LGBTQA Group Books discussion

Part I, Chapters 1-7

I am up to Chapter 4. I like the subtle style of Mr. O'Neill. It has that Sound and Fury kind of stream of consciousness. Some of my favorite sentences:

"When for lack of his own he shared a schoolbook, they goosed him, chiming,"For the scholarship boy is a needy boy." He mentioned it once to his father, and his father said,"What is it they call their own fathers?" Jim shrugged. "Papa, I think." That's easy fixed so. You call me Papa in future, then you'll be equal with your fellows."

Mr. Mack let a grunt. The bellows, the bronicals, any shift you choose. If work was in a bed, that man would sleep on the floor. Consumption, my eye."

But when he looked up again, his eyes were shining, and the hint of smile took the ape off his back. "I didn;t want you thinking me a thief." "I wouldn't have told." "You'd be thinking it all the same."

I like his character development, O'Neil gives these little reveals to who we are meeting.

I’ve made it through the first seven chapters and I am thoroughly enjoying this book. It was a struggle at first, though, because O’Neill is trying the capture the early 20th century, lower-class Irish brogue on paper. But once my internal ear adjusted to it and started to pick up some of the lingo, the book has become easier and easier to read.

My most dominate impression so far of At Swim, Two Boys is that O’Neill is most definitely a James Joyce wannabe. (That’s probably too flippant and I don’t mean to degrade O’Neill’s talent.) Nonetheless, this novel is kind of rip off, or recycling, of Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the quintessential Irish novel. He is actually mimicking James Joyce’s writing style and borrowing heavily from the motifs found in Ulysses. (I’ll admit I’ve tried to read Ulysses twice and could only make it half way before I gave up. It can be a daunting and frustrating novel because Joyce uses a more loose form of stream of consciousness in some places. Some people say Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written while others say it was a literary joke that makes no sense and is unreadable.)

If you’ve at least attempted to read Ulysses, you’ll remember that in the very first chapter two characters, Buck Mulligan and Steven Dadaleus, go for a swim in Dublin Bay at the famous Forty Foot in the shadow of a tower. (Sound familiar?) O’Neill has used this famous scene as a basis for At Swim, Two Boys.

Besides the allusions to Joyce, I’ve also noticed other reference to Oscar Wilde and Gilbert and Sullivan, who must be a few of O’Neill’s other literary heroes. In one brief passage I chuckled because O’Neill referenced Wilde’s quip that “Work is the curse of the drinking class” when discussing the Irish love for liquor. (That’s one of my favorite Wilde bon mots.) O’Neill also references Gilbert & Sullivan when he calls the clergyman a “model of a modern major bishop,” tipping his hat to the song from HMS Pinafore “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.”

Hummm… O’Neill is giving me a workout. He’s making me remember things I haven’t read or thought about since I took English Lit in college. I can't wait to see what will happen next.

A soundtrack for the Revolution…

While I was reading At Swim tonight, the lyrics of an old song by the Cranberries called “Zombie” kept popping up in my head. It’s appropriate since the song is about “The Troubles,” or the British occupation of Northern Ireland.

These lyrics kept haunting me tonight

It's the same old theme since 1916.
In your head, in your head they're still fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying...

I found the video for the song on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEySr...

By the way, this is a wonderful novel to read for the month of March since St Patrick’s Day is only one week away. :-)

This is my second time through the novel, and this time it seemed easier to get the hang of the dialect and peculiar word order. But I do find I have to read the text slowly, and reread some of the quotes twice, to get the full meaning. O'Neill feeds the reader just snippets of dialogue, so it takes a while to catch the drift. To help picture the seawall, and the Forty Foot, it may be useful to do a Google image search of Dublin Bay. So far I haven't located anything showing Glasthule streets leading down to the bay, but I'll keep looking. Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone.

Tom wrote: "This is my second time through the novel, and this time it seemed easier to get the hang of the dialect and peculiar word order. But I do find I have to read the text slowly, and reread some of the..."


Tom,

This photo might help you

http://www.iol.ie/~atswim/atswim/gall...

It's from Jamie O'Neill's website

Thanks for the link to the website, which has several interesting articles by and about O'Neill, plus images.

From the www.iol.ie website cited by RDM, here is an excerpt from a 2002 "Advocate" piece on O'Neill. Deals with his coming-out travails and eventual reconciliation with his own family:

"In 1988, O’Neill was hounded by the press after the death of his partner, BBC talk show host Russell Harty. O’Neill’s picture was splashed across every newspaper as Harty’s lover – that’s the unimaginably awkward way he came out to his family – and callous reporters offered him 50,000 pounds for an interview. Worse still, O’Neill says he was treated horrendously by Harty’s relatives, who immediately threw him out of the home the couple had shared for years. “I was actually living on the streets of London,” says O’Neill. “I had nothing. They burnt my clothes. They stole my car. They even wanted my dog.”

"O’Neill sank into depression for years. To his credit, he resisted all the dirty money tossed at him, and when his novel hit, he hoped the link to his tabloid past would never come up. He worried people would think he wanted to capitalize on his celebrity connection. He even allowed a couple of mistaken impressions. Although the press widely reported that “At Swim, Two Boys” is O’Neill’s debut, the fact is that Harty, an older mentor figure, had encouraged him to write two earlier, far less successful novels. “I don’t consider them to be mine,” says O’Neill. “They’re from what I would consider a previous incarnation.”

"But “At Swim” is a book he proudly claims. And its success has changed one person in particular. O’Neill’s mum, who didn’t post a picture of her son among the family photos for many years for fear of being asked when he’d be marrying a woman.

O’Neill’s current partner, a French dancer-turned-masseur named Julien Joly, tried to mend the situation after their first visit. “When we got home, he sent a picture of me,” says O’Neill. “The next time we went there, still no picture of me. Then when all this (the fanfare over the book) happened, my mother started showing the newspaper clippings to the neighbors.”

O’Neill laughs. “They all said, ‘God, she’s got Alzheimer’s. She’s inventing this new son,’ because they had never heard of me before.”