone of stories, the wise woman and sometimes a kind of a witch" (102) 

WH Smith, Dublin Airport.

I believe she is – she haunts me ever since. But also, her literary father does, Mr Barry. I received the book for Christmas. I chose to read it in February. In a couple of weeks. I chose to chew it slowly. Nevertheless, in April, that is, a couple of weeks ago, I realised the reading process was not finished at all. The final surprise was travelling to Dublin and find the author's name everywhere. In big, thick capital letters. Bestseller, Irish author of the month. I was so naïve, I thought that because of his unique, suave style, his nostalgic themes, he was a rather 'underground' writer, or rather an academic one, with his selected circle of readers. I am sorry, I was an irresponsible reader maybe. But as I've said before, I want to go through any book as naked as possible. But that was a happy surprise for me. How could I have forgotten, Dubliners know their literature! That was not Barcelona! Ha! Irish people read... Spaniards, do not (studies say so, not me!) After reading the novel I was so enchanted by it, I was so satisfied I needed no googling or external reviews. I knew the novel was not so new, but I did not bother to check out if he had new ones. I was already busy reading GB Shaw, if I remember correctly. 

DART to Sandycove.

But I have been googling him often since I returned to Barcelona and I am so proud of him! :) Also, I just found out that the novel I kept seeing advertised in train stations and bookshops during my trip to Dublin came out in summer 2011....And I've just guessed by looking closely at one of my pictures that the ads were for the e-book and paperback edition – the one I got, ignorant as I was of the existence of the hardcover one! :) At the beginning of this paragraph I said I realised in Dublin that The Secret Scripture process wasn't finished. And that is when a (sublime) novel marks the difference. Its reading process never finishes. Keeps coming back to you. Anytime, anywhere. Also, it reads you. The textual desire for it never ends. Makes you come back to it any day any time and read a random quote. Even re-read the whole text. Haunts you, you are so charmed by it your daily life won't look as dull anymore. The text transcends the printed word and gets tattooed on your soul. Because Roseanne exists. Maybe because she is you. Or you are hers. So, needless to say, this review has no spoilers. Maybe just some hints that will sparkle your interest in case you have not read the novel yet. But that's all. I promise! 

Connolly Station

MYSTERY - As a general rule, I believe you cannot tell a book by its cover. But with this case in particular I allowed myself to be superficial. It was love at first sight. I saw the cover of the novel and I decided that was the last book I was going to read, out of the six I received. I wanted Roseanne's evading look to speak to me during the waiting. She received a preferential place in the bookshelf of my desk. There are many editions, of course, as the bestseller it is, but the lovely person who gave me this book chose the cover carefully. As you can see here, the match of deep red with the gold letters is a most beautiful combination. Adds a certain vintage aura to the book. Then, you have that haunting picture of the profile of a mysterious woman with melancholic eyes, hair nicely tied into a bun, and a simple necklace hanging down her neck. So evocative! But of what? Textual desire working at its best! Well, maybe I lied. I said before that the reading process had involved just me and the text, no external stuff. But there was another presence there. That poignant picture. There was that woman in the cover I modelled to be young Roseanne. I am totally against covers which show a clear picture of any face. Isn't that intimidating? Unless it is a picture of the real writer, or a real, historical person the book is dealing with, of course. But in this case, the picture leaves a lot to the imagination. As I've said, it is evocative, it is suggestive of many things which although heart-breaking, we are brave enough to go through. You can tell all that much by its cover. The neck, the bun, the eyes. Enchanting simplicity. Life. Goddess Earth. 

EASON - I was on Connolly Station and when reaching the platform of the DARTs to Sandycove, one of my travelling companions pointed me to Roseanne! There she was at the top of a big rolling ad of Barry's latest book, On Canaan's Side. Our heroine was there to remind people of her real existence and support her creator in his new literary adventure. Lovely. Ah, sure, here I need to mention it was my Roseanne, the one with the golden letters and the bun! How awesome is that? You have to understand, we do not get that in Spain. The ads you normally see on the transportation services are of movies like Battleship or Twilight. Or best-sellers like the Millenium or Harry Potter sagas. To sum up, in Spain good literature is the antonym of best-seller and the other way around! So, I thank Irish readers for making it possible for me to be haunted by Sebastian Barry during my last visit to Dublin. Speaking of Sligo – well, actually I haven't said anything about it yet, so maybe I should mention that this is where the novel takes place. And isn't Sligo the Yeats country? 

“Swift haunts me; he is always just around the next corner” W. B Yeats 

DART to Sandycove

Well, well, Mr Barry, I can just say the same thing about you! :). OK, so the next day: same station, different direction. Connolly to Howth. Barry on every single station. Oh, dear! Can this be real? Once again, there is the profile of an enigmatic female figure looking away from us with the following description: Some moments stay with you for a lifetime. FASCINATING. Back to Dublin in the afternoon I went straight off to O'Connell Street and there Eason made the rest. I was happy :) 

IMPROVISATION - Sebastian Barry is a spellbinding author. When I saw the cover it was love at first sight. When I read the book I became Roseanne. And since back from Dublin I cannot stop thinking about him. On Canaan's Side is now in the place that once belonged to Roseanne. Waiting, looking away from me. I still do not know her name. I know Mr Barry will send me his signal when he thinks I am ready. After all, he guarded me in my last visit to Ireland :) Oh, what to do, what to do? Shall this post just be an introduction to the post I had on mind? I wanted to talk about certain aspects of the novel, and make a comparison between Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and Barry's The Secret Scripture. I want this blog to be dynamic and with a strong oral quality. No limits or restrictions. Roseanne is a bit like that in her diary, ain't she? :) So I have to cut it down here. Off to daily life. Oh well.