Literary Periodicals: Irish Pages Eds Chris Agee, Cathal O'Searcaigh and Seán Mac Aindreasa (Vol 4, No. 1), 256pp. €14 Cork Literary Review Eds Eugene O'Connell, Sheila O'Hagan and John W. Sexton (Vol. XII, 2007), 373pp. €12 The Dublin Review Ed Brendan Barrington (No. 29, Winter 2007-8), 112pp. €7.50 Dublin Review of Books Winter 2007/8 issue, online at www.drb.ie, free Poetry Ireland Review Ed Eiléan Ní Chuileanáin (Issue. 92, 2007), 108pp. €9.99 The Stinging Fly Ed. Declan Meade (Issue 8, vol. 2, Winter 2007-8), 112pp. €7 Field Day Review Eds Seamus Deane and Breandán Mac Suibhne (Issue 3, 2007), 308pp. €35 Irish University Review, Ed Anne Fogarty (Vol. 37, No. 2, Autumn/Winter, 2007), 291-606pp. €12
There was a time when the small-circulation literary magazine evoked garrets and Gitanes, impoverished intellectuals and artists eking out a living. Such periodicals advocated radical artistic innovation and opposed the norms and values of the bourgeois status quo. These days, smoking bans have done for the Gitanes, even in Paris, and judging by the production qualities of some of these magazines, finances are no longer as hand-to-mouth as they were.
With the exception of the US-funded Field Day Review, and the venerable Irish University Review, all the magazines here sport the Arts Council logo. Indeed some of them are lavishly put together, run to several hundred pages and sport colour plates. Perhaps this is one reason why the traditional stance of political and social dissent seems rare in many of the pieces here. The short stories and lyric poetry usually deal with private and familial experience. Rarely do we find explicit treatment of issues such as immigration, social inequality or rapacious consumerism that has drawn comment in modern Ireland. There are exceptions, of course, such as Thomas McCarthy's poem in Cork Literary Review, A Polish Youth Thinks Only of Home.
One generally has to go to the overt social analyses to find political critique. An example is "A Squalid Performance", Brendan Simms's indictment of Irish foreign policy in the Bosnian war in Belfast-based journal Irish Pages. The absence of the editorial in almost all these magazines is itself a symptom of the eschewal of overt social or aesthetic agendas. But there is a brief statement of policy in Irish Pages, which asserts the magazine's political impartiality, claiming that the "sole criteria for inclusion in the journal" are "the distinction of the writing and the integrity of the individual voice". However, these criteria can never be neutral or ethically blind and, though the journal must strive to be non-partisan, it can never be apolitical. This is no bad thing. It is as much a mistake to sequester literature from politics as to render the two identical.
This Irish Pages focuses on "Media" and themes of communication and miscommunication run like a loose thread through this capacious volume. Two essays, by Sven Birkett on information technology, and the Marxist John Berger on the idea of place, are pessimistic about current cultural conditions. But these jeremiads are contradicted by the fine range of poetry, prose and translation. Eminent names sit alongside emerging figures, poetry with prose, international perspectives with the Irish language, the personal with the political.
Cork Literary Review is more explicit about its geographical origin than Irish Pages. This is another thick and various volume, though writers with Cork affiliations are given appropriate prominence. There is a high emphasis on poetry, including a sample from the emerging poet Leanne O'Sullivan, and a selection from prize-winners of the Cork Literary Review poetry competition. There are also numerous short stories, memoirs, obituaries and other non-fiction pieces, interspersed with drawings by Brigid O'Brien.
UNLIKE THESE TWO magazines, The Dublin Review is a slim, unostentatious affair. It is, nonetheless, a magazine you could grow to love. Its plain, understated cover and style belie some wonderful writing. Brian Dillon's diary of his travels around European art exhibitions is funny, self-effacing, and eloquent. Edna Longley's ruminations about the relationship between Northern Unionism and English nationalism is also a pleasure to read and with a sharp eye for the similarities behind seeming contradictions. There is also fine reportage and short stories. This issue is a little over-reliant on first-person narrative, but The Dublin Review is still a world-class forum for the literary essay.
Longley's article could easily be called a "review article", citing numerous books on its subject and providing an extensive bibliography. But one feature of all three of the literary magazines thus far discussed is the relative paucity of criticism. Irish Pages claims to avoid "standard reviews and narrowly academic writing", but more space could be given over to review essays and evaluation. Variety is admirable, but aesthetic discrimination is also essential. Rigorous editorial procedures initially provide it. But the inclusion of critical essays shows why quality counts.
The creeping tendency in our 21st-century culture to demote literary criticism needs to be refuted. The internet provides ever more publishing and reviewing opportunities. Who is to guide us on what to read? Judging by these volumes, the prose essay is in good health. But the critical essay still needs to climb to its proper place at the heart of Irish letters.
Into this breach steps an admirable online quarterly, the Dublin Review of Books. Now on its fourth issue, this journal publishes extended review articles on recently published books, giving space not usually afforded to reviewers in newspapers or print magazines. In that respect this online journal resembles its print namesakes in London and New York. Each issue contains 10 or 11 essays, with back issues on the website. It has a rich international representation. There are articles dealing with aspects of British history, on the French writer Michel de Montaigne and on Scandinavian poet, Gösta Agren. But around half are given over to subjects of specifically Irish interest. Major cultural analyses get extended treatment, such as Terence Killeen on Joe Cleary's Outrageous Fortune and John-Paul McCarthy on Stefan Collini's Absent Minds. Poetry criticism, of Denis O'Driscoll's latest volume, sits alongside analysis of Ireland's economic success. One of the benefits of the long review is the room afforded for quotation, seldom better deployed than in Enda O'Doherty's review of Terence Cave's How to Read Montaigne. O'Doherty (one of the editors of DRB) gives an absorbing portrait of Montaigne's life that goes far beyond Cave's book. O'Doherty and his co-editor Maurice Earls deserve thanks. Their online journal is free and it is hard to think why Irish Times readers would not add it to their bookmarks.
EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN, the new editor of the esteemed Poetry Ireland Review, remarks that "both critics and editors can tell most truth when guided by delight". Whatever about editors, critics can also reveal truths through indignation, as the review section of Poetry Ireland often demonstrates. The stakes need to count. But Ní Chuileanáin knows that the criteria for selection need to go deeper than feel-good inclusivity: "It can never be an editor's job merely to encourage the young." Ní Chuileanáin publishes new work by older poets like Pearse Huthchinson and Fergus Allen, together with an eclectic range of talented poets at different stages of their careers. Her stewardship promises to continue the invaluable contribution of Poetry Ireland to Irish literary life.
The Stinging Fly sets out to provide a forum for new writers. While some of the other publications discussed here have availed of the generosity of eminent contributors, The Stinging Fly contents itself with publishing up-and-coming voices, making a concession only for lyrics from poet Paul Muldoon's garage-rock band. Nonetheless, it rightly strives to keep the admission bar high. This sharp, slim and contemporary volume has many promising poems and short stories, such as Neil Hegarty's The Fall of Saigon, which, through the story of a widow and her memories, elegiacally moves between public and private worlds.
THE THIRD NUMBER of Field Day Review, the annual of the Keough-Naughton Institute of Irish Studies, could only achieve more elaborate production values with the aid of medieval monks and vellum parchments. Photographs, manuscripts reproductions and the slickest of designs make this an extraordinarily opulent volume. As with certain bespoke boutiques, I searched in vain for the price tag, though a quick scan on the internet told me that the annual costs €35. The contents are impressive too, with essays by the most eminent academic figures across disciplines. It has an intriguing piece on the DeLorean car by Richard Kirkland and a memoir of Robert Altman by the actor Stephen Rea. The focus here goes beyond narrow-gauge "Irish Studies", including articles on Walter Benjamin by Seamus Deane, counter-factual historical novels, by Catherine Gallagher, and global economics, by Alan Ahearne. Happily, it also has a section of extended review essays as well as shorter reviews. Field Day Review comes to Ireland like a returning emigrant, with a cadillac and a fat cigar.
One of the attractive features of Irish literary magazines is that, unlike in the UK and the US, academic writing is not sequestered from the wider world of letters. Field Day Reivew is an academic journal decked out like a coffee-table book or art catalogue. The are several academics writing in the other, less overtly academic magazines. That the two spheres intersect in this way in Ireland is healthy for both.
Irish University Review, well into its fourth decade, continues publishing a selection of essays and reviews on Irish literature in English. The cover and the contents make it look very much like a traditional "Eng. Lit" journal, with essays mainly based on a single author or literary work. It kicks against expectation this time, however, by including a short story by Frank McGuinness, Jane Austen in Ireland, 1945, which mischievously parodies the academic world.
We should be grateful for small-circulation magazines and periodicals. They are the bone marrow of art, creativity and intellectual endeavour. In them new talent is nurtured, artistic experiment tested, complex ideas circulated at a high level. The days of the garret may be over, but producing and editing a journal requires commitment, vision and hard work. Based on these examples, Irish periodical culture is in good health.
However, as the blogosphere emerges as an inexhaustible venue for new work, quality in the literary magazine must continue to take priority over quantity.
Rónán McDonald is senior lecturer in English at Reading University and director of the Samuel Beckett International Foundation. His book The Death of the Critic was published recently by Continuum