PROFILE SEBASTIAN BARRYSebastian Barry has quietly taken his position at the front of the Man Booker prize pack, which is no more than he deserves, writes Eileen Battersby
ALL THE WHILE, as attention, speculation and interview space looked towards Joseph O'Neill's pre-race favourite Netherland, particularly in the days leading up to this week's Man Booker Prize shortlist announcement, another Irish writer, Sebastian Barry, was quietly being left to his own considerable devices. Having already been Booker and Impac shortlisted for his bestselling Great War novel, A Long Long Way, as well as being internationally honoured as a playwright, Barry is a serious, sophisticated artist possessed of a Yeatsian tone that underlines his apolitical vision of Ireland's grim history.
When the shortlist dust settled on Tuesday, there was no Netherland, yet Barry's strange, luminous and beautiful interweaving of lives, The Secret Scripture, was not only a deserving contender, it is now the favourite to win - as long as the judges don't decide it is too beautiful and too artistic, and instead favour the mundane forensics of Philip Hensher's dutiful epic The Northern Clemency over Barry's marvellous theatricality, with its echoes of Brian Friel's Faith Healer (1979). Another possible obstacle to a Barry win could be the youthful exuberance of Australian Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole.
Barry probably wouldn't mind if Toltz, the latest literary boy wonder, got the nod. After all, Barry became a writer at 22, and in 1982 published Macker's Garden, which was followed by two novellas and two collections of poetry, before a remarkable prose work appeared in 1987. The Engine of Owl-Light consists of six interwoven stories, each told in a particular voice. Complex, daring and ambitious, it divided critics but remains the work readers should now look at. Even from this early point in his career, Barry, who had already begun to look towards the theatre, was something of a literary boy wonder, and had made it clear that language was his abiding passion. His literary voice remains one of heightened, at times even overpowering, lyricism. His characters are alert to the beauty and menace in the ordinary.
Roseanne, the old woman whose complex version of the past is central to The Secret Scripture, recalls her life as it was, or may have been, but also the distant, physical world she once lived in: "Always the deluge of rain falling on Sligo, falling on the streets big and little, making the houses shiver and huddle like people at a football match. Falling fantastically, in enormous amounts, the contents of a hundred rivers. And the river itself, the Garravoge, swelling up, the beautiful swans taken by surprise, riding the torrent, being swept down under the bridge and reappearing the other side like unsuccessful suicides, their mysterious eyes shocked and black, their mysterious grace unassailed. How savage swans are even in their famous beauty."
There are two voices: that of Roseanne, who although a century old, speaks with a vivid, lively voice belying her great age and also her story. In contrast to her lyric memories is the journal kept by Dr Grene, the psychiatrist of the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. He is interested in Roseanne and this interest becomes something far more intense when the old lady quietly comforts him after she realises that Grene's wife has died. The bond between them develops into the heart of the narrative. Yet again this novel summons characters from his previous work, such as The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) and The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (1995) - Barry loves connections and continuity.
Born into the Dublin bohemia of architect Francis Barry and actor Joan O'Hara in 1955, Barry was one of three children. The magical O'Hara, who died last year, shared her son's love for language. She could always be relied upon to snatch the perfect word from the air. Once, during an interview, she asked where I thought she should be photographed. "How about in that tree?" I suggested. "That's a good idea, I like that," and she duly climbed into the tree.
O'Hara passed on her other-worldly air, if not her tree-climbing skills, to her son. She also gave him a love of her native Sligo, which provides such a powerful setting for the new novel. Sligo was also the setting for Eneas McNulty - the central character of which fills a small yet crucial role in The Secret Scripture.
Whereas O'Hara was playful, Sebastian Barry, who is witty, is also deliberate and slightly pained. Known to be generous to other writers, he is also protective, even defensive of them. With his soulful expression, he does seem more like a 19th-century man of letters and his writing has always retained a rhetorical, graceful romanticism. The present does not appear to have drawn him as intently as it has so many other Irish writers of his generation. The Pride of Parnell Street, with its unconvincingly lyric working-class speech, is an incongruous work. His is the least brash voice, and the most mythic; a Barry play creates its own sense of another time. It is as if he sees the artistry of history. Prayers of Sherkin, one of his most original works, is a haunting account of the slow death of an English religious sect who sought new hope on Sherkin Island off the coast of Co Cork during the 1890s. It was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1990, when Joan O'Hara played Sarah. Alison Deegan, who took the role of Fanny Hawke, later married Barry and is the mother of his three children. The family live in Wicklow.
TWO YEARS BEFORE Prayers of Sherkin reached the main Abbey stage, Barry had already impressed with Boss Grady's Boys, the story of two elderly brothers, Mick and Josey, living in a small hill farm on the Cork/Kerry border. The genius of the piece is the humour and pathos with which their relationship is explored. Late in the action, Josey becomes upset and exclaims: "I know nothing. I am a cretin." To which Mick responds: "You're my brother. If you were ever a cretin, I was one too."
The Steward of Christendom, which was first performed in London's Royal Court Theatre in 1995, proved Barry's defining moment. A powerful text was brought majestically to life by Donal McCann, in the finest performance of his career. The steward, Thomas Dunne, former chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, now bedridden in the county home, struggles to escape Ireland's history, as well as his own. For all the praise directed at the writer, Barry invariably paid tribute to his actor. Its success was followed by Lizzie Finn, which Barry wrote for his wife. In it, the eponymous heroine attempts the difficult passage from life as an English seaside music-star to a new existence in an Anglo-Irish big house.
Barry, now a twice Booker-shortlisted novelist, must smile when he sees himself yet again described as a "playwright". It is interesting to consider that this writer, who began his career as a poet, has apparently, when asked to write a new play, pointed to some of his poems. These can serve, and indeed have served, as sources for his plays. White Woman Street (1992), set in the Ohio plains during Easter 1916, was originally intended as a novel.
A quick glance at Barry's literary career would suggest a charmed experience. Here is a gifted, respected writer who, having read English and Latin at Trinity College and chosen his craft as his life's calling, quickly won approval. He has also succeeded in using history in an effective, evocative way without ever resorting to dogged polemic. But in common with most other mortals involved in the arts, Barry has also suffered criticism. By the opening of the disappointing political satire Hinterland in 2002, beauty was the word most associated with his work. Hinterland depicted the life of a delusional politician named Johnny Silvester, who had a great deal in common with Charles Haughey - even to the extent that he presented Margaret Thatcher with a Georgian teapot. Aside from the crudeness of the lampooning, it was poor theatre from the hand of an accomplished playwright.
Barry was openly devastated at the criticism and defended the play in a confused way, leaving some doubts as to whether the Haughey similarities were only coincidental (if glaringly so), while he also spoke about Ireland's poor treatment of writers. He made no attempt to laugh off the criticism and revealed exactly how sensitive he is. Jennifer Johnston, his literary mentor, publicly chastised the play's critics - sending a letter to this paper denouncing this writer. Barry recovered. A new novel, Annie Dunne, about two old women living in 1950s Wicklow, was published that year. Within three years, another novel, A Long Long Way, with its connection to The Steward of Christendom, had appeared. It introduced Barry to another arena - that of literary bunfights.
John Banville's The Sea went on to win the prize, yet A Long Long Way has retained a high profile - it was on the Impac short list and was also chosen as Dublin's 2007 One City, One Book. Although the narrative twist in The Secret Scripture becomes obvious once Dr Grene reveals something about his past, it does not distract from the beauty of this engaging, graceful book that carries its collective horrors with such wilful ease. The language flows and so does the story. Sebastian Barry makes sense of the present by drawing on the past.
CV SEBASTIAN BARRY
Who is he?Major international playwright and novelist
Why in the news?This week, he was Booker short-listed for the second time in three years
Most appealing characteristic:Dreamy, slightly distracted, gentle, good manners
Most annoying characteristic:Looking hurt
Most likely to say:"All histories have an afterlife"
Least likely to say:"How many copies have I sold?"