Men of letters

A collection of wonderfully colourful letters to Leitrim novelist and teacher Michael McLaverty reveals a side of the late John McGahern usually not shown to the public. Review by Eamon Maher

Dear Mr McLaverty: The Literary Correspondence of John McGahern and Michael McLaverty 1959-1980. Edited by John Killen. Linen Hall Library, 2006. £9stg (€13.70). Order at www.linenhall.com or by calling 0044 28 9032 1707

Since John McGahern's death in March 2006, there has been a genuine outpouring of grief at the loss of one of the most significant Irish writers of the latter half of the 20th Century. Because he was acclaimed as a novelist of substance with the publication of Amongst Women in 1990, a status confirmed subsequently by That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002) and Memoir (2005), it is easy to forget the problems he encountered with the censorship board in the 1960s, or his difficulties in gaining acceptance from the literary establishment in his country of birth. The publication of this correspondence with Michael McLaverty is revealing on many levels, but particularly with regard to the dark days at the beginning of McGahern's career.

The fact that Michael McLaverty was also a teacher-writer could explain McGahern's affinity with him. However, the empathy probably had more to do with the carefully-sculpted style employed by McLaverty, which struck an obvious chord with the emerging young Leitrim novelist. This correspondence, which deputy librarian John Killen spotted after manuscripts and letters of McLaverty's were donated to the Linen Hall Library, Belfast, in 2005, is an invaluable resource for anyone with even a passing interest in McGahern's literary evolution. McLaverty, the elder of the two, showed a deep appreciation of his acolyte's early literary production and offered him encouragement and sound advice. He had to be flattered by the first letter he received in January 1959, in which McGahern wrote: “I came across Truth in the Night when I was in the training college. I read it several times that month”. He added later in the same letter: “I believe that it is a great achievement for any man to state, even once, a measure of his experience truthfully. Your books have given me a better appreciation of life as well as their own pleasure.”

McGahern sought out writers who were able to capture in an authentic way their own little parcel of truth. In this he was an admirer of what Saul Bellow, in a letter to Philip Roth, described as “the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil”. McGahern found this ring of truth in the work of someone like Tomás Ó Criomhthain (The Islandman) or Ernie O'Malley (On Another Man's Wound) – and we can now safely add the name of McLaverty to that list. The latter took the liberty of recommending some reading to the younger man: Mary Lavin, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Daniel Corkery. McGahern, in his reply, said that he had read them all apart from Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which he described as “the greatest of them all”. A connection had been forged and would continue intermittently for the next 20 years. The difficulty of combining a career in teaching with writing, problems with publishers, poor royalty cheques, unappreciative critics, the censorship board, comments on each other's newly-published work – all these elements are discussed. What emerges is a rich tapestry of the social history of the period.

But it is the writing that counts most to both men. McLaverty is deeply impressed by the extracts he reads of McGahern's first novel, The Barracks: “Your work afforded me the same rush of delight that used to come over me when I saw my algebra teacher write on the board ‘Simplify'. To read your work [...] is to convince me that simplicity is the finest ornament of any style.”  He captures in these lines the feature that makes McGahern such a fine writer; his eschewal of ornament and prettification, the production of simple, transparent prose.

What is surprising is how uncharacteristically forthcoming McGahern is in these letters. Here is an extract from one written in June 1961: “I often think the realest reason I write is, having lost formal faith, I am self compelled to pray or praise. If I did not need to do it I would stop tomorrow, but there seems nothing else.” This is the type of revelation for which the novelist was not renowned: it is all the more valuable for that.

McGahern was somewhat apprehensive about what the reaction of the older man, a devout Catholic, would be to his second novel, The Dark, with its masturbatory passages and the scene in which clerical sex abuse is threatened but not carried out. But McLaverty was effusive in his praise: “The book rings with truth at every turn and it must have been a heartbreaking and exhausting book to write.” At this stage, his marriage in a registry office to Annikki Laakski had taken place and this, along with the banning of The Dark, would lead to McGahern's dismissal from his teaching post. The reaction of the public and the censorship board surprised him: “What disturbs me very much is that the book's a religious work if it's anything at all.” In the following years there are letters from London, where McGahern was obliged to go in search of work, which reveal his depressed state of mind: “I've long [...] gone past the point where I find anything [...] more than a matter of reflection in the awareness of my own stupidity and nothingness.” Of teaching, he says that it's just a way “to keep stupid flesh for a time on the stupid bone”.

There is an interruption of 12 years in the correspondence between 1967 and 1979. When McGahern next writes, it's from his home in Foxfield, Co Leitrim, where he returned to live with his second wife, Madeline Green, in 1970. The tone is considerably more upbeat. The last letter from McLaverty expresses gratitude at the story ‘Gold Watch' being dedicated to him and predicts that it will live even if critics overlook it: “If a thing is true it will remain true for perceptive readers”.

In spite of numerous invitations, the two writers never actually got to meet, which is a great pity. Thanks to the publication of this correspondence, however, we have some invaluable insights into the mindsets of two important Irish literary figures, particularly that of McGahern. We are indebted to John Killen and the Linen Hall Library for bringing this attractive and highly informative volume into the public domain.

Eamon Maher is the author of John McGahern: From the Local to the Universal (The Liffey Press). He is currently working on a second book entitled The Life and Works of John McGahern.π