Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.
This one wrecked me. As I knew it would. In the way all good literature ought.
I missed out on the hype surrounding At Swim's release. So it wasn't until years later I crossed paths with it, but within the first week I'd heard mention of it, it was mentioned three different times, so I bought it. Plus, both the clothbound and paperback covers were gorgeous, which helps.
I have a Cataloging in Publication fetish* -- the first thing I do with a new book is flip to the copyright page to discover how the Library of Congress has catalogued it. Here is At Swim:
1. Ireland--History--Easter Rising, 1916--Fiction. 2. Dublin (Ireland)--Fiction. 3. Male friendship--Fiction. 4. Teenage boys--Fiction. 5. Gay youth--Fiction.
Isn't it pretty? Isn't it magical? Each time I read CIP data, I feel like it's a secret incantation that will unlock the work at hand.
The next thing I do is read the endorsements, which are ranked. Non-American news media endorsements get top billing, followed by non-conglomerate owned American news media, followed by conglomerate owned American news media, followed by other authors -- which is always sketchy. Sometimes other authors say useful and true and brilliant things about one another's works. Sometimes it's just a big circle jerk.
So. Here was what Murrough O'Brien of The Independent on Sunday (UK) had to say about At Swim: "A story of such tenderness, wit, and metaphysical conviction that you might well be tempted to have it placed on your breast when the earth takes you."
I thought two things when I read that: 1.) I'd never read such a loving endorsement before. And 2.) I'd never suspected a reviewer so full of shit.
And here is what Richard Canning of the regular ol' The Independent (UK) had to say: "Mesmerizing, sophisticated, intense, nearer to the truth of our lives than most established writers dream of ... There is no crisis in fiction except for those who choose not to read it. Don't miss out."
While I was waiting for At Swim to arrive, I cruised Amazon.com reviews and blog reviews and established media reviews, and was really irked by how often At Swim was referred to as a "gay novel." Another reviewer addressed this, stating that At Swim was "a gay novel in the same way that Beloved was a black novel." Which I couldn't agree with more. After about an hour of reading so many people fall all over themselves admitting that yes, gasp, even though the 3 main characters are gay, you don't have be gay to read this book, I'd decided that I wasn't going to even address (here) the gayness or notgayness of the novel. Because really, it shouldn't matter, right?
Well, yes and no.
Here's the thing: it is a gay novel. It's also an Irish novel. And a historical novel. And a war novel. And a psychological novel. And a bildungsroman. And you can't talk about it at all, without talking about these things. Or mentioning its incandescence. Or what a joy, a complete and unadulterated joy it is to read.
Broadly it is this story: two young Irish men, one poor and one more poor, both smart, only one "properly" educated, both coming of age on the threshold of a revolution. The one, Jim, is shy and devout, the son of a rather ridiculous but endearing shopkeeper. The other, Doyler, is the brash, heretical, cripple; son of Jim's father's old army pal. The young men reconnect at the Forty Foot, a great jut of rock that serves as a popular bathing spot, and make a pact that Doyler will teach Jim how to swim, and in one year, on Easter Sunday of 1916, they will swim out to sea, out to Muglins Rock and "claim that island for themselves."
Of course, we all know what happened Easter Week of 1916. But watching the events of the Easter Rising unfold in these pages was in many ways like learning about it for the first time.
Meanwhile, Jim and Doyler fall in love with one another. Only, it's 1915. And they're Catholic. And they don't yet have a vocabulary for what it is they feel. Here:
Slow and affecting, the soldier-speaker went on. Did ever a man, he asked, have more of heroic stuff in him than Wolfe Tone? Did ever a man go more gaily and gallantly about a great deed? Did ever a man love so well? Was ever a man so beloved? "For myself," he said, speaking slow and a little shyly, "I would rather have known Wolfe Tone than any man of whom I have ever heard or ever read."
Jim knew this man's heart was deep and true, for he made Jim wish for an equal love and an equal truth in his heart. He was swept by a great desire to take hold Doyler's hand and tell him in his ear, That's how I think of you, that's exactly how I think of you.
The axis of this little world during these tumultuous years is the third protagonist -- MacMurrough, one of the most bewitching characters I've ever known.
Oh, MacMurrough. MacMurrough, MacMurrough, MacMurrough. MacEmm. How did I get by before you?
Prior to reading At Swim, Ian McEwan's Atonement easily came to mind as the most psychologically astute novel I've read in recent years. Brideshead Revisited as the most beautifully sad. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay as the most sparkling and magnetic. (I could do this all day, but you get the point). And then along comes little At Swim, and I feel as if I've never read anything before this. Or that, it was all preface to this.
Critics and non-critics alike have compared O'Neill to Joyce. At Swim to Ulysses. In full disclosure, I have never read anything by Joyce. So I can't speak with any authority about how accessible or inaccessible this language is in comparison. It's true that it's a very dense read. And that I didn't know what the hell O'Neill was talking about half the time. And that I would have very much appreciated footnotes. But none of these was a detraction in any way. Like listening to opera -- I don't know what they're singing, but it's beautiful. There were dozens of times throughout the book where I'd get lost, have to go back and reread several times. And there were times when the book felt like one big Irish inside joke. But even so, it was beautiful. It never irritated me, and reading it never felt like work.
I feel like I owe MacMurrough more than the previous shout out. But, again, what to say? That I love him? That I miss him? That I, too, want it to be all right for him? When we're first introduced, MacMurrough has come back to Ireland after spending two years in a hard labor camp on account of "some buggery at Oxford" and is settling awkwardly in his ancestral home, with his proud, revolutionary spinster aunt. He is predatory and dandified. He smokes Turkish cigarettes and watches the boys in the sea from his garden and keeps company with Scrotes, Nanny Tremble and Dick. He is often abrasively honest, especially about himself and his shortcomings. He wants a different world for Jim and Doyler than the one that jailed him for his Oxford tryst. And in wanting so, discovers he wants a different Ireland for them as well, than the one so heavily yoked by British colonialism.
Again:
MacMurrough pursed his lips. I want it to be all right for him, he said. For both of them.
--Help them.
--I have procured the one his suit. The other apparently can clothe himself. It should seem the extent of my capacity to assist.
--Help them make a nation, if not once again, then once for all.
--What possible nation can you mean?
--Like all nations, Scrotes answered, a nation of the heart. Look about you. See Irish Ireland find out its past. Only with a past can it claim a future. Watch it on tramcars thumbing through its primers. Only a language its own can speak to it truly. What does this language say? It says you are a proud and ancient people. For a nation cannot prosper without it have pride. You and I, MacMurrough, may smile at the fabulous claims of the Celt. We may know that the modern Irishman as much resembles the Gael of old as he resembles the Esquimau or the Kafir on the Hindu Kush. And we may believe he is the better for that. But no matter. The struggle for Irish Ireland is not for truth against untruth. It is not for the good against the bad, for the beautiful against the unbeautiful. These things will take care of themselves. The struggle is for the heart, for its claim to stand in the light and cast a shadow its own in the sun.
--Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literatures for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light.
Like many stories, this one too is a love story. And in so being, it is MacMurrough who experiences the most transformation. We watch as love takes hold him and makes him something new. He is at first bewildered, then resigned, then madcap engaged, then resigned once more. And like so many love stories, this one too is a tragedy. It's a tragedy about the things love doesn't protect us from -- death, mainly, but the smaller deaths as well, heartache and disappointment; but it's also about the things love calls us towards, in spite of what little protection it offers -- ecstasy and joy and hope and desire and possibility, however fleeting they may be.
So ... it's not that I want you to just read it. It's that I want to make a gift of it to you. Could I, I'd rent a chalet in the forest or the mountains, and I'd make you and keep you a fire going. I'd see to it that you had wine or whiskey or hot chocolate, and in the course of it, you'd likely need all three. And I'd be very very very quiet, while you read. While you allowed this book to clear run away with you in the most lovely and extraordinary and reckless and necessary way.
Remember what Murrough O'Brien said? About wanting to be buried with this book? He was right. I have so many, so many, books I want to read, that usually, as soon as I finish one, I hop out of bed, and place it back on my shelf, to make room on the bedside table for the next in line. When I finished At Swim, I couldn't let go. I didn't want to be so physically separated from it. I couldn't even bring myself to put it back on the bedside table. Instead, I tucked it against my chest and slept with it.
If we're allowed to say that stories can save our life, then surely this is that story. Surely it is that miraculous.
Ed. Note: referring to the following definition of fetish -
Fetish: an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency (Random House Dictionary, 2009).
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