Mary O’Donoghue: ‘The first paragraph is where it’s at, where possibilities are asserted’

Having read your wonderful short story, The Sweet Forbearance in the Streets, when it won our Legends of the Fall short story competition back in 2013, I was particularly excited to read your debut collection, The Hour After Happy Hour, published by Stinging Fly Press, another mark of quality, and it delivers richly on that promise. What’s rare is wonderful, of course, but is writing a slow process for you?

Thank you – and yes, I write at what must seem a slow pace, though I prefer to think of it as unhurried. The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has a poem, Airmail, in which he writes, “Down here work goes slowly. / Often I steal a glance at the clock.” That’s my process, with occasional side-eyes at the Clock of the Long Now. This device supposedly lives under a mountain and is set to tick for 10,000 years.

How would you describe the collection thematically and stylistically?

The book moves through waiting places and limbo states, very often situated in emigration and transit. I’m told the style is necessarily unsentimental. Meanwhile, in style, I’m looking for sentences that won’t let go.

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Unusually, it begins and ends with a story called The Rakes of Mallow. How come?

I would like to explain, but I want readers to find the reason for two stories having the same title.

You are senior fiction editor at the Boston-based literary magazine AGNI. What do you look for in a story and who for you are the masters of the form?

I look for confidence in a voice that compels the reader from the first paragraph – the first paragraph is where it’s at, where possibilities are asserted. By confidence I also mean trust in the short story as the writer’s chosen form. The short story has many ways to bring something new. To quote Barry Hannah, “Thrill me”.

I prefer not to use the word “master”, so maybe we’ll say “magician”. I count all the excellent Irish short story writers of the last 10 years in this company. I also name Joy Williams, Tatyana Tolstaya, Gina Berriault, Rachel Ingalls and Amy Hempel, all of them flinty and funny, following Maeve Brennan’s wake.

You grew up on the edge of the Burren in Co Clare and have lived in the US for more than 20 years? How do those very different experiences play out in your writing?

My roots are rural, and my American life is urban. I find these experiences amicable in the syntax of my stories. I try to make durable sentences – rocky, implacable – within modern paragraphs that move with both speed and doubt.

You also translate Irish-language poetry by Seán Ó Ríordáin, Louis de Paor and Colm Breathnach, among others. What inspired this?

I’m a fervent translator. Translation keeps me attuned to the language I might otherwise have lost or let dwindle. It’s an enlivening project, and I hope I do right by these poets.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

Yes, but haphazardly. It was in Oaxaca, Mexico, looking for where DH Lawrence briefly resided. It’s said he was mistaken for Jesus in the streets of this city. Up and down the street my husband and I went, not finding the number, until a rainstorm damned our effort.

Who do you admire the most?

No one named person. Instead, I most admire the kind of person who deepens both their art and their way in the world.

You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?

In no situation would I accept the role of a supreme leader. Except maybe to eliminate supremacy and then vanish – job done.

Your most treasured possession?

So much depends on a red espresso pot – the Wordle, writing, general psychic weather. The espresso pot is a quotidian treasure.

What is the most beautiful book that you own?

Hmm. Beauty is debatable here, but I do like having a handsomely stout green-bound 1927 copy of the Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, compiled and edited by Rev Patrick S Dinneen and published by the Irish Texts Society.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

I’d prefer to invite living writers over dead ones. And the room would host the writers of exquisite short novels and the writers of extraordinary long novels: Juan Rulfo chatting with Ingeborg Bachmann; Silvina Ocampo in full flow with Halldór Laxness.

What is your favourite quotation?

“I am human, so nothing human is alien to me.” While I don’t have favourite words to abide by, every so often I resort to Terentius, the African Roman playwright. It’s believed he died at the age of 25 in a shipwreck.

A book to make me laugh?

The Irish Times has great coverage of literary prizes, so you might find Edward St Aubyn’s novel Lost for Words wickedly funny. And I’d pair it with the acerbic non-fiction book My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard, for grimmer, briefer laughs.

A book that might move me to tears?

I recall my reaction to the end of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, which I read 20 years ago. Set in 1970s India, this novel of friendship, poverty, refugeeism, violence and much more is toughly beautiful. It will take you much further than mere tears. You’re a goner.