Philip O Ceallaigh
In the wealthy West (that is, western Europe, North America, and Australia) there are always second chances. Every decision can be reversed – career, job, marriage – so in the end there are no crucial life decisions.
The story As I Sink Down perfectly captures a turning point in a man’s life. He has dropped out of college, his girlfriend gets pregnant, decides to have an abortion. This is related in a deadpan first-person, getting the facts across. He takes on a temporary job as a miner, but already he can see this is to be his life from now on. Back-breaking work, five hours sleep, until the mind closes in. He must acquire what is generally termed “maturity”, so that he will work without complaint, without excessive recourse to alcohol. Like his father, his only joy will be to see his nephews and nieces grow up and perhaps have better prospects. Although he may listen to the same rock’n roll, and see the same iPods in the department stores, he inhabits a world away from what’s familiar here where I write.
I thought of how I had never known my father, and all the men he worked alongside, until I had descended into a mine myself.
I understood how it was them against the whole world. Nobody else mattered, nobody else knew.
Next day I worked. It was better than having time on my hands. I was no longer afraid. I worked well.
Those things he would have scorned as a rebellious student – a small clean apartment, an office job, a calm and good-natured wife – now become unattainably distant.
We need reminding that failure exists – not the spectacular failure of a drug addict or criminal, but the stoic acceptance of a man who faces the prospect of slavish labour for the rest of his life. The common fate of the mass of humanity through history.
Read on …
There’s something odd going on in Honey. The story is about a retired couple who have settled in a large air-conditioned house in Phoenix, Arizona. They are the sort of people who hold very certain views on certain topics. They know that they have worked hard to earn their big house, and that other people who have not achieved the same have obviously done things the wrong way.
The story is related from the viewpoint of the woman. Old Bob is made to look obstinate and ridiculous at a couple of points. “He would never realise, she understood, that his own wife could see him as something comical and ultimately futile, as in that moment when he cursed and stamped about a machine that refused to move.”
At the end of the story he falls off a ladder. Hs wife rushes to help him.
When he opened his eyes there was an old woman standing over him.
Her stricken face . . . reminded him more of some grotesque insect than of his wife. He waited. It was coming.
‘Honey! Are! You! All right?’
In a rage of agony, searing words like caustic bile rose to his mouth. He would not be responsible for what he said next.
But the pain in his body was so great he could only gasp one word.
‘Honey!’
This is like a brief glimpse into the furnaces of hell. Nothing in the story prepares for it, least of all the title. That’s what makes it great.
Another great story is An Evening of Love. It achieves a kind of perfection. (Not to turn this into a barbed compliment, but perfection only has meaning when there is a recognised standard.) Like many of the other stories, the viewpoint is entirely that of the unreflecting driven young man. There is intensity, there is coherence, like a sharp light shining outwards, delineating the harsh edges of the world. O’Ceallaigh writes about such men with as much insight as Kafka wrote about angst-ridden Jewish sons.
It’s hard to determine a writer’s intention. O’Ceallaigh seems to be presenting this material not for entertainment, nor to evoke sympathy for lower income groups, or change the world, but because it is real.
The piece A Performance stands out as a comment on how his work will be received. The performer undoes sutures and pulls aside his ribcage to expose his beating heart. The audience has its moment of catharsis. Simple as that, the author is brave indeed to throw down this successor to Kafka’s Hungerkuenstler.
There are a couple of pieces near the end, including Gone Fishing, that seem autobiographical. Perhaps because of their incidental nature they’ve been tacked on at the end. I am glad they were included.
Valancourt The Viaduct reissue
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Irish Times Q+A