"The Inquisition" By Liam O'Flaherty (1934)

     Liam O'Flaherty (1897 to 1984) was born in Inishmore on one of the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland.  His cousin was the famous Hollywood movie director  John Ford.    Like Frank O'Conner and Sean O'Faolain he was involved in the Irish War for independence against the British (largely a guerrilla war)1919 to 1921.    It was a bloody war of brother against brother in many cases.   It ended in Southern Ireland becoming an independent country with largely Protestant Northern Ireland staying under British rule.    

O'Flaherty worked for a time as a teacher until he became successful with novels like The Informer (which his cousin made into a movie) .     O'Flaherty moved the USA around 1923 to live in Hollywood so he could work with his cousin, among other reasons.   He was for a time a communist but returned to his Roman Catholic roots in latter years.   He had an affair with Elizabeth Bowen.    He was deeply into the reading life with a passion for French and Russian literature.    Much of his adult life was lived in the USA, his  writings nearly all deal with Ireland.   

During ISSM2 in 2012,  I posted on one of his most famous short stories, "Going Into Exile".  I admit I have been jealous of him ever since I heard he had an affair with Elizabeth Bowen!  

The Catholic Priest plays a large role in the Irish short story, often depicted in a quite unfavorable fashion as a man taking out his own misery on his flock, fighting demons and sexual urges.  They are often portrayed as being cruel, petty tyrants to the young people who go to Catholic schools, using guilt to torment them.   The problem of misbehavior among Irish priests, in terms largely of sexual abuse of young boys, is an ongoing travesty which has been addressed by the Vatican.  I have posted on several short stories about Irish priests, the most recently written story was "A Priest in the Family" by Colum Tobin which deals with just such a priest.  

"The Inquistion" is set in a Catholic school.  The priest teaching in these schools were often, I know they all were not, vicious near sadists taking out deeply repressed homo-erotic urges on the boys through harsh  beatings, often on the bare bottom.  As the story opens, the priest is interrogating one of the boys about a reported incident in which several boys were observed buying cigarettes in the village.  The priest is shocked as the boy was the one pupil he felt was totally sanctimonious in his habits.  He begins to demand the boy tell him who else bought cigarettes, smoking by the young being scene as a terrible sin.  He uses guilt to try to get the boy to inform.  As the story proceeds, the boy begins to have contempt for the priest and see through his teachings.  

This really is a beautiful story.  It is very anti-clerical.  There are some say deep connections between the power of the priest and the weakness of the Irish father.  Often it seems the brutality of the priest gives license to parental cruelty from a father who feels the church has taken away his authority, admist a culture of repression.  From this the father seeks escape in pubs and drink. 

You can read this story here 

http://fullreads.com/authors/liam-oflaherty/

Mel u

House of Gold by Liam O'Flaherty (1929)

 In 1929 the stock market in New York City crashed, starting a ten year world wide economic down trend which was part of the cause of WWII.   The post important book published that year was The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.  1929 was also the year in which the Irish Free State Board of Censorship first banned a book.  That book was House of Gold by Liam O'Flaherty (1896 to 1984 - Inishmore, Ireland) which was declared obscene.  O'Flaherty went on to have a long successful career as a writer, living mostly in America.  

I have read and enjoyed a number of O'Flaherty's short stories.   I first became aware of his set in Galway House of Gold through publicity surrounding its recent republication.  The novel opens with a section in which a woman married to a prominent local business man and power broker and her lover have sex, outdoors as was common in a time of no motels and gossips everywhere.  It is not at all graphic but there is a reference to the woman putting her skirt back on at the end of the encounter and I am guessing this is what was seen as obscene.  As is well explained in the introduction to the book by 1929 the British landlords and officials had been replaced by home grown tyrants.   The narration of the story refers to the common people of the area as "peasants".   I think, in part, The House of Gold is a protest of the romanticizing of the Irish peasant seen in much of the popular literature of the time.  Even the political leaders of the period tried to use the image of a happy contented populace away from the corruption of modern influences to manipulate the citizens of Ireland.  Much of the novel can be seen as an attack on the role of the Catholic priest as a tool of the wealthy to control the masses.  O'Flaherty was a Communist and subscribed fully to the view that religion was "the opiate of the people" and served to keep the "peasants" servile.   No doubt one of the factors in the novel that caused outrage in the censorship board was the depiction of a priest as lusting after a married woman.   

In the introduction it is stated that the peasants in House of Gold are kind of corrective figures to the smiling shuffling figures in the works of Sommerville and Ross and I see this.   

The dominating figure in the novel is a former peasant who through great industry and shrewdness has made himself a very big fish in a small pond, dominating the economic life of the area.  The adulterous woman is married to him and it is a pure sham of a marriage.  

O'Flaherty is known for his wonderful descriptions of nature and landscapes and I found many beautiful and lyrical passages that I relished.   

This a worth reading novel for those seriously into Irish literature and history.  It lets us see a lot about "real life" in Ireland in 1929.   It is not a great novel but I think it is an important book for its historical value.  

 

There are lot of typos in this edition, enough to make me think nobody proof read it.  

Mel u

Liam O'Flaherty Two Short Stories

"The Peddler's Revenge"  (1976, 11 pages)

Irish Short Story Month

March 1 to March 31

Liam O'Flaherty-Inishmore-

1896 to 1984

Event Resources

Please consider joining us for the event.  All you need to do is complete a post on any Irish Short Story or related matter and let me know about it.  I will publicize your post and keep a master list. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. 

Liam O'Flaherty (1897 to 1984) was born in Inishmore on one of the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland.  His cousin was the famous Hollywood movie director  John Ford.    Like Frank O'Conner and Sean O'Faolain he was involved in the Irish War for independence against the British (largely a guerrilla war)1919 to 1921.    It was a bloody war of brother against brother in many cases.   It ended in Southern Ireland becoming an independent country with largely Protestant Northern Ireland staying under British rule.    

O'Flaherty worked for a time as a teacher until he became successful with novels like The Informer (which his cousin made into a movie) .     O'Flaherty moved the USA around 1923 to live in Hollywood so he could work with his cousin, among other reasons.   He was for a time a communist but returned to his Roman Catholic roots in latter years.   He had an affair with Elizabeth Bowen.    He was deeply into the reading life with a passion for French and Russian literature.    Much of his adult life was lived in the USA, his  writings nearly all deal with Ireland.   

Last year I posted on one of his most famous short stories, "Going Into Exile".  I admit I have been jealous of him ever since I heard he had an affair with Elizabeth Bowen!

"Liam, give me a call"-Carmilla

"The Peddler's Revenge" is a very interesting story, told in the third person, about the life long hate of two men, one a peddler whose was very small and other a giant of a man with gargantuan appetite for food.    Both men are in their late seventies but the hatred started when they were school boys and the peddler was bullied by the other boy.  The story is set in the rural areas of Ireland and makes use of the dialect of the time in a very delightful and not hard follow for an outsider fashion.  There is a beautiful rhythm to the conversations, you can almost hear the lilt in their voices.  The big man has been found dead but just before he died he told people he had been poisoned by the peddler.  The local constable is called and he questions the peddler.  He admits he hated the other man and did not mourn his death but he says the claim he poisoned him is just ludicrous.   When I found out what had happened I said OK this is a guess of kind of poetic justice.  The ending will make you smile and think and gives is a glimpse of a way of life that is no more.  I really enjoyed reading this story.  

I have an ebook of 14 of his short stories so I will be returning to his work at some point in the future, I hope.

"Going into Exile" by Liam O' Flaherty

"Going Into Exile" by Liam O'Flaherty (1927, 20 pages)

The Irish Diaspora
Irish Short Story Week Year Two
A Story of those Left Behind

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 22.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an e mail and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.  

In 1927 the first Greyhound track in Ireland opens.   The first transatlantic telephone call is made.   Great Britain renames the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, acknowledging that the rest of Ireland is no longer under British rule. The first Volvo is made.  To the Lighthouse is published.   Charles Lindbergh makes the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic.   Kevin O'Higgins, the Vice President of the Irish Free State, was assassinated.   The first Japanese train line opens, in Tokyo.   

Liam O'Flaherty (1897 to 1984) was born in Inishmore on one of the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland.  His cousin was the famous Hollywood movie director  John Ford.    Like Frank O'Conner and Sean O'Faolain he was involved in the Irish War for independence against the British (largely a guerrilla war)1919 to 1921.    It was a bloody war of brother against brother in many cases.   It ended in Southern Ireland becoming an independent country with largely Protestant Northern Ireland staying under British rule.    

Liam O'Flaherty

O'Flaherty worked for a time as a teacher until he became successful with novels like The Informer (which his cousin made into a movie) .     O'Flaherty moved the USA around 1923 to live in Hollywood so he could work with his cousin, among other reasons.   He was for a time a communist but returned to his Roman Catholic roots in latter years.   He had an affair with Elizabeth Bowen.    He was deeply into the reading life with a passion for French and Russian literature.    Much of his adult life was lived in the USA, his  writings nearly all deal with Ireland.   

In the first story I posted on for Irish Short Story Week, "Home Sickness" by George Moore, we are given a look at what happens when an Irishman living for many years in New York City attempts to return home.   In "Going into Exile" O'Flaherty shows us the emotional consequences that emigration had on those left behind.  

The story opens in the crowded cabin of Patrick O'Flaherty.   There are lots of people there for a party in honor of the two oldest of eight children both of whom are leaving for America in the morning.    

"The people were dancing and laughing, and singing with a certain forced and boisterous gaiety that failed to hide from them the real cause of their being there, dancing and singing and laughing.  For the dance was on account of Patrick Fenney's two children, Mary and Michael, who were going to the United States on the following morning".

There seems to me a lot of very understandable forced gaiety in the short stories of Ireland.

Fenney knows that in the morning he will lose his two oldest children and he will likely never see them again.   He has  too many other children for them all to go and very few people ever return.     This is a very sad, near heart  breaking story.   In  one very powerful scene, Fenney and his son Michael go for a walk together.   Neither really knows what to say.   Michael is wearing the suit bought for him to wear on the trip.    He feels awkward in it as it is the first clothing he has worn that was not homespun.   Michael tells his father he will soon be able to repay the passage money and will be able to send the family money by Christmas.   Just as the father begins to give into his deep sadness and break down, he catches himself and tells his son not to become impudent just because he has a new suit of clothes.   

"They  stood in silence fully five minutes.   Each hungered to embrace the other, to cry, to beat the air, to scream with an excess of sorrow.   But they stood silent and sombre, like nature about them, hugging their woe".

Mrs. Fenney is keeping as active as she can, urging the guests to eat as much as they want from the ample food that has been prepared.   Having enough food was a constant source of anxiety to many.     Mary Fenney had lots of same age, early 20s or late teens, friends and a dozen of them were all huddled in the bedroom with Mary.   Mary 

"Kept thinking of the United States, and one moment with fear and loathing, and next with desire and longing.   Other things troubled her,things of which she was half ashamed, half afraid, thoughts of love and foreign men and clothes and of houses where there were more than three rooms and where people ate meat everyday".

Mary's mother is laughing too much at the party, almost hysterically which Mary knew a fit of terrible hysterics was coming when the moment came when the mother must deal with the fact that she will never see her children again.      The closing of the story is very emotional and terribly sad.   

O' Flaherty in his simply and beautifully written story has captured the terrible pain that emigration caused when families know they will never see each other again.   

I read this story in Classic Irish Short Stories edited and introduced by Frank O'Connor.   It is a beautiful work of art.   


Mel u