A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS MCGONIGLE
ABOUT HIS FORTHCOMING NOVEL
ST.
PATRICK’S DAY: another day in
Dublin
OBVIOUSLY ST. PATRICK’S DAY: another day in Dublin, A NOVEL TO BE PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS, IS A CITY NOVEL IN THE TRADITION OF THOSE OTHER IRISH WRITERS OF CITY NOVELS: JOYCE, BECKETT, STUART, O’BRIEN. BUT YOU WERE NOT BORN IN DUBLIN, SO WHY THE CITY?
My grandparents were spit out of County Donegal, Ireland in
1889 at the age of 12 like so much possibly tubercular phlegm. They became inhabitants of Brooklyn and none
of their many children graduated from high school and all of them died of
alcoholism or the effects of alcohol. During
all my years of living in Ireland I have only gone twice to the
countryside. Jokingly I say pints don’t
grow on trees but I knew and know that the countryside is The Famine. To be Irish and to celebrate the countryside
is to celebrate a death of too many sorts but it also seems as thoughtless as a
Jewish person celebrating German culture in spite of…. Do I really need to say
more?
WHEN AND WHERE DID
THE ACTUAL ST. PATRICK’S DAY: another day
in Dublin BEGIN?
On the second floor of Patchogue High School in November,
1961 when I saw Melinda Brady and was unable to talk to her or introduce myself
to her. She was two years younger than
me and a sophomore to my being a senior.
I decided to write a short story about an American soldier in France who
dies in the trenches of WWI on the 6th of November 1918 with
thoughts of a Melinda Bradley in his head.
There was no response and so I wrote a second story but this time from
her viewpoint of going down to the train station in Indiana and discovering his
death.
THAT SEEMS LIKE A
VERY ROUNDABOUT WAY OF TALKING ABOUT…?
Is there any other way of so describing the origin of a
novel of the type that I have written and which I am obviously interested in? I finally did meet Melinda upon my return
from Dublin in June of 1965 and I went about with her in Patchogue and into the
city for the summer. But unlike a
certain type of Danish movie we are still alive with her living in Northern
Maine with her third husband and I am living in New York City with my third
wife.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS
HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR BOOK?
I arrived in Dublin in September, 1964 by way of the
over-night ferry from Glasgow. It had
been a rough crossing and I along with many others, including infants in their
mother’s arms, had thrown up. I tried to
read the first book I had bought in Europe—if Glasgow can be thought of as a
part of Europe—Samuel Beckett’s From an
Abandoned Work. I also bought
William Burroughs Dead Fingers Talk. The
four days in Glasgow, after stopping for a few days in Iceland, the painting of
the crucified Christ by Dali, the anarchists in George Square, a performance of
the Caucasian Chalk Circle in the
Citizens Theatre prepared me for the Dublin I walked that first morning from
the quays to along O’Connell Street up to a bed and breakfast down the street
from the Joycian school, Belvedere. And a few hours later the walk to the
Friends meeting rooms on Eustace Street, a street in which I would live years
later again on the top floor of a commercial building now torn down… and then still
another walk in the early afternoon across Stephen’s Green to talk with a
priest in Newman House about seeing after accommodation while at UCD and he
sent me to 5 Orwell Park where I would
spend that first year as a paying guest of the Opperman Family who ran/owned
Jurys Hotel. Breakfast was presented to me in my room every morning and a Sunday lunch was
provided. I was very fortunate when compared
to many who found themselves in “digs” with landladies who counted the slices
of toast and the minutes in the bath…
IS ALL OF THIS IN
YOUR BOOK?
It is not for me to destroy any sort of suspense the reader
might have when reading my book. It does
take place on St Patrick’s Day… in Dublin…
though in those years 1964-65 it had not acquired its subtitle, but more
about that a bit later. A day starting in a building that will be torn down and
ending in another building that will be torn down. It will be said that only this book remains
to remember when…
TELL US ABOUT
BULGARIA AND HOW IT IS PART OF YOUR BOOK , WHICH IS SET IN DUBLIN.
The close reader will notice towards the end of the book the
reproduction of a check to a Lilia McGonigle for 500,000 pounds from the poet
Derek Mahon and a headline FROM DUBLIN
TO BULGARIA. In the so-called time
of the novel none of the characters knew that one day both Ireland and Bulgaria
would find themselves in the same social club called the European
Community. Lilia arrived at Dun
Laoghaire by ferry with me, with the recognized narrator of the novel after
coming on the overnight boat train from London and before that Paris, Venice
and Sofia… having spent Easter in the French countryside. We were met by Eugene
Lambe who presented Lilia with her first grapefruit. Derek Mahon was in near
attendance and later would write a poem about Eugene being in heaven though my
own last memory of Eugene was our eating oysters together in Longacre in London
where he was held hostage in a attic room by a small sculpture by David Hockney
and the complete edition of My Past and
Thoughts: The Memoirs of Akexander Herzen … however that is not in ST
PATRICK’S DAY: another day in Dublin. Lilia and the narrator of the novel
happily did not have to avail themselves of the generosity of the poet and the
check was saved as reminder of a more lasting treasure we were fortunate to
find in Dublin.
COULD YOU EXPLAIN THE
SUBTITLE OF THE BOOK?
Happily. It was supplied by Anna Saar who is my third and
last wife. Her first language is Estonian and the close reader will have
noticed the dedication in the book which is in the Estonian language and I am
sure recourse to a handy Irish-Estonian Dictionary will reveal the nature of
the precisely worded delight contained in that aspect of the book… a detail
even close readers will appreciate as such is not included in a certain book by
Mr. James Joyce and thus a significant difference between the two books.
HOW DID ST. PATRICK’S DAY another day in Dublin ARRIVE
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS IN SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, AND SOON THE
WORLD AS THE RECIPIENT OF THE NOTRE DAME REVIEW PRIZE?
That’s a long question and deserves a short answer. The angels
were on duty.
THE LONG ANSWER: The editor of the Notre Dame Review, William O’Rourke had the good well-developed
taste to publish two pieces of other books by me: “Then” a prepared slide from Just
Like That, a book from the Sixties of the last century, that was
involved in part with Anthony Burgess, and “The Beginning of a Traditional
Novel for the Twenty-First Century,” a book I am still composing that revolves
around the painter John “Jack” Wesley who is not yet dead. Mr. O’Rourke had heard that ST.
PATRICK’S DAY, which had not acquired its subtitle, was available—I
will not go into the immediate reason for it being available as it is all too
sordid to retell in such a pleasant circumstance as this. Mr. O’Rourke read the
manuscript very quickly in the late summer of 2014 and the prize was awarded
and here it is. We share an affection
for the writings of Edward Dahlberg and of course take consolation in Dahlberg’s
wise words, “It takes a long time to understand nothing.”
AND THE FUTURE?
Having even a more limited ability to predict the future
than the Weatherman or should I say Weatherperson though Weatherwoman sounds
more interesting and I have never met a woman who was not far more accurate in
her predictions than…. But that is… I
hope the book will find a few readers who are interested in reading a book they
have not read many more times before. Of
course Notre Dame seems an ideal place for such a book but then there is also
Ireland itself with its native delight in begrudgery and I hope to see the book
appear in Estonian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Swedish, Icelandic, Turkish, Russian…
of course I worry about what people in Patchogue will think of it and the
shades that inhabit Grosvenor Square, in Dublin, and it should be remembered
that the duck counters are there as they always are in St Stephen’s Green since
they are counting for all of us…
BUT SURELY AFTER THE
FUTURE COMES THE PAST?
Yes, a 12 year old boy is always being put on a boat for
America having walked from Malin Head, Co. Donegal to… he will give up his name
Patrick in Brooklyn and take on Hugh which he will pass to Hugh Jr., my father,
whose dying will be financing the opening scene in ST. PATRICK’S DAY: another day in
Dublin…
ANY WARNINGS?
All the sexualities are present in these pages, all the
versions of intoxication, all of the versions of reading and being read, all
the ways of… not dying… just yet.
Book Information:
St.
Patrick's Day
another
day in Dublin
Thomas
McGonigle
Notre
Dame Review Book Prize
ISBN
978-0-268-03538-9
240
pages
$27.00
hardback
Pub date: August
19, 2016
University of Notre
Dame Press
Thomas McGonigle is
available for interviews.
Contact: Kathryn
Pitts, Marketing Manager, University of Notre Dame Press, e: pitts.5@nd.edu, p: 574.631.3267
