So Little and So Much

Abstract

When John McGahern died four years ago, many of the tributes that followed hailed him as the finest Irish novelist of his generation. The previous year had seen the publication, to great critical acclaim, of his deeply moving retelling of his upbringing, Memoir (2005). Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories (2006), which followed his death, was if anything even more warmly received. The time since has furthered this sense of a writer now firmly in the Irish literary canon, a stellar reputation secure. That dubious posthumous fate, an annual summer school, has been established in his honour, accompanied by the publication of two volumes of The John McGahern Yearbook – a strange example (rather like another Irish periodical, Field Day Review) of the academic journal as expensive coffee-table book, with beautifully reproduced photos of McGahern and facsimiles of his manuscripts accompanying the usual essays and appreciations. There now appears Love of the World, a 400-page collection of almost all his non-fiction prose, scrupulously edited by Stanley van der Ziel, with a typically engaging introduction by Declan Kiberd. Such a volume demands consideration in its own right, of course, but also prompts reflection on the nature of McGahern's, now so highly regarded, achievement, as well as his place in Irish fiction more generally.