BRIAN MOORE: PRIVATE PERSON:
Cook, Bruce
B nan Moore's persistent and growing reputation as a novelist seems, in in an odd way, due to the kind of BRIAN MOORE: writer he isn't, rather than the kind he PRIVATE...
...Unless they do, nothing will as real and frightening to the reader The style, once again, is the man...
...His next book, The Revoluas it must have been in his own mem- The month that Fergus was pub- tion Script, was a work of non-fiction ory-for in this, as in most other de- lished (September, 1970), an article (not his first, for he had done a Timetails, the novel closely follows the by Brian Moore appeared in The At- Life book on Ireland a few years be23 August 1974: 458 fore) which dealt with the conse- have been enveloped by a kind of plative life, the private life, the life of sequences of blood in the streets...
...They are rather tentatively and enormous ability who was stretching written with the compression and con- elliptically expressed, but they come his talent to the utmost at that point centration of short stories, deal with down to this: He sees this one--quite in his career...
...It may that when his first book appeared in bearings, and responded to his new not have provided much in the way of 1955, he suddenly emerged as a mature surroundings by capturing them in a real power and fame, but still it was and full-blown talent...
...Or a pinched Irish school book-his only novel with a Canadian trap...
...Gavin joins the Air Raid Pre- identities, and so on, he is clearly does...
...Part of that story, of Moore had carefully rendered a world upon Brian Moore as a writer, threatens course, is the consequent kidnapping wholly imaginary (for to him, per- his right to continue doing the kind and murder of Pierre Laporte, the la- haps, it is...
...siders himself a Catholic...
...Or will he confront bloody certainly the big story out of Canada Catholic Church at all, except as the Ulster directly...
...Besides, this from one to the next, no faltering of movie star...
...In a all previous times of strife in Northern bound to be some slight falling-off- period of less than a day, Mary Dunne, Ireland because of the presence of the and there was...
...Engstory of the passage to manhood of Mary Dunne and Fergus Fadden, their land must, at last, accept its responyoung Gavin Burke, whose failure to identity troubles stem at least indirectly sibility toward us, which is to rule us, qualify for university has bitterly dis- from their national origins-who they directly, totally, as part of that 'United appointed his exacting father, a Bel- are is fixed by where they are from...
...Unlike make no better beginning than to quote particulars, we see that he is not in a some, he has apparently never confused a tribute to him by the Canadian novel- literal way, Brian Moore) to Canada, the writing he does to make money ist Mordecai Richler: "Only a few hoping to match his prospects with his with his real work...
...If and neither took place in Ireland...
...It won the prestigious Seldom has the advent of a historical of their findings...
...It is the longest and the tional Observer...
...Calling themselves would defend the "straw man" that olics, too, was written at least partly cliometricians (the historians' counter- Fogel and Engerman set out to dein response to the crisis in Northern part to econometricians), the authors stroy...
...He isn't, for example a writer like Jimmy Breslin doing sports for the local NBC outlet in New York...
...The period, Fergus Fadden, a novelist and television and now caught, it must be Emperor of Ice Cream is that generic screenwriter living on the West Coast, held by whatever means if any sort of first novel that Brian Moore refused must lay the Irish ghosts of his Bel- real change is to be brought about to write at the beginning of his career...
...they ing piece of journalism...
...enough of the old bluster and optimism -as he must know-can be just as To tell us what it's like to be Judith at book's end to let him continue...
...He isn't living with a dom and independence...
...Partly because he has had a reward...
...As for explaining what that Ginger's luck is mostly bad: he live his life as a novelist at a remove sort he is-as to what his concerns has emigrated from the Irish Republic from the temptations that seem so ir- and intentions are as an artist-I could (in this, as in many other important resistible to other writers today...
...It was its own best than he may even have thought himwriter...
...But the Catholic context of the there by way of Belfast...
...book his ambitions are very largely Commonweal: 457 realized...
...Only in a relative a Canadian-born, thrice-married New television cameras there...
...And he has never contemporaries, say Brian Moore, live ambitions, as he never could in Ireland...
...1939 and the beginning of 1940, when most writers...
...The opsense, though, for he is so much the Yorker must determine, to her own pressed Catholic minority in Northern modern master that his weakest work satisfaction at least (Memento ergo Ireland has caught the attention of ranks with the strongest of many sum) just who she is...
...For although in his fic- Note the "we" and the "us...
...These are the days of This is something of which Moore ern Ireland' which our passports prothe so-called "phony war," the end of would be more deeply conscious than claim us to be...
...The Belwriter...
...He isn't a society figure...
...Still, the change lantic entitled "Bloody Ulster," which of view, it tells of the blind desire of caused in Gavin's father and a few dealt, obviously, with the civil strife Brendan Tierney, an Irish immigrant others by the bombing is a bit sudden in Northern Ireland...
...It is a very movin New York, to be a writer, an im- to be completely acceptable...
...dogs...
...This A Supplement provoked by the tone of these authors...
...From three separate points author's experience...
...Ulster people must die like the terrible destruction of that week felt, personal, and close novels he has...
...I believe that Cath- American slavery...
...For it is the treal by a cell of young French-Cana- piece seems a bit neat, as though strife there that impinges directly dian separatists...
...Blood must run in the Brian Moore does succeed in making sort who could write the intensely streets...
...Please take note that that year-and after all, Moore, a Ca- Church serves as a handy metaphor...
...the abbot, in spite of the fact that all nadian citizen, had been a newspaper- Its importance to Brian Moore, I be- the moral force is on his side, gives man in Montreal for years and knew lieve, is as a defense of the contem- in finally to Rome...
...qualified to do that...
...Not ultra-secular hyper-Berriganism-writ- the writer...
...Is it land monastery and brings the outif you prefer that phrase-treating the really about the abbot's loss of faith...
...This is no well as his memories, are directed tobert treated female sexuality, rampant little thing...
...He is the author of The of faith, Judith Hearne is as unlike most technically ambitious of all those Beat Generation and, most recently, Lis- the ordinary first novel as The Feast written before or since-and in the ten to the Blues (Scribner's...
...Can there be any wonder that self at the time they were written, for modicum of good fortune-film op- writing today should be in such straits Moore was a good 10 years out of tions on his novels have been picked (I had originally intended a reference Ireland by then...
...terrible week in 1941, the German whom he writes...
...fast past...
...what might be termed in the broadest, accurately, I think-as different from After such an effort, there was non-clinical sense, identity crises...
...vincingly about America or Americans...
...We must now become wards Autobiographical and episodic, it is the It is worth noting that with both of the English state," he writes...
...When at last, one only as they affect the individuals about first of all, the question of terrorism...
...A precise, mov- remarkable novel, which is in some ing, and carefully drawn portrait of ways his best, entitled An Answer BRUCE COOK is on the staff of the Na- an alcoholic Belfast spinster in a crisis from Limbo...
...Nor is he a Norman Mailer, running for may- BRUCE COOK or, barnstorming the college circuit when he runs out of the readies...
...Perhaps he sees himself as literally, of course, for it had to do ten by one who has said often and a sort of monk-writers often doonly with two related acts of terror- emphatically that he no longer con- laboring in isolation, offering it up...
...And interwoven It is a harrowingly intense, and in some You have to have lived here a while, through all of this, almost as fine ways a shocking and unpleasant book, and more important (and still more thread through a heavy tweed, are but An Answer from Limbo repre- difficult) you have to like us, to do the Moore's conclusions and recommendasents a peak effort by a writer of job right...
...Working next two books were written to deal aid team, and he becomes a joke to as he does, so close to his characters, with the problems-personal problems one and all, for the war itself is a such things must be discussed (if dis- and problems for him as a writerjoke to the Irish who seem so safely cussed at all) in the subtlest ways and raised by bloody Ulster...
...The the Allies had squared off with Ger- tion he had always resisted making situation in Ireland must have troubled many but the fight had not begun in large statements about cultures, national him sorely then, and no doubt it still earnest...
...Will he continue another group of separatists...
...In their passion to defend their methodchance of becoming his best known Little, Brown, $12.50 ology and their position, they often work since The Lonely Passion of claim too much for the significance Judith Hearne...
...Kingdom of Great Britain and Northfast physician...
...I, for one, that is so, then the emissary from Essentially, The Revolution Script is believe him...
...The book seems well, Rome in Catholics who visits the isa documentary-or nonfiction novel, rather than passionately, written...
...They are in their about 15 years in this country, he inperhaps that this should seem remark- way as good as any he has done, which sists he is today...
...It is just literary fellowship, met people, got his thought of as the writer's life...
...first person, it weaves Moore's obserand mother, who suffer the conse- His next two were American novels vations on what must have been a quences of that ambition...
...short novel (only 107 pages in its They are advocates, arguing their case hardback edition with lots of blank ROBERT FOGEL & pages between chapters) stands a fair STANLEY L. ENGERMAN like lawyers rather than scholars...
...and in a like the world with its struggle because of writers better known than he...
...He doesn't say naughty things on talk shows-because he doesn't appear on them...
...the city well-so why shouldn't he be the one to write it...
...change...
...There was, removed from it all...
...Let it suffice to say his way, Brian Moore has managed to Moore isn't...
...And if, for The Economics of been not only profitable but viablewhatever reason, he felt constrained American Negro Slavery sustaining the lives of slaves as well from writing directly of Northern Ire- ROBERT FOGEL & as being productive-those who have land, treating the acts of terror in Can- STANLEY L. ENGERMAN an ideological or emotional stake in ada gave him an opportunity to handle either a paternalistic master or a totally gingerly and at a distance matters that Little, Brown, $8.95 victimized slave will make these volconcerned him, personally, far more Time on the Cross: umes the subject of heated argument...
...This is a fable ostensibly insist that they have cut beneath the since Kenneth Stampp's Peculiar Inabout the future of the Catholic Church sentimentality and moralizing that they stitution introduced many of their -the old personal religious values think has plagued the historical litera- "corrections" to the literature, and Commonweal: 459...
...there...
...So much so that I believe his cautions service as part of the first aware of their importance...
...B nan Moore's persistent and growing reputation as a novelist seems, in in an odd way, due to the kind of BRIAN MOORE: writer he isn't, rather than the kind he PRIVATE PERSON is...
...No reason-except that during the time of the Cross kidnapping and the writing of the BOOKS book about it, Moore was most deeply concerned with the situation in Northern Ireland, if we are to judge from SOFT SLAVERY the passionate tone of the "Bloody Ulster" piece in The Atlantic...
...Both of the novels, too, tions...
...they will have it-provides the backat occasional odds and ends of journal- All of which should give you an ground for his third novel, The Luck ism and film-writing that have come idea of what sort of writer Brian of Ginger Coffee...
...Evidence and Methods: Much of the controversy will be What, then, about Catholics...
...It has been almost twenty years Ireland...
...able, that it should somehow bring is not to say at all that there has been He came down to New York on a distinction to him, for this used to be no development in his work...
...setting-won him the Governor GenNo, the truly difficult thing is to sit Richler was referring there to eral's prize, Canada's top literary at your desk day after day, year after Moore's first two novels, The Lonely award, and established him as a year, and do your own work-and that Passion of Judith Hearne and The Canadian writer which, in spite of is what Moore has done...
...He is simply what he is: a is the only way, really, the work can any sort in his early novels...
...This was ferent reason that it is not about the doing them...
...It's queer Feast of Lupercal...
...Because they find slavery to have the Cross kidnapping...
...Nobody, I -written here and set in the United recent trip to Belfast with memories think, has ever written as ruthlessly States...
...deeply...
...This suggests to me that of deeply personal novels that he~ has bor minister of Quebec province by Catholics was written for a much dif- done in the past...
...He had emigrated to up at crucial moments and films were to the sickness of the novel, but the Canada and taken a job on the Monactually produced from two of his crisis is generalized), when nobody treal Gazette, and his experience as an books-but owing most of all to his seems to remember anymore that the immigrant-or a "new Canadian," as willingness to live modestly and work writer's role is to write...
...Very, very few foreign ward explaining the conflict thereand predatory, quite as Moore does writers of fiction have written con- and he is, in many ways, uniquely here in his portrait of Jane Tierney...
...teacher...
...and lucrative W. H. Smith Award for study been greeted with such publicity The broad conclusions of this study him in England and was given an ex- and ballyhoo as the two volumes are not so new and revolutionary as cellent production in a television film under review, which claim to over- the authors would have us believe...
...In a way, the sort He had commented dramatically on bombers come to raid Belfast, the war of writer he is-private, devoted to the violence in that Atlantic piece: "It is suddenly no longer funny...
...Cast in the portant writer-and of those, his wife cave in, rather than change...
...But this NATHAN IRVIN HUGGINS concern must, to some extent, also have attracted him to the subject of Time on the Cross: ture...
...He is neither a friend nor an enemy of the thought to offer compensations in free- That is to say, there is no falling off Kennedy family...
...been so desperate as to sign on as a up to what I once took to be the nov- And though none of it goes quite acfull-time Professor of Creative Writing elist's primary moral responsibility, cording to his expectations, he retains at Whatever State University, for this which is to be the loser's advocate...
...adaptation starring Trevor Howard turn traditional interpretations of There are no reputable historians who last fall on CBS...
...side world in with him, changing kidnapping of James Cross, the Senior Yes, partly-and in this it is convinc- things so drastically, probably came British Trade Commissioner in Mon- ing...
...of Lupercal is from the usual second...
...And writing as an end in itself-is the only must escalate...
...be done, and there was at one time fast background of these first two made His sort is an anomaly in this age widespread agreement that the work him seem much more an Irish writer of the media freak and the celebrity was worth doing...
...Just as much as An Answer stimulated by the sights of "this place and honestly of that quality of literary from Limbo, the two-1 Am Mary which still, foolishly, I sometimes call aspiration in extremis-nor, for that Dunne and Fergus-catch the pulse 'home.'" His eye-witness reports, as matter, has anyone this side of Flau- and feeling of American life...
...The debilitating to a writer as the celebrity Hearne...
Vol. 100 • August 1974 • No. 19
