In the opening pages of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller lays out his intentions for the book: “There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty … what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps but I will sing.”
In the opening pages of This Is The Ritual, Rob Doyle does something similar, albeit through the words of one of his characters, John-Paul Finnegan: “If I were then to roar the word literature at the top of my lungs, the vast majority of these people would run to the sides of the ship and hurl themselves over the edge to be drowned. They would sooner drown than confront a man roaring literature.”
Finnegan goes on to deliver a foulmouthed invective on Irish culture that – were it labelled “non-fiction” – would possibly be the most controversial piece of Irish writing in 50 years. Finnegan is a glorious, monstrous creation – equal parts the worst (or best) of art-for-art’s-sake writers, combined with the bitterest of failed novelists. But here Doyle – like Miller – is setting out his stall: while he goes on to experiment in many of the other stories in the book, the first story is also a warning of the inherent dangers in doing so. It’s as though he’s erecting a “Danger” sign for himself: “Fall into the trap of writing this way, and you’re a wanker too.”
This Is The Ritual could be called “experimental fiction”, if that term didn’t carry with it so many negative connotations. (As Doyle himself says: “The phrase sounds so dreary and joyless, so miserly!”) Perhaps a better phrase would be “transgressive fiction”.
In New York, in the 1980s, there was something called the Cinema of Transgression. The people involved had a manifesto, part of which read: “All values must be challenged. Nothing is sacred ... Intellectual growth demands that risks be taken and changes occur in political, sexual and aesthetic alignments no matter who disapproves ... There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined. None shall emerge unscathed. Since there is no afterlife, the only hell is the hell of praying, obeying laws, and debasing yourself before authority figures, the only heaven is the heaven of sin, being rebellious, having fun, fucking, learning new things and breaking as many rules as you can. This act of courage is known as transgression.”
Now, this is nothing new; all great art has been about transgression. But nonetheless, as a mission statement, it’s exciting. Sometimes, we forget that art should be transgressive, because some people in our society don’t want transgression. They want the status quo, if not regression.
When I was about 16, and about to embark on my Leaving Cert, I was looking forward to studying Wuthering Heights. Hardly what one would call “transgressive fiction”, but a book I had taken a liking to, having read it over the summer. However, when we returned to school in September, our English teacher told us we would be studying a different book. When I asked him why we weren’t studying Wuthering Heights, he replied, “There’s enough madness and misery in the world as it is without reading about it.”
Needless to say, I was stunned by his reply. Even at 16, I thought to myself, “Isn’t that what literature is supposed to do? Isn’t literature supposed to reflect society – warts and all – rather than trying to suppress or ignore the aspects of life which we find unsavoury?”
This Is The Ritual – like all good transgressive fiction – does exactly that. It reflects what is happening in our society at the moment, whether we like it or not. Doyle himself has said that This Is The Ritual “features scenes of impotence, infidelity, revenge sex, a threesome that gets very messy, pornographic fixation, sexual violence, sexual obsession, polyamory, stripteasing, and, as one reviewer pointed out, a suspiciously high frequency of masturbation.”
It features a lot more than that, of course. But because it chronicles human beings – and human beings who are often adrift and lost – these are some of the issues that will arise.
After the furore surrounding Tropic of Cancer, Miller commented: “People fucked back then just as much as they do now. We just didn’t talk about it as much.” Similarly, James Joyce pointed out that the events that take place over the course of a day in Ulysses took place every day in the Dublin of that time. And the same could be said for the events that take place in This Is The Ritual.
Transgression suggests something that is dangerous. And dangerous ideas are usually a good thing. Because much of the art that is considered “classic” nowadays was regarded as dangerous at one time – whether it be Ulysses, Manet’s Olympia or rock n’ roll.
Dangerous ideas are exciting because they shock people out of complacency. But the purpose is not merely to shock; there is far more to it than that. Firstly, because if genteel society is not routinely shocked and scandalised, then it will become a mundane society. And secondly, because some of those people – shocked out of complacency – won’t return to their previous states, they will get up and do something; they will try to create a dangerous idea themselves. That’s why a book or a song or a piece of art can change a life, and that’s why we need more transgressive fiction.
Derek Flynn is an Irish writer and musician with a Masters in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin
This is the Ritual by Rob Doyle is published by Bloomsbury and Dublin's Lilliput Press. This month, we shall be exploring the collection in detail, with interviews and articles by the author, his editors, fellow writers and critics, culminating in a podcast interview recorded at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin last week and to be published on irishtimes.com this Friday
