Free Public Lecture - 'John McGahern's New Voice: The Writing of 'Amongst Women'

To mark the 10^th anniversary of the passing of John McGahern, The James Hardiman Library in association with the MA in Writing and the Moore Institute at NUI Galway are delighted to present a public lecture by the renowned John McGahern scholar, Denis Sampson. The lecture, 'John McGahern's New Voice: The Writing of Amongst Women' will take place on Wednesday, 27 April at 7pm in the Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway.

Denis Sampson

Sampson produced the first full-length study of McGahern’s works, Outstaring Nature’s Eye, in 1993, and his enduring critical attention to the writer culminated in his book Young John McGahern: Becoming a Novelist, published by Oxford University Press in 2012. Sampson has lectured and published widely on modern Irish writing, and he has also published a memoir, A Migrant Heart (2014). His new book from Oxford, The Found Voice: Writers' Beginnings, will be out next month.

The 30^th of March this year was the 10^th anniversary of the death of the celebrated Irish writer, John McGahern. McGahern’s work, from the 1960s up to his passing in 2006, has enthralled readers with his artistry and has engaged a succession of generations with his range of themes emanating from modern Irish history, culture and society. His reputation is as strong abroad as at home, and he is widely regarded as a master of the novel and short-story forms.

The rich John McGahern Archive at the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway preserves the documentary evidence of 'the writer at work'. In his lecture, Denis Sampson mines the Archive to trace the drafting and evolution of McGahern's 1990 novel, Amongst Women, and he reveals the ‘reinvention’ of McGahern as a writer through his writing of this major novel. In McGahern's papers, the characteristic personal traces of the writer can be found in voluminous manuscript copybooks and loose pages. The ideas that inform each work become clearer through these papers, and his artistic process is made clear in the exhaustive level of revision and redrafting he brought to his emergent novels and stories.

Looking forward to Sampson’s lecture, Dr John Kenny, John McGahern Lecturer in Creative Writing and Director of the MA in Writing, NUI Galway observed: ‘The nature of John McGahern’s Archive here at NUI Galway ideally suits it to different kinds of exploratory readers. Scholars of McGahern, or of contemporary Irish fiction and writing, naturally find it a highly valuable resource, but the papers also hold great promise for any student or devotee of writing intent on emulating the best models for creative practice and artistic dedication’.

John Cox, University Librarian, NUI Galway comments: "We treasure the John McGahern archive as an enabler of new research and are greatly looking forward to Denis Sampson's lecture as a very appropriate way of marking the tenth anniversary of John's passing."

In his lecture, Sampson will discuss unpublished drafts of Amongst Women from within the McGahern Archive and will reveal the links between the novel and some of the earlier McGahern short stories in his collections Getting Through and High Ground.

The lecture will be accompanied by an exhibition of select material from the McGahern Archive and is free of charge and open to all.

Venue: Moore Institute Seminar Room (G010), Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway

Date: Wednesday, 27 April 2016

Time: 7pm

Contact: barry.houlihan@nuigalway.ie / john.kenny@nuigalway.ie

Material from the John McGahern Archive at the Hardiman Library

John McGahern - The Writer and the Archive - RTÉ Radio 1 Book Show Special

John McGahern

The 30^th of March brings about the tenth anniversary of the passing of the acclaimed Irish writer, John McGahern. In the decade since his death, Ireland and its people, society and identity, have changed beyond recognition. One of McGahern's great achievements in his writing, in any of his accomplished forms; novel, drama, short story or essay, was an ability to get to the very heart of Ireland and especially of rural Ireland and the lives of its people. The time, place and context of McGahern's writing would be recognisable constants, vivid as any character within his writing. McGahern's writing spanned over five decades and tracked the huge social changes in Ireland across this time.

The Book Show on RTÉ Radio 1 recently broadcast a feature on John McGahern, focusing on the life and career and also his archive. It was a pleasure to have the programme host, Sinead Gleeson, visit the archive here at NUI Galway and see first-hand the collected literary legacy of one of Ireland's most accomplished and beloved authors.

The award-winning writer had a body of loyal readers around the globe from publications from the early 1960s in The New Yorker magazine, through his early novels, The Barracks (1963) The Dark (notoriously banned on grounds of indecency in 1965) and Amongst Women, (1990) to name a few. McGahern's short-story collections, such as Nightlines (1979) and High Ground (1985) drew readers to his power of expression within the contained form of the story. John's later writing would see a life's work come full-circle and culminate in such loved works as the novel That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002) and the revealing and striking Memoir (2005)

The archive of John McGahern is held with the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway. Deposited by McGahern in 2003, just three years ahead of his death, the archive is a literary treasure-trove that records not just the vast and prolific writings of McGahern, but also his literary relationships with other writers and offers a unique insight into the mind and processes of McGahern as both a writer and person.

Such unique material in the archive includes the manuscript for The End or the Beginning of Love, the unpublished novel by McGahern, that was accepted for publication by Faber and Faber in 1962, but which was withdrawn by McGahern as he believed it to be not good enough. 

McGahern's unpublished novel

Other material from this period includes a letter from William Maxwell, fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine addressed to Elizabeth (Cullinane) that is confirmation of the young McGahern's publication in the prestigious magazine. In the letter Maxwell writes that 'The John McGahern story [Strandhill, The Sea] went through' and that 'whoever handles him will be writing him to tell that it is accepted'; he goes on to state that 'if you see any more [manuscripts] of this calibre floating around Dublin, start them on their way to me.' (1963) (P71/1171)

Also from this time are two letters from John McGahern to Mary O'Malley in relation to the Threshold literary journal published by the Lyric Theatre, and found within the archive of the Lyric Theatre, also within the Hardiman Library. He asks to be considered for publication although 'I have not appeared in print' (17 January 1959) and later discusses publishing an extract from one of his novels (26 June 1962).

Drafts of Bank Holiday

The archive reveals the private and intimate world of the writer at work. The writing style of McGahern is revealing of how he worked. He wrote long-hand, often in coffee-stained school copy books and A4 notebooks. The scrawl of handwriting gives a sense of working on fleeting ideas that would often change and fluctuate. The number of drafts and revisions show McGahern rarely let go of an idea or a narrative completely but would often return to make changes, often to as much or as little as a single word or line, but which would bring the setting or characters or plot in a new direction. One short-story, Bank Holiday, has over twenty identifiable drafts alone.

The John McGahern archive consists of forty boxes of manuscripts. All evidence of 'the writer at work' is within this volume of manuscripts and covers the breadth of McGahern's writing in prose, drama, fiction and essay.  The papers give the reader a unique and otherwise impossible accessibility to the mind of McGahern. McGahern himself said of the separate worlds of the writer and the reader: "I think each of us inhabit a private world that others cannot see" – the archive brings those two private worlds together and is perhaps the only place this can happen.

Drafts of The Power of Darkness - a play by John McGahern

You can listen back to the  RTÉ Radio 1 Book Show, hosted by Sinead Gleeson here: