Eimear McBride greatly admires Edna O'Brien, viewing her as a literary icon and a "beacon of brazenness and defiance". McBride highlights O'Brien's "profound intelligence" and the "tangible, fizzing joy" in her work. She also acknowledges the impact of O'Brien's "fearless" writing on Irish literature, particularly her groundbreaking portrayal of Irish female experience, which paved the way for other female writers like herself. McBride even notes that meeting O'Brien, despite briefly, served as a powerful reminder of what she wanted to achieve as a writer.
McBride when O'Brien was 90 (anno 2020) in the Irish Times: "I've been lucky enough to know Edna O'Brien for most of my life. First, and far longer, from the page. Second, and only more recently, in the flesh. From both relationships, I have learned an awful lot. For my reader self, she is an absolutely defining writer. For my writer self, she is the bar I strive to attain as well as a model of perseverance in a world of fools.
As she arrives at her 90th birthday, I think all of these aspects deserve celebration. Right back at the start, with The Country Girls, Edna dragged women's voices into a light that kicked and screamed against them. With her most recent novel, Girl, she proved she still remains unafraid of confronting that dark. In between there have been many books, and many battles, but always, always her wonderful, inimitable language. To read Edna O'Brien is to know love; of words, of literature and of life itself. No one does it the way she can so I'm hoping for 90 years more."
For my writer self, she is the bar I strive to attain as well as a model of perseverance in a world of fools.
Jotting down in my memory of someone to read, thank you. I miss reading and need new material, I don't note my heritage to myself often, but it's almost Irish through and through. So material that fleshes out or represents Irish culture I should take more time to know. My grandmother was a strong woman, born in Canada, but Irish in descent with both of her parents Irish.
I mostly chase literature for philosophy and imagery left in a surreal style that is evocative. So it's natural in a way, for me, I chase the more philosophical and absurd stories told, but I know somewhere I am missing the profound nature of stories told just as they are. If that makes sense.
There's a kind of profoundness writing things as you see them and explicitly as it's your own story, not the story told in surrealism is real.
To persevere even in a world of fools was my own original thought I took from you. Hence why I quoted because you will find those as often you find a baker's dozen, or what is the phrase I can't quite remember, that is about a dozen eggs.
@val70 Then which library do I travel to read O'Brien? You know I don't expect that answered here. I will never be a good writer in a literary context I know, because like you, I'm moved by emotion more. My sister is the writer in my family, studied English, wanted to become an English teacher but she let go of her dreams to become a mother. I'm an emotional man, who sometimes writes his sister of emotional subjects of my life, and it's always just a scroll of my emotions when I write her. She says she has to read again and again, because at first she's left in wonder what I mean, but then she see's I'm writing in emotion and my words are like poetry in how I write. My long way of saying there are many kinds of writers, and I think you are one. You write like you are chasing language to find your meaning sometimes, I've noticed this.
Yes I want those translations... Translate those for me. Tie in the Mustard Orange, even if it takes, a little poetic license of yours. Like you put on a raincoat, maybe I'll head down to the local library and find O'Brien! Thank you!
@val70 Thank you.. I think you met a soft spot somewhere without listening yet, I also love listening to authors talk of their words. You can learn so much behind their words from their stories when they are asked about them.
