CITIZEN OF HONOUR

THE CITY OF DUBLIN IS A LITERARY HEROINE.WITH EACH NEW GENERATION, DOZENS OF TALENTED WRITERS BURST FORTH FROM THIS LIVELY,DYNAMIC CAPITAL. Though it has fewer than 600,000 inhabitants, the city has played host to four Nobel laureates in literature in the last century. Here, authors of novels, short stories, plays and poems are respected and recognised. It’s not uncommon to see a pub patron absorbed in the pages of Ulysses, James Joyce’s arduous masterpiece, or to hear a police officer quote one of the nation’s poets. Or – yes, it happened! – to meet a taxi driver reading the latest novel by Joseph O’Connor, when, in fact, we’d hailed the cab that morning to take us to our interview with that very person.

“My parents always made an effort to expose us to culture, especially literature,” recalls the 53-year-old writer. “In those days, back in the 1970s, Ireland was still a poor country. Playwrights, novelists and poets were viewed as the land’s only true resources. The only Irish who saw any success in life were writers.” Considered one of the most important writers of his generation, Joseph O’Connor has published twenty books since 1991 – mainly novels and short-story collections, but also plays, a travelogue and a few chronicles of the times. Sensitive, FIVE TURNING POINTS FOR JOE O’CONNOR

1963 Born in Dublin. 1976 Decides to become a writer after reading J.D. Salinger’s

The Catcher in the Rye. 1991 Publishes his first novel, Cowboys and Indians, followed by his first collection of short stories,

True Believers. 1995 Meets English television and film writer Anne-Marie Casey, with whom he has two sons. 2014 The Thrill of It All is published in Ireland and the United Kingdom. He begins teaching Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

spirited, finely wrought tales brimming with good ideas in which humour and melancholy intertwine to great effect, O’Connor’s books forge complicity with readers and, at times, disturbs them as well. The characters pouring forth from this explorer of the human soul are multifaceted, never unambiguous. They drink, they lie, they’re conniving or simply untrustworthy, they’re fragile, they’re windy braggarts when, in fact, their lives are a mess, they yearn to change their lives, they’re dumped by lovers… but they are all alive. Masterfully alive.

In 2002, after five acclaimed books (in which the protagonists are almost always Dubliners), O’Connor published Star of the Sea, a complex, exciting work of fiction that follows a group of Irish natives on their Atlantic crossing as they flee the terrible famine of 1847. The novel became a bestseller within months. Over 800,000 copies were sold the year it was released and translations popped up on every continent. Having become world-famous, O’Connor published other, equally subtle and lavish books, from thick novels to short stories spanning a few pages. In 2014 came publication of The Thrill of It All, his latest opus, recounting the meteoric rise and dramatic fall of a rock band, Ships in the Night, in the 1980s. The group is fictitious, but the artists with whom these

PAD AND PEN The author takes notes for his next novel on a daily basis.

musicians cross paths (including David Bowie, Joe Strummer, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Patti Smith) do – or did – exist and their world is aptly described. Still, it is less a book about rock as it is a story of friendship, love, betrayal. A touching story of humanity, with a grandiose, unexpected denouement. The Thrill of It All, Joseph O’Connor’s most recent success story, has, to date, been translated into 44 languages.

DYLAN DEVOTEE, PATTI SMITH ENTHUSIAST

“Music plays a major role in my life,” says O’Connor in his deep, crooner’s voice. Though he claims interest in everything from Celtic harp to French electropop and from American soul to Seventies punk, the writer remains a faithful fan of Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, artists he listens to nearly every day. In fact, he has his own guitar and occasionally plays with his two sons, James and Marcus. “But I couldn’t be called a musician,” he quickly clarifies. “Though sometimes, at night, I dream of being one. A few weeks ago, I dreamed I was getting ready to go on stage with the Beatles. Backstage, John Lennon asked me what the chords were to ‘She Loves You’, because he’d forgotten them.” •••

WHERE MIGHT YOU ENCOUNTER O’CONNOR IN DUBLIN?

ULYSSES RARE BOOKS dd “A bookstore specialising in 20th-century Irish literature. It has a wide selection of rare editions from James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney and other famous names. ”

MULLIGAN’S df “This pub has preserved its original, authentic atmosphere. A place where you can talk, read, contemplate or be alone, if you wish. James Joyce used to come here.”

THE LITTLE MUSEUM OF DUBLIN dg “This eccentric and charming museum traces Dublin’s social, cultural and political history over the course of the 20th century.”

FISH SHACK CAFE dh “For real fish ‘n’ chips or a shellfish platter to savour by the sea, come to the pretty village of Sandycove.”

> You’ll find these locations on our map in the back of the magazine.

Though he rarely speaks of it (and never to the media), O’Connor is big brother to Sinéad O’Connor, the tempestuous pop icon who became a star in 1990 with her cover of the Prince tune ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, made so poignant by her emotional, impassioned interpretation. Isn’t having two artists in the family a lot to handle? “There are three, in fact,” says the writer. “My other sister, Eimear, an art historian in Dublin, has also written books that are selling well in Ireland. And she plays the harp.”

In the 1960s, the family with five children (three boys and two girls) lived in close quarters in a modest house in southern Dublin. His father was construction engineer, his mother a seamstress. The marriage was stormy and his parents divorced in 1975. A few months later, O’Connor discovered The Catcher in the Rye by American J.D. Salinger, a novel about adolescence or, more accurately, the disillusionment that comes with the loss of childhood innocence. “Reading this book is what made me want to become a writer. I thought it would be the noblest thing to do with my life.” He wrote his first short stories; literature rapidly became his refuge, a place where he could shut out the world, just as music would for his sister Sinéad. “When you’re a teenager, you often see art as an oasis,” he comments sagely.

“I SEE MILLIONS OF WORDS” From then on, Joseph O’Connor never stopped writing.

He studied literature at Dublin’s University College and wrote his first articles for the campus newspaper and local dailies.

He wanted to write at all costs and believed that vocation was his mission on earth. When his mother died in a car accident in 1985, he set off to wander Nicaragua for a few months, a trip that would later be captured in the inspired novel, Desperados (1993). An early memory comes to his mind: “I was 15 and was walking around Grafton Street, the shopping district. A fortune teller asked me “In Ireland, to show her my palm. I had no money for we dislike a tol re d ading, but she me my future pretention and anyway. she saw She million said s of academicism.” words 1978, .” That when was in Dublin was starting to feel the first tremors of the punk explosion in England. “I have wonderful memories of that very creative time,” adds O’Connor. “Every teenager was in a rock band or a theatre troupe or was writing a novel. The city was wrapped in this positive energy, and it was in this moment that the band U2 came to be. I remember one of their first concerts – the musicians gave their instruments away to the audience, piece by piece, and Bono even gave his microphone to a spectator. After so many long, sad, austere decades, the times were a-changin’.”

A MIX OF JOY AND MELANCHOLY

Nearly forty years later, the writer lives in Killiney, on the southern outskirts of Dublin. The Irish capital has come through that era of change with flying colours, having even survived the challenge of the 2008 economic crisis. It has become friendly, warm, colourful and optimistic, all while retaining its character and groundedness, even if, in certain quarters, the same standardised retail outlets found in other major European cities are briskly cropping up. “That’s just globalisation – it’s hard to avoid,” Joe concedes. “When I was a teenager, we felt isolated from the rest of the world, like victims of our island existence. But today, students fly off to spend the weekend in Barcelona or London,” he sighs. “The older I get, the happier I am to live here.” He is still partial to the sea and, more than ever, loves the distinctive character of Irish culture. “This country’s soul is a mix of joy and melancholy, something as intense as Portuguese fado. They say that the Irish are the Mediterranean people of the North – and I do indeed feel more at home in Barcelona than in Glasgow. People don’t take themselves so seriously here. In Ireland, we dislike pretention and academicism. It’s a very pleasant place to live out one’s days.” This can also be felt in the city’s written works, with local writers inspired more by American authors like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver than the classics of English literature. But what makes Dublin such a literary city? “We inherited the Celtic storytelling tradition,” explains O’Connor. “And also because the island was poor and isolated for a long time, we had no other means of expression.” By appropriating the English language, Irish authors created their own style, a way to invent stories –at once tangible and direct – for a broad audience. This use of the language is what makes Irish literature so appealing, and Joseph O’Connor is one of the best illustrations of that craft. n > Warm thanks to The Dean Hotel, 33 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2

FOUR MUST-READ YOUNG IRISH AUTHORS

COLIN BARRETT “His first collection of short stories, Young Skins (Vintage, 2013), depicting Irish youth burdened by misgivings, has been compared to James Joyce’s The Dead.”

SARA BAUME “A young writer we will surely hear more about in the coming years. Her first novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Tramp Press, 2015), has won numerous awards.”

LISA McINERNEY “A precious, imaginative gem! Her first novel, The Glorious Heresies (John Murray, 2015), won the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, the UK’s most prestigious annual award for fiction written by women.”

PAUL MURRAY “Skippy Dies (Hamish Hamilton, 2010) became a bestseller in Ireland and has been published in many countries, earning praise from literary figures like Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis.”