‘Heavy Gang’ short stories at Smashwords

The collection of short stories Do You Like Oranges? is now available from Smashwords  in all the main eBook formats.  Just click on the cover image in this post and you’ll arrive at the download page.

Downloading is free for the present – special Xmas offer – after which time a small charge will apply. In the New Year a hard copy edition will be published for the target date of May Day, 2012.

If you like the stories, please pass the word on.  Recommend the collection to your friends by forwarding or sharing the link.

Dear reader, this is vital and much appreciated as the stories in this  collection address difficult but important issues: the power of the police and the abuses of that power.  In other words this is political fiction with a capital ‘P’ and ‘F’ …  so your help and support is greatly appreciated AND required.

There’s also a Facebook promotion page where you add a ‘Like’ or a comment.   Or a even short review.

Thanks, of course, to everyone who has supported this publication already!

Don’t Mention The War at Frank O’Connor Short Story Festival

Image via Wikipedia

Sometimes the best way to get your hands on the cream of short story writing for the year is to get along to the Frank O’Connor Short Story Festival, held in Cork.  This year the short list of six writer (see below) for what is regarded by many as the most prestigious prize for the short story in the world, included five writers from the United States.

There is no doubt that the short story is a valued form in the States.  Publications such as the New Yorker have in particular promoted the discipline and must be credited for their support for the short story over the years.  Frank O’Connor himself benefited enormously from US patronage when he struggled to make a living here in Ireland all those years ago.  Furthermore we cannot easily dismiss writers of the caliber of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Jane Anne Philips and Annie Proulx – to name just a few of the accomplished writers who have penned stories from over in the States.

But – and here’s the thing – it stuck me forcefully this year, with the US having such a strong presence in the final shortlist, that there is something wrong.  The United States after all is at war.  Actually it is fighting not just one war but two – in Iraq and Afghanistan.   These wars, it must be underlined, are major conflicts.

In 2003 the United States led coalition invaded Iraq. It deposed the regime there and installed another one.  Massive civilian casualties were suffered and many atrocities occurred.  It was discovered that torture and the ill-treatment of prisoner by US forces was rife – recall the Abu Ghraib revelations.  In sum Iraq has been bombed into a relic of what it was once by the US war machine for dubious and long discredited objectives.  Then there is the war in Afghanistan.  Attacked in 2001 it has been in a state of crisis for nearly 9 years.  Again the casualties have been massive.  Torture has been rife and there is the ongoing plague of drone bombings which have in fact escalated in intensity since the Barak Obama’s election.  Significant numbers of civilians have been massacred.  We are talking here of outrages as serious as what Guernica represents to modern warfare.  Now however it seems as if atrocities of the scale of Guernica have become so commonplace that they are hardly commented on any more.  But they are still outrages and they are still happening.

What has all this got to do with the short story?   Well, for me, it is this.  Here, on this occasion in Cork, we have five US short story writers shortlisted for a prestigious international award.  These are very good writers – some are new and have produced debut collections while others like TC Boyle and Ron Rash are established.   But is there one significant story about the above wars in the collective output from these writers?  Well, so far, if it is there, I haven’t been able to find it.  And by the way if someone does find such a story, then do let me know.

The pat explanation of course is that stories or literature (and art), if you want, are above these base matters.  Or another generous explanation might be that the material for stories about these wars has yet to filter down through the great sponge that is contemporary life and civilisation.  In other words, with regard to US output these stories will come in time – as indeed they did when we look back at the invasion of Vietnam by the US.

The above points are indeed reasonable.  Or are they?  Do they explain the avoidance of these US wars – that’s the question? Or maybe avoidance is too strong a word – is it?   ‘Omission’ perhaps?  Lack of interest perhaps?  Well what then?  Why silence about such important and vital events?

I accept that this blog observation of mine is not a scientifically valid study of contemporary US fiction and it’s engagement with war.  Fair enough. Nor is it intended to be of course!  And perhaps there is an explanation, or part of one, in the process of selection for the Prize – from long list to short list even.  There were, I think, over twenty US writers on the long list so, maybe, along the way the writers of war stories were weeded out.  I don’t know if that is so.  And so maybe I am getting the wrong end of the stick here?

But my main point has been taken up elsewhere too.  The dearth of novels about the current US wars has already been previously noted.  US writer and small press publisher, Tony Christini has pointed out in a number of articles that there is serious lack of material emerging in the States to do with the current wars.  Tony Christini’s points to a number of reasons for the paucity of fiction relating to these wars.  Publishers are business people (as we all know – don’t we?) and as such they are uncomfortable with any rocking of the boat.  And on the writer side, a focus on these wars  can lead to the stigmatization of the writer as ‘political’ or as ‘having an agenda’.  Apparently such qualities are good for your career.  So is the issue censorship or perhaps more worrying still: self censorship?

Returning to the collections at this years prize, something else struck me though.  And this in some ways is the most disturbing thing.  It is not just that the collections concerned here don’t touch on the various wars now being waged by the USA.  Rather there is also the inverse problem: this indeed is even more damning of the state of writing in the US to my mind.  What I mean is: the picture that emerges of the Untied States from the collective output of the shortlisted US writers for this years Prize is of a society NOT at war.   Indeed the concerns of many of the characters is rather of a world not unlike our own.  (Note that Ireland is not currently at war or in the process of invading any other countries – that I know of anyway.) What I mean is that the characters obsess about normal and everyday concerns (mean neighbours; bad parenting and so on and so forth).  And perhaps this is the double injustice of the literary output from the States as exemplified by this shortlist.  In these times the ugly truth of a nation at war and a society driven by a voracious military-industrial complex is not only not being examined, it could even be argued it is being airbrushed from the picture we are being offered to see of that same society.

As a short short writer myself and as someone who has always admired Frank O’Connor’s engagement with the political, I must say I am unsettled by what I’ve read, and by this short list.  But lastly let me say a few words about the worthy winner, Ron Rash.  His stories in this collection are a cut above the others IMHO – going by the US entries anyway.  While I couldn’t find any stories in his collection, Burning Bright, about the current US wars, this in a way is not surprising since his work has a focus on the southern, US Civil War dynamic.  Fair enough I suppose.  Indeed Rash’s collection points out well the problems in what I am attempting to draw attention to here and I accept that. Burning Bright is very good in its own right and indeed all the collections are worthy.  It’s just as I say: how can you, you know… (… THE WAR).  It’s still on everyone, isn’t it?  Right now.

The Short List:

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Picador UK, 2010) by Robin Black
Mattaponi Queen (Graywolf Press, 2010) by Belle Boggs
Wild Child (Bloomsbury, 2010) by TC Boyle
The Shieling (Comma Press, 2009) by David Constantine
Burning Bright (HarperCollins, 2010) by Ron Rash
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009) by Laura van den Berg

Note: TC Boyle had to withdraw from the final contest due to an his inability to travel to Cork for the Festival.

The Long List is here.  (Scroll to the end.)

Related Articles

• US writers dominate prize shortlist (guardian.co.uk)
• Dzanc Title Short Listed for Frank O’Connor Short Fiction Award! (emergingwriters.typepad.com)
• Progressive Political Fiction by Tony Christini
• Frank O’Connor award goes to Ron Rash (guardian.co.uk)

Irish short story about Garda brutality online

I’ve put up an audio (mp3 format) of But Your Mother, the second story from The Heavy Gang triptych of stories I wrote in the late 90s.  The story is about the ‘hidden from view’ intimidation that political activists have to face when they take a stand against injustice.  It is told from the point of view of the activist who arrives home from a protest about unemployment only to find that the Special Branch have been to his house and gone.

Take a listen … and let me know what you think.

the hand of god …

Latest story on my web site ties in with the horrendous details revealed by the recently published Ryan Report.  I wrote the story back in the late 90s after meeting a friend of mine from school.  We both ended up taking about our school days and about the fear we felt.  I would go further now …  one of the important things about the release of the Ryan Report is that it allows us all to be more honest about that period and what we were subjected to.  It is not an easy place to go back to – that has to be said.  But what I would say now is that it was not fear that I felt but rather terror – I was scared out of my wits so much of the time.  So the story comes from that.

But now since publication of the report I think of how lucky I was.  I was in secondary school when I suffered at the hands at the Christian Brothers but at least I could get away at the end of the school day.  At least.  I shudder now to think of those who encountered the Christian Brothers and the nuns and were at their mercy 24/7.

Today so many have marched in Dublin in solidarity with those who have suffered.  It is great to see.  Something at least.

To the story…

do you like oranges? online

In the 90s I wrote three loosely related short stories – each in some way connected to the issue of policing and repression.  I am adding each of these stories as PDFs to my site beginning with DO YOU LIKE ORANGES?

Do You Like Oranges? has been published a number of times, although never in Ireland.  In 1996 it was shortlisted for the Ian St James International Short Story Award and came runner-up to a winning entry by Michel Faber.

The idea for Do You Like Oranges? came from hearing about an incident that happened in Cork back in the early 80s.  At the time there was a lot of political repression.  Although mostly directed at ‘republicans’, many others were also getting caught in the net – intentionally, I imagine, in order to spread fear and intimidation.  I heard about an incident that went far beyond what you might consider ‘harrassment’.  If you place someone in a position where they perceive that they are facing imminent death – what is that?  I had heard of just such an incident.

I felt it was important to write about such a situation.  A lot of what the the Branch did back then – and still does when the ‘need’ arises – is legitimised for the public on the grounds of the ‘national good’ and the threat from ‘subversives’.   But the incident I had heard about – which incidentally is different to what happens in the story; that I made up – was serious and extremely worrying.  There was also at the time – and there still is  - an unwillingness to face up to the matter.  Torture is a problem for ‘elsewehre’, isn’t it?  Here in Ireland for example there has been little discussion about the so-called ‘Heavy Gang’ – a secretive and brutal section of the Irish Gardai charged with breaking suspect held in custody.  This ‘dark period’ in Irish history is usually glossed over and in any case there is the excuse that ‘a few bad apples’ just spoiled the barrel.  The reality of course is another matter entirely.  Torture orchastrated by the state comes from a clear stragegy decided from above; the torturers are often, literally, just followign orders.

In recent times the issue of torture – those who do and those who suffer it – has come back into the headlines.  We have had the exposure of state police activity around the so-called ‘rendition’ policy of Bush and Co – which has been aided and abetted by the state police in a number of other jurisdictions. The dreadful and shocking case of Binyam Mohamed comes to mind.  But Binyam is only one of a great number of people who have been grossly abused as part of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

Do You Like Oranges? follows a young man who returns to Ireland to stalk the man who tortured him many years before.  As he tracks the torturer he recalls what happened.  The story juxtaposes memory and action/ retribution (?) – although it is never clear if retribution either occurs or what it might entail.  As they say make your own mind up.