March 1 to March 31
A Question and Answer Session with
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Ruth Quinlan
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"Crossing the Dunes"
Not long ago I read and posted on all of the short stories in Abandoned Darlings which is a very much worth reading collection of short stories and poems from from the 2011-2012
National University of Ireland at Galway MA in Writing Class members. Ruth Quinlan, whose work "Crossing the Dunes" is included in the collection, made it possible for me to carry out this project by her advise and assistance. Here is how I feel about her wonderful story.
"Crossing the Dunes" is a beautiful work that in just a few words makes us feel the immense pain the death of her father causes a woman. One of the things I really liked about this work was how the later part of the work forced you to rethink your reading of the first part and in so doing made you see the sad beauty of the Irish countryside. As I read it I was brought to mind "Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray. The narrator of this story walks along dunes along the Atlantic, near the great cliffs of the shores of the West of Ireland. The woman is walking barefoot among the stones, she wants to feel pain to be sure she is still alive, she wants to feel the cold of the ocean, maybe she wants physical pain to over-mask her heartbreak.
This story is only two pages, just as I would not try to "sum" up Gray's magnificent poem, I will let you discover this for yourself. It really must be read several times so you can fully whole the story in your mind and she how the parts connect. This is a wonderful very moving story that speaks with the verisimilitude of lived pain which may show the beginning of real wisdom.
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1.Who are some of the contemporary short story writers you admire? If you had to say, who do you regard as the three best ever short story writers?
The three short story writers I’m currently reading (and re-reading) are all Irish and have connections with Galway. They are Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Mike McCormack, and Celeste Augé.
They are all quite different in style and tone, each with something very unique to say. Ní Chonchúir writes with a deep sensuality and earthy wisdom; McCormack produces work of razor-sharp intelligence, and Augé’s prose has a wonderful warmth, veined with bittersweet humour.
The three best ever short story writers are hard to pick. However, if forced …
Annie Proulx astounds me with every piece. Her depiction of the dissolution of North American rural life is incredibly fascinating for someone who has little knowledge or experience of that culture. However, In Ireland, we have seen the dispersal of our own rural population so her work strikes a resonant chord.
Frank O’Connor was the quintessential Irish short story writer and his tales of growing up and living in Ireland are a paean to a lost way of life. His stories should be preserved under glass as relics of an Ireland that has now almost disappeared.
H.H. Munro (Saki) was a true master of the short story and his works should be on every potential writer’s primary reading list. He makes the art appear deceptively simple and as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing”. He contrasted the hypocrisies of Edwardian England with the primal battles of nature, highlighting the flimsiness of the social and moral restrictions we impose upon ourselves.
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. What do you think is the root cause or causes of this? Is it an accurate depiction of Irish culture?
Unfortunately, the demon drink features heavily in modern Irish society so writing about Ireland without mentioning it would be a lie, or at least just a partial truth. There is still the overused stereotype of the drunken Irish idiot but the truth of the matter is that, to some extent, we have earned this. One only has to go out in Dublin or any other of the major Irish cities at 2AM to observe that we seem unable to handle alcohol. We drink to celebrate, we drink to mourn, we drink for the sake of drinking.
Without drink, a vital element in many short stories would be missing. We, the greatest talkers on the planet, find it hard to communicate feelings without the lubrication of alcohol and for a short story to progress, someone is usually going to have to talk about something other than the weather.
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? I see this for sure in your story "Crossing the Dunes" - about which I said "Crossing the Dunes" by Ruth Quinlan is a beautiful work that in just a few words makes us feel the immense pain the death of her father causes a woman.
In my piece, “Crossing the Dunes”, the main character journeys to the ocean, seeking solace from the pain of losing her father. She tries to distract herself by looking at the nature around her, only to find that everything reminds her of what she is trying to momentarily forget. The beach, where she spent much of her youth, is littered with precious memories.
Men in Ireland are hamstrung by their inability to express themselves verbally. This can lay waste to the strongest relationships, even the vital bond between a father and a son or daughter. It also means that when a father is gone, there is not just the loss of the person, but also the loss of the words that were never spoken.
4. When did you start writing?
I started writing when I was quite young, creating epic poems and stories that I am sure were absolute drivel, but I was very proud of at the time. It was an almost natural corollary to being a bookworm as a child. Then, college and work got in the way and I didn't write again for many years until I took a few evening classes back in 2005 with Susan Millar DuMars. It was only then that I realized how much I had missed it. However, soon afterwards, I moved abroad with work, and once again, the writing was shoved way down the priority list. In 2011, I decided I couldn't survive without writing anymore and was accepted into the MA in Writing in NUIG. Leaving the job at the time and going back to college again was the best decision I ever made; I loved that year. Being surrounded by people who are passionate about the same thing is a real privilege – and not one that everyone gets the chance to fully experience.
5. How do you view Aosdána? Is it a great aid to the arts in Ireland or does it perpetuate closed elitism? Or is this question to remote from your experiences?
This is too remote from my experience.
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.
This is actually something I used to wonder about as well. But, if you think about it, what are you going to do in good weather? You’re going to be outside enjoying it, not stuck inside chained to the desk and getting covered in ink or giving yourself repetitive strain injury from the laptop. Suffering and misery makes great literature, sun lotion and tequila slammers maybe not so much …
If you consider the Irish weather, it’s grey, it’s wet and it’s generally quite depressing. When you have that outside your window most days, escaping into the technicolour world of the mind is quite logical.
7. Did you travel much in Malaysia? did you visit one of my favorite cities, Singapore?
I didn’t travel as much as I would have liked. However, I did get to Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, and into the rainforests – which was an amazing experience. Penang and Malacca were also magical, soaked in the Chinese and Portuguese influences of hundreds of years. However, one place that really stood out was Bali (even though it’s a part of Indonesia rather than Malaysia, I have to mention it) – this has that same indescribable energy or vibration as Galway. There are places in the world that are special – and I know for a fact that Galway is one of them. Whenever you try to make a list of why Galway is such a great place to live, there’s very little on that list. Even when you ask people who have lived here for years why they stay, they look puzzled and simply answer, “Because it’s just a great place to be.”
Singapore was a city I visited many times – again, with work mostly. It’s a great city but there is something very buttoned-down about it. While living in Malaysia, I met many Singaporeans and ex-pats from Singapore who would come to Kuala Lumpur at the weekends – just to let loose and forget about rules and regulations for a while. This was one of the most intriguing things about Malaysia - the sense that if you wanted to, you could push far beyond the moral and social mores you grew up with. That can be both intensely liberating and intimidating.
8. Are you a poet who also writes short stories or the reverse? Does one form matter more than another to you?
I think that I am a short-story writer who also writes poetry. I would consider my prose stronger than my poems but my prose is informed and nourished by poetry. I took poetry lectures during the MA and its effect on my prose was immediately noticeable. I have great admiration for the precision and control required to write great poetry.
9. Why have the Irish produced such a disproportionate to their population number of great writers?
We love to talk, we love to tell and hear stories. A great story has a very special place in Irish culture and writers are generally quite revered here, especially amongst the older generations. Writers and poets were always thought to be slightly mad, and in Ireland, we have great affection for a modicum of insanity. Where else, would “You’re mad!” be considered a compliment?!
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."
I don’t believe in them myself but I think we Irish have an innate love for the idea of them. We absolutely adore the notion that the world is not the logical, sane place that others make out. If that requires a few fairies and leprechauns, then so be it.
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?
Perhaps, to some degree. Ireland has an ancient culture and we’re surrounded by it – we live, breathe, and eat history; our towns and cities are built on burial grounds of the past. Because the meaning of many of the Neolithic structures was lost, legends built up around them – for example fairy rings. There are still very few farmers that would dare disrupt a fairy ring in a field, even though it is probably just the remains of an old stone circle. We accept that we cannot know everything about the past, and we respect it.
12. How important are the famines to the modern Irish psyche?
Very. Our national psyche was indelibly scarred by the Great Famine. We have a fear of being evicted from our homes (and are thus obsessed with buying houses) and we have a fear of leaving home and never being able to return. This is what generations of Irish experienced and it was only in the last decade or two that the tide finally turned and people started to return in large numbers. Sadly, that has changed again, and new waves of emigrants are leaving our shores. There was a resigned groan across the country when we saw that the young were being forced to leave again.
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?
Yes, but I find it puzzling as to why this character turns up so often – surely there are other characters that we can write about by now. Why do we not write about the many people from Asia and Africa that have settled here? Why are so many of our characters the usual, pasty, drink-obsessed, pure-bred Irish?
It’s perhaps forgiveable when people from abroad write about Ireland using the usual stereotypes, but why do we ourselves insist on using the same drunken character again and again?
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?
It’s a strange thing, to be a success in Ireland. It’s only tolerated for so long, and then we love to knock people off their pedestal. I have to say I love that about the Americans, they’re not afraid to say, “I did this, I succeeded and it was great.” That’s unheard of in Ireland – we’re too afraid that someone will pillory us as arrogant fools. We prefer to knock ourselves down first, before anyone else do it. So, we love a good failure.
But then, look at our history. We’ve been conquered again and again. What have we won? We’re so unused to winning or succeeding at anything, we can’t handle it. Just look at the gluttony that permeated the country during the Celtic Tiger. However, I like to think we will improve with experience and next time we pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and start succeeding again, we will act with more grace.
15. Do you think poets have a social role to play in contemporary Ireland or are they pure artists writing for themselves and a few peers?
It depends on the poet. I love the poetry of Rita Ann Higgins. She is adept at skewering the gombeen men that make up quite a lot of our political structure. She does not tolerate foolishness or hypocrisy in the leaders of our country; instead, she reminds them that we’re not all stupid peasants, bovinely happy to be ruled by Church and State. We’re literate, intelligent human beings who expect a level of competency and decency in those that represent us.
16. 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.
This is a subject I really don’t know enough about to answer properly.
17. Tell is a bit about how your experience was at your Feb. 28th reading at Over the Edge please.
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It was a wonderful experience to be invited to read at Over the Edge. Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars do tremendous work for the literary scene in Galway and it’s a real seal of approval to get an invitation from them to read. Over the Edge gives people a chance to experience the joy of reading to an informed, literary-minded audience.
I read a mixture of fiction and poetry, starting with a short story called, ‘The Healing’, moving onto my ‘Fallen’ and ‘Knocheneimer’ poems. and then finishing with ‘Crossing the Dunes’ from the Abandoned Darlings anthology. I was also very lucky to be reading with such wonderful fellow readers as Dan Wisniewski and Mia Gallagher. By pure coincidence, we all ended up reading on themes regarding parents and their relationships with their children.
18. The literary productivity of Galway is incredible. What is there about Galway's social climate that produces this?
I may have partially answered this already in other questions. There is an indefinable electricity to Galway. It literally hums with it and the city is the proud owner of a very bohemian soul. The fact that there are two large centres of higher learning within close proximity to the city centre plays no small part in this. Many graduates of the MA in Writing have settled in Galway after completing the course because of the opportunities that are present for them there. They, together with the already established writers in the area and groups like Over the Edge, play a vital role in supporting apprentice writers, welcoming them to the fold.
19. Do you prefer e-reading or traditional books?
I prefer traditional books but for sheer portability when travelling, nothing beats e-books. The fact that we can carry around hundreds of books at any one time is a gift.
20. What did you miss most about Ireland, besides family and friends, when you lived in S. E. Asia? What were you glad to be away from?
When I was living in Malaysia, I missed the Irish weather – isn’t that strange! I think I’m hard-wired to survive under rainy, grey skies and my body didn’t know how to deal with 30-degree heat and almost 100 percent humidity all year round. I spent three years running from one air-conditioned space to the next! I’m ashamed to admit I also had terrible cravings for Irish sausages, rashers, and black and white pudding – the typical big Irish breakfast that I don’t even eat all that often at home. Odd how you miss things only when you can’t have them.
I definitely did not miss the rampant consumerism that had gripped Ireland at the time however. I was quite glad to be away from that.
21. If you could time travel for 30 days (and be rich and safe) where would you go and why?
I would like to see Malaysia, India, or Kenya when they were part of the British Empire. Ireland was a colony, like them, but it was a miserable existence. Britain despised her first colonial child and treated her abysmally. It would be interesting to see what life was like for those colonies. I think this stems back to reading Out of Africa. The colonials had an immensely privileged lifestyle, bought at the expense of those they ruled. However, when you look at what they got to see (the grassfields of Kenya, the tea plantations of India, the hardwood forests of Malaysia, the vast resources of untouched lands), it is hard not to envy them.
22. Do you think there will be follow up editions to Abandoned Darlings-either new works by its writers or similar works on other graduating classes?
There are already plans in place for the next MA group to put together an anthology. I am really looking forward to seeing what they produce. Self-publishing is a great opportunity for apprentice writers to learn by getting their hands dirty. It’s not until you see the amount of work that goes into collating material, editing it, formatting it, marketing it, etc. that you understand that a book is the product of a lot of labour. I am very glad that I worked on the Abandoned Darlings anthology as I learned immensely from the experience.
23. Like you I have lived in Asia as an expat-can you tell us how that has shaped your writing?
It has given me a keener eye for observing people and places. I don’t think you can appreciate how unique your own country of origin is until you have seen it through the eyes of another culture. You need to be able to compare to really understand.
Living abroad for a period also enables writers to take motifs and talismans and then use them in a completely different context. I did this with the “Moon-kite” story in Abandoned Darlings, taking one of the beautiful hand-made moon-kites from Malaysian culture, and transforming it into a tattoo on a lonely Irishwoman’s shoulder.
24. Best Literary Festival you have so far attended?
Cuirt in Galway is a week of pure literary enjoyment. It’s so well organized, and the people that speak at it are of such a high calibre. The amount of locals and visitors that are willing to volunteer their time to making it a success is great to see.
25. Flash Fiction - how driven is the popularity of this form by social media like Twitter and its word limits?
The modern appetite for quick ‘bites’ of information is insatiable. Flash fiction satisfies this appetite perfectly, telling a story in a minimal number of words. Twitter imposes a 140-word limit on us – and to tell a story within that miniscule space, you have to make every single word count.
26. How important in shaping the literature of Ireland is its proximity to the sea?
It has a huge effect on my own writing as I grew up by the sea and tend to get separation anxiety when too far away from it! I have always found that I find it easier to set a story near the Atlantic because I know it so well; I know the smells, tastes, rhythms of it. I know what my characters are looking at, what they’re experiencing – because I have experienced it myself.
Ireland is a small island nation, so many of us have experiences and memories tied up in it. This is bound to have an effect on the writing produced as a whole.
27. Now that many print sources of book reviews, like Sunday supplements in newspapers, are closing down, does this leave a void or opportunity for book bloggers to fill? Professional reviewer and academic have attacked book bloggers as reviewers without credentials and book bloggers have responded by saying professional reviewers are upset because in many cases book bloggers have more real insight and culture than they do they just don't charge people for it. Are professional reviewers just upset as book bloggers give away for free what they want to be paid to do? Over course this is a loaded question coming from me!
Of course there will be a tension between paid reviewers and bloggers prepared to provide this service for free. If you saw your livelihood being threatened, of course you’re going to react negatively and go into self-defense mode. However, I think that there is room for both – everyone is entitled to their opinion – and as long as it’s well expressed, why not let each person have their say. After all, how many well-respected critics in the past have dismissed writers later recognized as masters?
End of Q and A
I am very grateful to Ruth Quinlan for taking the time to respond in such a well thought out informative fashion to my questions.
I hope to be able to read much more of her work in the future.
Mel u
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