Books

Rakes progress as Cork regresses

Anthony Hartnett on the inspiration for his novel, Requiem for a City

Anthony Hartnett: Cork is indeed a bleak symbol of the “vulgar fest” that O’Reilly defines as contemporary Ireland.

Anthony Hartnett
Fri Apr 8 2022 - 06:20

Requiem for a City began its life as a pub bet that went too far. My increasing despair at Celtic Tiger Ireland and how it has developed, combined with a past social life that included some colourful rakish types, led me initially to write a few satirical sketches until one of these libertines bet that there was a novel in the making.

This idea was given added impetus by two sources – an Emily O’Reilly speech and a scathing article on Cork city by Paddy Woodworth. O’Reilly’s comments hit a chord: “the vulgar fest that is much of modern Ireland. The rampant, unrestrained drunkenness, the brutal, random violence that infects the smallest of our townlands, the incontinent use of foul language…… the fracturing of our community life”.

So too with Woodworth’s comments on Cork’s “pragmatic and philistine values” and the “comforting prospect offered by the parochial mirror”. For me, Corkonian notions of the “real Republic” and the importance of their city (“the Venice of the north” as one tourist brochure described it) are so ridiculous.

These ideas, together with my despair at a failed education system and at a younger generation which knows nothing and cares less, led me to pen Requiem for a City, more Swiftian rant than conventional novel, where plot and character development take second place to the satire.

READ MORE

The work’s narrative viewpoint is that of three highly literate but ruthless, very non-PC rakes who carouse in the city’s various pubs, with occasional visits to west Cork. I didn’t have any particular plot in mind to begin with – apart from seeing where the rakes would get to in their quest for romantic liaisons.

While the work is sprinkled with references to literature, art, music and science, the social world they encounter is that of trogs (troglodytes) and lowlifes who instill the city with an atmosphere of violence and threat. Indeed there are occasional touches of the phantasmagoric (shades of Otto Dix and George Grosz) in their nocturnal adventures. Here also they encounter the Frosties (snooty but good-looking women) and the Motleys (“a clique of guys, all over forty, crumpled up, in varying stages of decrepitude”) as well as odious male characters such as Satan – “lecherous, uneducated, sly, untrustworthy, insincere... who inflicted all kinds of psychological and physical abuse on past and present girlfriends”.

Woodworth’s scathing essay is titled Internal Exile in the Second City but ironically for me it is not only the outsider who feels alienated, as the experiences of the three rakes reveal. There is Murphy, a kind of spiritual atheist, whose rare experiences of the numinous (encountered in works such as Bach’s Mass in B minor) are negated by his perception of the human race (“non-league football”); Kearney, a cynical “Richard Dawkins man” who makes Samuel Beckett seem like an optimist; and Molloy, an incorrigible Welsh tomcat. These are endlessly exasperated with most people they encounter – boring types who spend their entire lives talking about meaningless functional matters.

Consider Kearney’s experience in a cafe with a group of teachers: “He had just bought a stunning book on Vermeer as he was of late especially taken by the master’s sublime View of Delft. This particular work held him in thrall with its pellucid evocation of a summer morning in 1660, its sheer brilliance in capturing a moment in time with such poetic insight, ‘the light of fulfilled creation’ as one critic put it. He had placed the book on the table as they all had coffee yet not one of the company passed a single comment or expressed even the remotest interest in Vermeer. Instead it was the usual banal conversation about mortgages, clothes, soccer and sprogs.”

The rakes’ cavalier cynicism and nefarious attitudes towards women in general will make some wince but c’est la vie alas. (Are we to stop listening to Mozart’s Don Giovanni?). In any case, counterpointing the parochial and nightmarish world of the city, I’ve created three female characters who regularly challenge the rakes’ unacceptable perceptions.

These purely fictional creations represent a more idealised world of intellect and beauty. There is the ethereal Jane, an Oxford postgrad who is on the brink of discovering the identity of the author of the great medieval romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and who reminds Murphy of “one of those beautiful women in a Chagall painting who floats effortlessly over village houses”. For the rakes she is the “Renaissance nymph” who can play the Goldberg Variations as easily as she can deal with the rough and tumble world beyond Academia.

Then there is the troubled Emily, an academic who is married to a boring and frugal Scot, and who seeks occasional solace in the transcendent world of Beethoven’s late string quartets. Finally there is Sadie, a west Cork artist and polymath who is highly amused by the antics of the rakes.

These visit Schull in west Cork at her invitation where they enjoy the convivial atmosphere of the local pubs and where they have endless, witty arguments (on such topics as the role of the artist in society, the afterlife, meaning in modern art) while seeking more romantic conquests. However, the recent murder of a German woman, and the threatening presence of a violent local whose wife is having an affair with Molloy, cast a shadow over their stay.

I bring the two worlds of the novel together in the experiences of a visiting American woman, another of the more interesting women the rakes encounter, and one whose personality gives the work some of its optimism and light:

“She had presence and style and had the most amazingly beautiful skin which made her seem far younger than she was. It was in fact almost impossible to believe she was American at all. There was an almost Mozartian lightness about her, a kind of ethereal grace. If the nymph was the Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, then she was Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. As the morning lingered she got Molloy by himself in a sunny corner, having dazzled the company with a witty talk on the poetry of Richard Wilbur no less.”

It is she who makes Molloy realise “the meaninglessness of his life, the futility of his liaisons, the superficiality of his relationships, his disgraceful fickleness, his lack of a bottom line, his gross amorality, his unending conveyor belt of lies and half-lies.” Towards the end of the work she too encounters the dark side of city life as some local “trogettes” slash her face with a razor just for the fun of it (an incident taken from real life alas).

I’ve kept an occasional anger simmering as the rough, parochial and philistine atmosphere of Irish life drives the rakes to near despair. Cork is indeed a bleak symbol of the “vulgar fest” that O’Reilly defines as contemporary Ireland. It exists only at a functional level, with its mediocre architecture, violent streets, impoverished cultural life and parochial atmosphere.

However, despite the occasional whiff of cordite, the overall tone is breezy and witty as the rakes encounter the best and worst of human nature in their wanderings. On a note of optimism, I include intermittent surprises that lift their world out of the parochial quagmire they find themselves in – surprises such as the ethereal Helene Grimaud playing Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in Bantry House in the closing pages. As Corolanius declares, “There is a world elsewhere”.