SOURCE: “How It Is on the Fringes of Irish Fiction,” in Irish University Review, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring/Summer, 1992, pp. 151-67.

In the following essay, Imhof examines the fiction of Sean O'Faolain, Sebastian Barry, Dermot Bolger, Aidan Higgins, Kevin Kiely, Aidan Mathews, Brian McHale, and Robert McLiam Wilson.

In Sean O'Faolain's story “The Faithless Wife”, the principal character reflects on the nature of Irish fiction and he comes up with this, not especially flattering verdict:

Irish fiction was a lot of nineteenth-century connerie about half-savage Brueghelesque peasants, or urban petits fonctionnaires who invariably solved their frustrations by getting drunk on religion, patriotism or undiluted whiskey, or by taking flight to England. Pastoral melodrama. (Giono at his worst.) Or pastoral humbuggery. (Bazin at his most sentimental.) Or, at its best, pastoral lyricism. (Daudet and rosewater.)¹

There is still a lot of that about—religion, patriotism, undiluted whiskey and all. But...