Politics is the continuation of war by other means

Another example of Garbhan Downey's tendency to leaven Runyonesque nostalgia with the lurking possibility of violence in his story collection Off Broadway:

"`They're all found and surrender immediately – as does Teddy Badteeth. And they are all cuffed. Indeed, there is no shooting at all until Davey the Fuseman tries to bolt for it and is shot in the arm. Though it's nothing life-threatening and he's able to walk back into the room.'

"`But the gendarmes then line all four of the Boys up against the wall, and without any comment, the sergeant pulls out his revolver and shoots Jimmy, Teddy and Davey in the head. Dead as green meat. My father, Dom, who is fourth in line, is shaking and crying as he makes his Act of Contrition. But the sergeant, who, incidentally, is no connection whatsoever to Two Tuts, then re-holsters his gun and tells Dad to go home – and let that be a lesson to him.'

"`It's a move as old as war itself: always leave one alive to tell the tale.'"

The stories in Off Broadway are narrated as recollections. The recollections are often of the violent days of the Troubles, and they are narrated by and among characters who move in other circles: criminal, political, legal, journalistic. The slow bleeding of the recent past into the present is a constant dynamic of these stories, and before I start sounding like a sociologist, I'll shut up and say that they're a lot of fun to read.

=============

A story called "First to Score" has Harry the Hurler, former chief executive of the Boys in Derry, getting it into his head to form a soccer team. It's the longest and funniest tale in the book, and it, plus Downey's frequent concern with politics, brought up a question that I've been thinking about at work: What sports metaphors do political commentators outside North America use?

The question arose last week as I copy-edited a story about that night's presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. A political operative, assessing McCain's chances, told a reporter that McCain needed to land a knockout punch in the homestretch of the campaign.

What made the two-sport cliché-mongering especially delicious is that it came in a story about the debate's having to compete for attention with that night's baseball playoff game. Baseball, quite naturally, was invoked in the headline, which gave the story three sports metaphor/clichés – or should I say a hat trick.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

An Irish crime writer revitalizes Runyon

Two years ago the Rap Sheet marked Damon Runyon's birthday with a post that suggested many readers knew his name and many knew his work, but few knew both.

I'm not sure how many know Runyon's writing these days (as opposed to movie adaptations, such as Guys and Dolls), but I agree that many know his name and that the name is encrusted with nostalgia.

Garbhan Downey's 2005 collection of linked stories, Off Broadway, chips away at the crust. Its title is an acknowledged nod to Runyon on Broadway, and Downey's characters have colorful nicknames, gather in bars, and speak in the present tense, as Runyon's did.

So what makes these stories fresh? The contemporary settings: Derry, Boston, New York. Paramilitaries and methods of violence I'd read about in other Northern Ireland crime writing. Thus I smiled at the diction of

"(T)he hundred K he'll get from the Massachusetts Public Insurance Board to make up for the two holes in the back of his knees, which incidentally will be developing about now"

even as I cringed at the violence. And how can one not love a phrase like "it will be a cold day in hell before Bad Breath Bradley shows his head in here again to violate my chips and Tikka sauce"?

And now, your questions: Thanks to Garbhan Downey, I may pick up Runyon again to look for darkness beneath the over-the-top color. What newer writers have caused you to take a similar look back at an earlier author or genre? (I have one such pair in mind, and if you're good, I may tell you who it is.) Which writers or styles could use similar rescue from the mist of nostalgia?

(Read about Damon Runyon and sample his work here.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Garbhan Downey's scoop on journalism and crime fiction

Garbhan Downey, a subject of discussion here in recent days, weighs in on journalism, fiction, the constraints of the first, and the freedoms of the second:

"I think you've a good point about fiction being the second draft of history. I worked as a reporter and newspaper editor for 15 years, and the main reason I started writing fiction was to tell the stories (and voice opinion) I could never print as a working hack. All heavily disguised, he added (not entirely truthfully). About 70 percent of my short-story collection Off Broadway derived from unprintable stories I'd garnered as a hack — as did the central plot of my latest, Yours Confidentially — though in fairness, I made my land developers a lot more crooked and murderous.

"Also, I don't think the public have any idea how scared and over-regulated journalism has become — so much so that the editor is now de-facto third in line in dictating newspaper content, after the lawyers and the advertisers.”

I’d referred Downey to my interview with Matt Rees, who had similar thoughts about the freedom fiction gave him to tell stories he could not tell as a reporter. Here’s Downey on that subject:

“I identify a lot with what he said. One of the worst things about being a journalist covering atrocities is that often you feel your reportage is cheapening the pain of the people affected. That you are pandering to your public and/or your employer by capitalising on someone else's misery. A large part of that is because of the unspoken strictures that media owners place on you as a witness. You are expected to sanitise brutality into handy clichés, and categorise and quantify pain to such a degree that the extinguishing of life fits into a five-word headline or a five-second soundbite. (No blame on the copy-editors!) Anybody who's ever had to doorstep a grieving relative and ask them to describe what their loss means, into a mike, knows what I mean. (Could you give me your name and title till I test the sound levels ... ?)

"Peculiarly, and I don't know if Matt Rees finds this, there are even two or three incidents I was unlucky enough to come across regarding the unearthing and murdering of informers in the North that I could never talk about in fiction, even now, because I wouldn't want to dishonour the dead or their families. These stories/events tend to be so sordid, sad and personal that to re-tell them for any form of profit — even critical approval — would seem like a betrayal. If it allows families to salvage a tiny bit of dignity, then what harm that a big-shot reporter keeps his mouth shut about a few dirty little secrets? There were days, honest to God, that I had to go home and shower at lunchtime just to get the grime off me.

"The late eighties and early nineties were not pleasant in the North.

"Any wonder I packed in the day job and started writing comedy?"

© Peter Rozovsky 2008