SOURCE: Skelton, Robin. “Aidan Higgins and the Total Book.” Mosaic 10, no. 1 (fall 1976): 27-37.

In the following essay, Skelton asserts that Higgins is working toward “the Total Book” in his fiction, in that he is “exploring the possibilities of linguistic innovation.”

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927 in County Kildare and educated at Clongowes Wood College, after which he became a member of a marionette troupe and, with his wife, toured Europe and Africa. Since then he has lived for different periods in Dublin, London, Berlin and Spain. His book of short stories Felo de Se (called Killachter Meadow in the U.S.A.) was published in 1960, and his two novels, Langrishe Go Down and Balcony of Europe, in 1966 and 1972 respectively.¹

This bald summary of Higgins' varied experience may serve to explain, in part, why his two novels deal so successfully with the mingling of cultures in present day Europe...