Pat Jourdan A Question and Answer Session with the author of A Small Inheritance

Irish Short Story Month-Year III

March 1 to March 31

A Reading Life Special Event

A Q and A With Pat Jourdan

author of A Small Inheritance

Not long ago I had the privilege of reading Pat Jourdan's wonderful novel, A Small Inheritance.  I am deeply honored that she has agreed to answer a few questions and I thank her for her very well thought out and quite interesting responses.

Author Bio  

Pat Jourdan grew up in Liverpool and has lived in Ireland for several years. Trained as a painter at Liverpool College of Art, she has had several exhibitions in both countries. Her paintings feature on the covers of her books, as well as those of Orbis, Crannog and Microbe. In 2000 an exhibition of poetry and paintings, The Life Class, was held at the Davis Gallery, Capel St. Dublin.

Pat's latest book, Citizeness is a collection of poems that begins with Madame Defarge sitting knitting and continues with protest movements from there onwards. We cover the movements of troops through Shannon Airport while an aid worker drinks her coffee and end with a rendition plane drifting over an exclusive London flat. As you read tomorrow's papers,if you want to be "On the Run with the Mad Idealists," this is the collection you need to take with you. You can buy Citizeness via the online shopping facility below.

• Finding Out, is set in an Irish seaside town. A group of outsiders think that learning the language will make a difference - and it does. They become increasingly puzzled and suspicious of each other as political changes surround them. Local people - Matt the Busker, Liam the entrepreneur,Mrs McLoughlin the embroidery specialist, carry on as normal. Each of the newcomers has a secret to keep and only a year to spend before leaving. You can buy Finding Out by clicking on the link on the right.
• Rainy Pavements is a collection of short stories published in March 2008. An Easter-egg factory goes on strike, a beautiful evening turns murderous, a couple teeter on separation - surfaces are broken and routine disappears. You can buy Rainy Pavements by clicking on the link on the right.
• A collection of poetry, The Cast-Iron Shore is available from www.erbacce-press.com, the Liverpool publishers. Price £4 plus postage, ISBN 978-0-9555754-9-5.
• Winner of the Veterans Awareness Prize, 2007 Norwich for the poem That Far Away Look.
• Working as tutor for the Spring Online poetry course of the University of the Third Age, 2009.
• Pat Jourdan won second prize in the Michael McLaverty Short Story Award 2006.
• Average Sunday Afternoon, (Poetry Monthly Press, www.poetry-monthly.co.uk, price £5.50. ISBN 1-905126-29-8) a collection of short stories features people who break rules and test the boundaries of habit, faith, or even television. Humour flits through the unsettling events, from an invasion by cows, crime in Dublin, death in a dustbin, to village legends and the everyday visions of a mad girl.
• Pat Jourdan was voted the best female poet of 2004 by Purple Patch Magazine, with her collection Turpentine being chosen as one of the best individual collections. She is also mentioned in Ian McEwan's Saturday as a 'little-known but gifted poet of the Liverpool School...'.
• Turpentine, a collection of poems (Motet Press 2004, price £6.99, ISBN 0-9542399-1-1), with cover painting by the author.
• The Bedsit , a new edition from Motet Press 2002, illustrated endpapers.

You can learn more about her work on her webpage.

You can purchase a Kindle or paperback  edition of A Small Inheritance through Amazon

1.   Who are some of the contemporary short story writers you most admire?   Who would you say are the three best ever if obligated to answer?   Best woman?


Contemporary short story writers - Lorrie Moore,ZZ Packer,Tobias Wolff; but not their entire works.
     Three best ever- Michael McLaverty, Maeve Kelly, Anton Chekov
     Best woman writer - Janet Frame (1924 - 2004, New Zealand)

2.  I have read lots of Indian and American short stories in addition to Irish, and alcohol plays a much bigger part in the Irish stories. How should an outsider take this and what does it say about Irish culture?

It rains and rains and rains. You are driven indoors and into oneself. There is then an unfulfilled yearning that alcohol can fulfill.Also, with no contraception allowed, the family of ten children meant that the men went off to the pub to avoid the consequences of their own sexuality, i.e.constant pregnancies.

3. Declan Kiberd has said the dominant theme of modern Irish literature is that of the weak or missing father?  Do you think he is right and how does this, if it does, reveal itself in your work?

 The father weak or missing? Don't really agree with this, apart from the above. Work often meant going abroad,often poverty wages and too many mouths to feed. An agricultural economy (no great industrial centres) meant less union power, less banding together.

4.  When did you start writing?

 I started  writing well before the age of 4. My mother was in a TB sanatorium, so I wrote to her.Continued through Art School and after.

5.  You are also a painter.   Do you see the literary or visual art form as somehow primary?

 I think painting is far more transcendent, 'other' and can reach the spiritual dimension easier than words.


6.  I sometimes wonder why such a disproportionate amount of literature of the world, that is regarded as great, is written in the colder temperate zones rather than in the tropics. How big a factor do you think the Irish weather is in shaping the literary output of its writers? I cannot imagine The Brothers Karamazov being written on a tropical island, for example.

 Irish weather as a factor?As 2 above, it rains and it is mostly damp..The person is fighting against implacable elements -the entire Atlantic Ocean, as is obvious from the ragged eastern coast of Ireland, bitten away by weather.But when the summer comes, a form of hysteria takes place.Look at the frenzy of Irish dancing - all that pent-up energy, but all contained, the upper body not moving, only the pounding feet.

7.   Tell is a bit about how your painting impacts your writing?

  Painting informing my writing? Ironically, it gives greater difficulty in describing exteriors, as I don't see people, places, scenes, rooms, clothes, in words - more as precise colours and shapes.

8.  Who is the first modern Irish short story writer?

 First modern Irish short story writer? Probably it's between Frank O'Connor and Sean O'Faolain.

9.  Why have the Irish produced such a disproportionate to their population number of great writers?


 Why so many Irish writers? The quick,lateral-thinking Irish mind.They are not some variation of the British, but as distinct as, say Italians or Spanish and just as passionate. The delight in talking non-stop - the only luxury or power that a poverty-struck and oppressed population can have....then, they learned to write and all the words started to hit the paper.

10.   (Ok this may seem like a silly question but I pose it anyway-do you believe in Fairies?-this quote from Declan Kiberd sort of explains why I am asking this:

"One 1916 veteran recalled, in old age, his youthful conviction that the rebellion would “put an end to the rule of the fairies in Ireland”. In this it was notably unsuccessful: during the 1920s, a young student named Samuel Beckett reported seeing a fairy-man in the New Square of Trinity College Dublin; and two decades later a Galway woman, when asked by an American anthropologist whether she really believed in the “little people”, replied with terse sophistication: “I do not, sir – but they’re there."

  Believing in fairies? Of course. They would not have been invented. Plus they are in worldwide cultures. With the destruction/tarring over of country places, there is less possibility for their appearance. To be cold and logical though, they are the only way to explain the many discrepancies in country life.

11.  Do you think the very large amount of remains from neolithic periods (the highest in the world) in Ireland has shaped in the literature and psyche of the country?
   

  Neolithic remains - well, it helps to see tangible proof of a country's heritage scattered round. Otherwise so much reassurance would be missing. It's like a national photo-album, there in the background.A different form of riches.

12.   Do you like the Stories of an Irish R. M.?  either the stories or the TV show?   Are the stories of Edith Somerville and Martin Ross mocking or celebrating Irish heritage?

  Somerville and Ross are controlled mockery, with an Anglo-Irish flavour.

13.  How lingering an impact to the famines of the middle 19th century have on the contemporary Irish psyche?

 The Famine is still there as a marker, like the ovens to the Jews, Gulags to the Russians, slavery to Africa - a wound that never heals.

13.  Does the character of the "stage Irishman" live on still in the heavy drinking, violent, on the dole characters one finds in many contemporary Irish novels?

  Stage Irishman? He was my boyfriend -mercurial, magical, dangerous, fluent, imaginative, absolutely unemployable. It is not a stereotype, the pub opposite my house was full of them.The pub is the poor man's escape, his interior tropical island, his social life, office, club, security and random family.It is always there, its upkeep and cleaning etc always attended to by others.


14.  William Butler Yeats said in "The Literary Movement"-- "“The popular poetry of England celebrates her victories, but the popular poetry of Ireland remembers only defeats and defeated persons.” I see a similarity of this to the heroes of the Philippines.  American heroes were all victors, they won wars and achieved independence. The national heroes of the Philippines were almost all ultimately failures, most executed by the Spanish or American rulers. How do you think the fact Yeats is alluding too, assuming you agree, has shaped Irish literature?

  Defeats and defeated persons? The Irish man, exceptionally, is complex; even more so in defeat - so far more interesting to write about. A victor is usually one-dimensional. Irish women have not been served well by literature, the society has been dominated by men for too long. It was as late as 1980 (???) that Irish women went on 'The Condom Train' up to Belfast to demonstrate by buying the forbidden contraceptives.


15.   Who was the first Irish writer great Irish writer who was not Anglo-Irish?

  Without any Anglo taint? John McGahern 1934-2006 and Edna O'Brien -but she lives in England, as does William Trevor.

16.  Do you see contemporary Irish poets as having a social impact or should they be looked up as artists writing for the sake of their art only?

   Poets definitely should have a political/social responsibility.However, poetry has become a cottage industry and a cheap evening out. It is both an occupation for both a)the middle classes and b)the unemployed.

17.  How do you think the fact that Ireland is an island country and most places are close to the sea has impacted the psyche and literary culture of Ireland?

      The Irish were different, complex;and their soil was not as equally as fertile as England. Definitely poetical and magical, they lived at the absolute edge of Europe -the edge of the known world for centuries.That had profound influence on the psyche.


18.    Do you think Irish Travellers should be granted the status of a distinct ethnic group and be given special rights to make up for past mistreatment? Are the Travellers to the Irish what the Irish were once to the English?  I became interested in this question partially through reading the short stories of Desmond Hogan.

 As Travellers marry only their own kind (with very early betrothals at 14 or so)they keep their ethnic purity and do not marry out.They are given many rights by the state - special allowances, teachers and special enclaves which they close to any entrants.They veer between being moved to unwanted plots of land, living in caravans by the roadside, and yet on the other hand,being given proper custom-designed halting sites with bungalows or permanent settlements.It's a mess; it depends on who you talk to.


   
20.  Best book store in Dublin

   Dubrays for books

21.  Talk a bit, please about your views on the long term impact of e-readers.

  Traditional paper books are far easier to read. They can be easily lent or sold on.The e-book will kill off second-hand book shops. The e-book is a vastly-promoted industry and yes, I've got a Kindle and have published e-books and I don't like either. No one ever mentions the electricity needed to charge up the device versus the free use of eyes for a paper book. When people call them dead-tree books, they omit mentioning the nuclear waste left by producing the electricity for ebooks.

22.  What do you like most about living in Ireland?

  People are vivid,approachable, talkative, immediately friendly. Wish for difference? They change mood instantly and can turn aggressive.


23.  If you able to live anywhere in the world but Ireland, where would you live?

    New Zealand

24.  Who are your favorite 19th century novelists?


   19th century novelists? Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky

25.  If you could time travel anywhere for 30 days and be safe and rich, where would you go?

  Charles ll's court at the Restoration 1660


  
27.  How is the seemingly every increasing influence of social media webpages like Facebook and Twitter impacting contemporary writers?


  Social Media? The 'domination' will scale down and there will be a fork in the road.The novelty will wear off. Facebook and even more so, Twitter, do not allow for complex structure or reasoning. 140 characters including punctuation, is merely enough to gasp out a last sentence. "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed" - we need more substantial hunks of prose to keep us fed with information or sensuous experience or transformation.

28.    Print outlets for professional book reviewers are declining, as many newspapers no longer have Sunday supplements in which reviews were often posted.   Does this present a void which will enable book bloggers to become more influential?  


  Book bloggers should cross-reference each other and not work in isolation. As they are self-selecting, this is both a good and bad thing. The established critics have sense of entitlement - we don't know their networks and background either -they just appear magically, appointed in papers and magazines.Book bloggers don't need any backslapping or backstabbing; can't see them going out to dinner together!

30.  Pick one
a.  dogs or cats
b.  Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?
c.  Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo
d.  Dublin or London?
e.  English or Irish Breakfast?
f.  Better for getting around Ireland-trains or buses?


   30    Dogs
         Wuthering Heights
         Charles Dickens
         English breakfast
         Dublin
         Trains
         

End of Guest Post

I offer my great thanks to Pat Jourdan for agreeing to participate in my Q and A.          

You can learn more about her work on her webpage.

You can purchase a Kindle or paperback  edition of A Small Inheritance through Amazon