Review of 'Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
if Cleary's study of modernism published last year framed the turn of the century cultural efflorescence as an ambivalent and contradictory response to the decline of old Europe and the rise of the United States as a global political, military and economic hegemon, this work attempts to discern the future of Irish literature as the American Empire begins to fray and China looks likely to rise as a worthwhile global competitor.
As ever, the range of Cleary’s erudition is staggering and almost every chapter throws out a dizzying array of authors, critics and intellectuals whose work has some bearing on the question at hand, but only a relative handful of these; Colm Tóibín, Colm McCann, Naoise Dolan, Joseph O’Connor, Anne Enright, Aidan Higgins, Yeats and Deirdre Madden receive chapters unto themselves.
Attempting to isolate a strand line of argument would be to do an injustice to the work, but overall …
if Cleary's study of modernism published last year framed the turn of the century cultural efflorescence as an ambivalent and contradictory response to the decline of old Europe and the rise of the United States as a global political, military and economic hegemon, this work attempts to discern the future of Irish literature as the American Empire begins to fray and China looks likely to rise as a worthwhile global competitor.
As ever, the range of Cleary’s erudition is staggering and almost every chapter throws out a dizzying array of authors, critics and intellectuals whose work has some bearing on the question at hand, but only a relative handful of these; Colm Tóibín, Colm McCann, Naoise Dolan, Joseph O’Connor, Anne Enright, Aidan Higgins, Yeats and Deirdre Madden receive chapters unto themselves.
Attempting to isolate a strand line of argument would be to do an injustice to the work, but overall Cleary is calling for a contemporary Irish literature of greater ambition, one that can effectively dovetail the economic, the political and historical within a satisfying and coherent fictional narrative. It won’t be necessary to say he is often disappointed and Tóibín, McCann and O’Connor are among those talked down for their provincialism and incuriosity when it comes to the imperial realities of US society. Enright too is rebuked for an uncritically ‘feminist’ representation of Eliza Lynch, who was after all a beneficiary of the riches accumulated by Francisco Solano López in the course of his dictatorship. Dolan is given an enormous amount of credit for her novel ‘Exciting Times’ which, as Cleary has it anyway, reflects on multipolarity, Englishness v Irishness in a post-Brexit context and a bid for a new novelistic ambition among a younger generation of left-leaning Irish writers.
Given that Cleary’s object is one still in motion and likely to have far more ambivalent effects yet to become clear, this work cannot hope to aspire to the same comprehensiveness as his previous works, but it is nonetheless tremendously enjoyable and worth reading. Very much to his credit also that he highlights more obscure works and I look forward to seeking out Ronan Sheehan’s ‘Foley’s Asia’.