ESSAY:The long relationship between the 'New Yorker' magazine and the Irish short story will be highlighted this year at Cúirt International Literary Festival. Here, Cúirt programme director MAUREEN KENNELLYlooks back at how it sustained and put bread on the table for many Irish writers in the 1950s – and how it endures today
IRISH WRITERS have carved an international reputation as masters of the short story. It's one of our greatest cultural exports and an American expert in the form of Richard Ford has christened it " thenational art form of Ireland". The Irish short story has been in domicile at the New Yorker from the 1940s right up to the present day and the publication has had a remarkable impact on its standing in the world of literature. A glance at the magazine's archive from the 1940s through to the 1960s reveals an intense concentration of stories by Frank O'Connor, Maeve Brennan, Mary Lavin and other Irish writers. Just what was it about the Irish short story that gained such a foothold with the New Yorkerand how did it impact on the form?
The New Yorkerwas established in 1925. Its founding editor, Harold Ross, had a profound empathy with writers. The New Yorker's commitment to sparkling, elegant and authentic writing was matched by Ross's aptitude for identifying outstanding writers, artists and editors. The magazine introduced the "first reading agreement" in the 1930s, whereby writers were paid a sizeable bonus in exchange for granting the magazine first refusal on all their stories. From the 1940s, the roster of writers attached to the New Yorkerwas luminous and it included John Cheever, John O'Hara, Eudora Welty and JD Salinger. In 1964, when Cheever was offered $24,000 by the Saturday Evening Postfor a first look agreement, he chose to accept a much lower amount from the New Yorkerbecause of its added prestige. Irish writers too became early beneficiaries of the New Yorkerarrangement, among them Brian Friel, who remarked, "If it weren't for the New YorkerI couldn't live".
Frank O'Connor, Mary Lavin, Benedict Kiely, and Maeve Brennan also had first reading agreements with the magazine, offering a degree of financial security and assuring their status in international literature. The amounts paid were significant – in a letter to O'Connor, his friend and editor, the renowned writer William Maxwell, refers to a quarterly cheque for $1,972 dollars, sizeable when you consider that the annual average general income in America for the previous year was $3,000. Those amounts must have appeared colossal in Ireland and surely inspired Daniel Corkery's spiteful greeting to O'Connor in 1956: "Well, if it isn't Mr O'Connor, who only writes for American magazines now". As well as the financial rewards, the Irish writers in the 1940s and 1950s were reaching audiences of 650,000, which was a staggering achievement from a country where publishing opportunities were deeply limiting. These Irish writers' early careers unfolded against a backdrop of vigorous cultural exchange between Ireland and America. The designer Sybil Connolly was taking the image of Irish peasantry (manifest in The Quiet Man) and transforming it into high fashion, and tweed became a major export to America. The Abbey Theatre with Siobhan McKenna was touring to New York. Costello's Tavern, where the profligate drinkers on the New Yorkerstaff could often be found, was run by a first generation Offaly man, and Makem and Clancy transformed the fortunes of the Aran sweater with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. Something of a transatlantic fever was afoot, exemplified by JFK's visit in 1963, and by Timemagazine's cover story New Spirit in the Auld Sodin the same year.
Back at home, draconian censorship laws deprived many Irish writers of their income with a record 1,034 books being banned in 1954. Ireland was a miniscule market offering meagre opportunities for its writers. In parallel, the New Yorkerwas haemorrhaging its best American writers to Hollywood, the novel form, alcoholism and domestic duties. The door opened for Irish writers to tumble through.
The Irish short story, with its characteristics of understated realism and subtle irony, suited the New Yorkerethos. Irish voices were original, distinctive and compelling, and they carried a quality of authenticity which mattered a great deal to the magazine. It's also true that Irish writers had an unusual gift for producing consistently high-quality short fiction over a sustained period. They were uncomplicated to work with, at ease with the magazine's famously scrupulous editing and they were hungry for the tremendous readership offered by the magazine.
For many senior New Yorkerstaff, such as Katherine White and William Maxwell, their only contact with Irish people was through "the swarming servant class", written about so savagely and humorously by Maeve Brennan. When the magazine started buying Irish stories in the 1940s and 1950s, Ireland was seen as a far-off, exotic land and American knowledge of it was actually quite limited outside direct political circles. New Yorkerwriter Brendan Gill noted that Americans at this time assumed "all Irish girls were named Mary or Bridget and boys Mike or Pat" and they were not at all sure whether Brendan was a boy or a girl. Whereas adjectives like grey, gloomy, choking, insular, frugal and provincial attach themselves readily to 1950s Ireland, it's fascinating to consider that several Irish writers were thriving in the cultural colossus of New York, which was glossy, optimistic, urbane, sophisticated and intellectual.
The wave of post-war Americanisation in Europe introduced the New Yorkerand the Saturday Evening Postto the Irish reading public. Frank O'Connor is even quoted as saying, "It is an astonishment to me how the New Yorkergets round Ireland, even in the provinces", and he took care to disguise some of his characters. Clare Boylan wrote of Mary Lavin that "she was an adored and unconventional mother who would also use a cheque from the New Yorkermagazine . . . to pile her three small daughters into her Volkswagen Beetle and head for France or Italy". Lavin's daughter Caroline Walsh recalls the vital part played by the magazine in providing their young family's income following her father's untimely death; her mother's long phone calls on a black bakelite phone, carefully ironing out the stories with the magazine's fiction editors, at a time when such a long distance call would have been both expensive and exotic.
What unites the New Yorker stories of the Irish writers at this time is their intense awareness of human loneliness, and a distinct melancholy percolates their work. They feature marginalised characters but the narratives are often fixed on a scaffold of charm and whimsy, making them more digestible for readers. Commentators often suggest that they can tell a New YorkerIrish story from a distance of several paces. The Irish grotesques of tempted priests, big-boned and big-eared maids with curious names like "Bridie" and "Josie", miserly farmers and skinny older sisters held an exoticism and enchantment for the New Yorker's staff and readership.
To this day, the short story form in America and Ireland features much exchange between writers from the two traditions, as evidenced by Richard Ford’s recent judging of the lucrative Davy Byrnes Short Story Award. What Ford has called the “high wire act of literature” is now well supported here with competitions and journals such as the Stinging Fly, and a new wave of truly exciting writers is coming through.
The New Yorkerretains its position as the highest profile and most influential publisher of short stories in the English language. Publication in the magazine was, and still is, notoriously difficult and acceptance of a story, even by such established writers as Canadian Alice Munro and William Trevor, is a major event and continues to provide a significant source of income. The continuing popularity of Irish short story writers in the United States and their sustained presence in the magazine suggests that the form is in rude health. It is hard to imagine the literary history of the New Yorkerwithout names such as Friel, O'Connor, Lavin, Brennan and Benedict Kiely and more recently William Trevor, Edna O'Brien, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Colum McCann and Roddy Doyle, and more recently again, Kevin Barry and Claire Keegan.
The New Yorker's infatuation with Irish writers seems set to endure.
As part of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, the fiction editor of the New Yorker, Deborah Treisman, will introduce three separate events in the short story form: Roddy Doyle and Mary Gaitskill, Tuesday, April 20, 8.30pm; Kevin Barry and Tessa Hadley, Wednesday, April 21, 1pm; Claire Keegan and Daniyal Mueenuddin Wednesday April 21, 8.30pm. For more see tht.ie
