Just an allusion: the joys of the literary reference

In the title story of my new collection, I was tempted to make the following bad pun: ‘A bane of drones’. It makes sense in the context, but the publishers of the anthology in which the story first appeared queried why I didn’t just name the popular sword and sorcery series. I replied that I was worried in case of some legal back lash from a powerful production company; the publisher never mentioned it again.

Reader, I made the pun!

Having to review, edit, and sequence galley proofs for publication afforded me a drone’s eye view of the mosaic of fifteen stories that comprise the collection. It revealed to me how many cameo appearances from the literary world occur across the stories. Readers of a certain vintage will recall the Quinn Martin productions on telly, usually detective shows on a Saturday, before Match of the Day, such as Cannon or The Fugitive. The opening credits would usually end with a voice over announcing ‘With Special Guest Star…’ who was probably some erstwhile movie actor down on her luck. Well, my drone revealed to me the number of special guest stars in these stories.

We have the Shakespeare character whose name is in the title of that story; there is the obvious litany of literati in Shelf Life 1; even George and Lenny turn up as a pair of school caretakers; The Late Gatz, the final story speaks for itself.

The Irish Times view on Irish banking: some welcome new competition

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Gerard Howlin: We now know which hospitals are overspending and which are delivering. Let’s fund them accordingly

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Ulster hold on for crucial bonus point win over Benetton

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Quiet quitting: You always had workers who did 9-5 but it’s a creeping malaise, employers say

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All of which brought to the fore the often allusive nature of what I do. My writing, I realised, tends more to the connotative than the denotative but hopefully without stinting on enjoyment or entertainment. I can imagine an editor, reading this article, counselling caution about me using terms such as ‘connotative’ and ‘denotative’; the definitions or fineries of which would require another article. I stick by the terms though, aware of the recent popularity in memoir writing and auto-fiction; both of which have their place, but sound too straight forward and anecdotal. The nearest I come to it in the collection, is A Beat Belfast, which I do subtitle as ‘memoir’.

The ‘allusory’ is one of the reasons why, in the final editing for the collection, I decided to subtitle Shelf Life 2 as a ‘search engine story’. Admittedly, it is a gimmicky piece, almost a pub-quiz story, with an even worse pun when I name a character Samuel Brexit.

Reader, I apologise.

But I termed the story that in response to, and alarm at, the following statement from Colin McCabe in his excellent collection of essays Perpetual Carnival (Oxford University Press, 2017). He states: ‘The development of literary language under the impact of the media, both at the level of syntax and vocabulary, but also… because of the changed position of the book in the ecology of information and entertainment, is such that the classics of English Literature… are extremely difficult texts for our students to read.’ If someone discovers Bukowski from reading Shelf Life 2; or ends up reading Dashiell Hammett because of the cameo appearances in the Gatsby inspired story, then the collection will have had some worth. Maybe, they’ll pick up a copy of Mrs Dalloway and so doing discover the magic of Virginia Woolf. Sara Paretsky or James M. Cain anyone? Although, these were not the original reasons for all the ‘guest stars’; the drone’s view revealed them to me after the event.

Finally, regarding the title of this piece, apologies to British trio Imagination who released the song Just an Illusion in February 1982. (Reader, I had to google that!).

The Welcome Centre is published by Arlen House and will be launched on January 26th at the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB.