A variety of lives
Gills Irish Lives Series
By various contributors
Published by Gill and McMillan
This is a collection of seven short biographies of famous
Irishmen - Connolly, Joyce, Wilde, O'Casey, Parnell, O'Connell
and De Valera - which look very pretty sitting together on the
bookshelf. The content however, is of more variable quality; many
are reprints of material which is some twenty years old and which
have been superseded by better and more recent studies. Space
dictates that I discuss only the best and worst of them.
Ruth Dudley Edwards's effort on James Connolly falls into the
latter category, most notably for its sheer dullness, although
given her subject perhaps one should consider this something of
an achievement. Making Connolly's life boring reading is not an
easy task. As with Pearse, Dudley Edwards's biographical
technique is to search desperately for dirt, and on failing to
find any, resort to her ``OK, granted he was a good man, so he was
only a republican because he was desperate/deluded/naive'' line of
argument.
She has also picked up some bad habits from her new-found
friends; like some of them, she seems to believe that poverty is
a moral failing and, irritatingly asks us to judge moral standing
according to material possession, rather than concentrating on
the more obvious connections between Connolly's material
circumstances and his politics. She wastes a lot of time in such
a short book grubbing around in the inconsequential minutiae of
Connolly's personal finances which, like Clinton's sex life, are
of much less interest and importance than his political words and
deeds.
In contrast, the accounts of both Oscar Wilde and James Joyce are
entirely absorbing. Wilde was a man of extremes and lived his
life in a similar vein. Richard Pine shows him in all his
complexity and literary brilliance, explores his public and
private struggles with his sexuality and religion, and reveals
him as a natural and tender father. He discusses Wilde's often
shocking non-literary activities with a sympathetic and
non-judgmental narrative style, whilst nevertheless resisting the
urge to claim him as little more than a cleverer-than-usual gay
icon.
James Joyce, perhaps rather more difficult both as a man and
writer, is superbly captured by Peter Costello. My memories of
having to read Joyce are not pleasant; his evocation of a
Catholic education in Portrait of the Artist reminded me a little
too much of my own miserable convent days, and his perverse
fascination with the disgusting made the achingly fashionable
Ulysses an intensely difficult and uncomfortable read, as it is
fully meant to be. My copy of Finnegan's Wake remains in a
pristine and unopened state. Peter Costello's primary achievement
is to largley mitigate these feelings and to demonstrate very
precisely the development of Joyce's writing in the context of
his own life - the greatest paradox of which was that, as someone
who left Ireland and the church never to return and professing
indifference to both, he wrote about almost nothing else.
A quick mention here also for Paul Bew's (not my favourite
academic, it has to be said) life of Parnell. Bew is perhaps
ideally suited for understanding that peculiar and now
near-extinct species known as the Anglo-Irish and he provides a
crisp and readable account of Parnell's rise and unjust fall.
Presumably the series editor does not believe that Irish history
includes women and there are other curious omissions - Tone,
Pearse and Collins for a start. Perhaps this series is not
complete as yet, so I shall wait with interest to see who, if
anybody, comes next. Still, they look nice.
By Fern Lane
Drawing conclusions
A Cartoon History of Anglo-Irish Relations 1798-1998
By Roy Douglas, Liam Harte and Jim O'Hara.
Published by The Blackstaff Press
Price £14.99
There's this guy pushing a big rock up a hill. When he reaches
the summit it rolls back down and he has to begin again. His name
is Sisyphus and he is carrying out his Greek mythological
punishment. It's an image which any cartoonist with a deadline
and a ticking clock will cheerfully use. In the index of this
excellent book there are five references to Sisyphus, one to the
late Rowel Friers. Robert Peel, Gladstone, Lloyd George are all
robed out as Sisyphus. Even Ian Knox, one of the best of today's
cartoonists, has used the Sisyphus myth to depict John Hume.
Occasionally a cartoonist will produce a piece of work that
enlightens like a flashlight switched on in a darkened room. Not
very often. Usually the cartoonist's own prejudices and the
readiness to grasp the most convenient cliche win out. A cartoon
in the Irish Times (1994) shows Gerry Adams being refused, by
John Hume, a seat at the talks table until he has washed his
hands which are, you've guessed it, blood-stained. The easy use
of cliched imagery and a woeful misunderstanding of what is going
on is not the exception. It's the rule. Perhaps it's the
prevalence of this kind of image which causes the bizarre
journalistic obsession with handshakes.
In a few years a cartoon can become wildly incomprehensible. The
picture that once replaced a thousand words now needs a thousand
words to explain it. Fortunately the words in this book are both
readable and informative. The erudition (and lack of outrageous
political bias) by the authors is quite impressive. The mass of
cartoons through which they have had to trawl is evident from the
breadth of the selection here. Unlike most cartoonists they did
not grab the first image that came to hand and they have provided
an interesting examination of the social history of this island.
The task which they set themselves must occasionally have seemed
impossible. There is only one word to describe it. Sisyphean.
By Cormac
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)