Alan Titley is the most important prose writer in Irish since Máirtín Ó Cadhain. He is also one of the most inventive, multifaceted, and unclassifiable.
In terms of his formal range and linguistic dexterity, Titley has no peers among English-language writers in Ireland (only Kevin Barry comes close) and you have to turn to Italian writer Italo Calvino to find another European author with a comparable curiosity in the boundless possibilities of form and language.
Commenting a number of years ago on the polymath sensibilities of the Cork author, the late Seán Ó Tuama observed in an incisive review of the remarkable short story collection Eiriceachtaí agus Scéalta Eile (1987) that Titley would give a Mastermind a migraine.
Máirtín Coilféir, the author of a highly regarded monograph on Titley’s work, has brought together a group of writers and scholars to try to capture the variety and extent of Titley’s creative practice. Particularly eloquent are the homages by fellow artists such as the prose writer Darach Ó Scolaí or poet Aifric Mac Aodha, who salute not only Titley’s enduring hostility to writerly complacency and conventionality but also his acute sensitivity to the poetic resources of the Irish language.
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Gearóid Denvir, in his engaging discussion, clearly situates Titley’s first novel Meirscrí na Treibhe (1978) in a tradition of postcolonial writing and thinking. Titley’s early preoccupation with the question of human dignity and its political contexts is taken up again in Rióna Ní Fhrighil and Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha’s sensitive exploration of human rights’ questions in some of Titley’s later writings. Ian Ó Caoimh offers an elegant foray into literary cannibalism in the dark tale Stiall Fial Fheola (1980) while Fionntán de Brún’s spirited engagement with the historical novel An Fear Dána (1993), is a highlight of the collection alongside Máirín Nic Eoin’s characteristically astute assessment of Titley’s relation to the art of criticism.
Claire Marie Dunne and Seosamh Ó Murchú rightly praise Titley’s innovative approach to writing for children and young adults in Irish, and the inexhaustible diversity of Titley’s outputs is further emphasised in Máire Ní Annracháin’s deft picking out of the travel motif in three of Titley’s prose works, in Philip O’Leary’s insightful discussion of the verse novel, An Bhean Feasa (2014), and in Máirtín Coilféir’s careful analysis of the crime fiction, Lámh, Lámh Eile (2018).
Titley is one of those rare writers – like Woolf, Joyce, Beckett – who do not so much find readers as create them. The extent to which he has taught us to read differently in Irish is persuasively demonstrated in each page of this welcome new addition to critical writings on a writer who knows no rest.
Michael Cronin is professor of French at Trinity College Dublin
