John McGahern
John McGahern
John McGahernis regarded as one of the most important Irish writers of the latter half of the twentieth century...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 November 1934
CountryIreland
book ideas space
Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space.
real mean australia
We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.
writing
I'd much prefer to write more quickly.
mother spiritual thinking
I think my mother was very spiritual.
mean chinese matter
The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.
book thinking differences
I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.
mean thinking catholic
I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.
distance imagination demand
The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.
beautiful mean people
Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.
printed-word church gothic
I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.
gratitude church upbringing
Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.
thinking facts serious
I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.
eight years long
I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.
thinking different grew
I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good.