How John McGahern’s sin was compounded in the minds of ‘careful and hostile’ interrogators

Hard to believe it’s Easter and still only March. These movable feasts can pass by before you even know it. Hard to believe too that it’s 18 years today since John McGahern, that grand man and wonderful writer, died, at the age of 71. He was unassuming by nature, with a sharp wry wit, and he died too young.

I interviewed him first in the late 1980s. He selected the Long Hall pub on South Great George’s Street in Dublin as the venue. We got on so well. It helped that we shared a similar background, rural and west of Ireland. Though he wasn’t a drinker, really, the conversation turned to his favourite pubs in my hometown, Ballaghaderreen. The subsequent article was framed there in Durkin’s bar for decades afterwards.

Over following years I met him at summer schools I reported on. He was always warm and friendly, and I felt privileged just to be in his company. Writing like that, makes me feel humble.

His 1965 novel The Dark was banned and he was fired from his teaching job in Clontarf by then archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid. The experience would have soured a lesser man/writer. Not McGahern.

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He handled it with typical grace and humour, as in a meeting at the time with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation board, including then general secretary DJ Kelleher.

McGahern recalled how “they were careful and hostile. Some of the men had taken whiskey to brace themselves for the meeting. Word had leaked out through the newspapers that I had married a Finnish woman in a register office.”

Kelleher, who “had also braced himself with whiskey, allowed his irritation with me to overcome his caution. “If it was just the auld book, maybe – maybe – we might have been able to do something for you, but with marrying this foreign woman you have turned yourself into a hopeless case entirely,” he said. ‘And what anyhow entered your head to go and marry this foreign woman when there are hundreds of thousands of Irish girls going around with their tongues out for a husband?’ he added memorably, especially since not many of them had been pointed in my direction.”

RIP, John. We shall not see your likes again and remain the poorer for that.

In Memoriam, “in memory of”, from Latin memoria, for memory

inaword@irishtimes.com