One Helluva Red Herring on the Emerald Isle...

or how Irish writers have decided to make the
writing fit the crime.





In a burst of enthusiasm I started out several weeks ago to write an
assessment of "Winterland" by Alan Glynn.
Personal reflections on any text are usually illuminating and this is the first time I have set out to write about a novel
whose author I have actually met.

The delay in publishing this post is due to the fact that there is no room left on the Blogsphere for commentators on "Emerald Noir",
a particularly green toned genre that has sprouted from, seemingly,
nowhere among the merry band of Irish writers who entertain us daily.
Reviewers have been filling the mainstream media spaces with praise for a new flowering in this genre and another piece of writing just seemed to be "de trop".

Even academics and graphic artists seem to be bewitched by the new writing.
Noir was almost dead until film directors in the '70s and 80's gave it the
kiss of life and turned out masterpieces like "Chinatown" and
that is where I bowed out. I left the cinema after "Chinatown" literally
quaking and have not seen it since. Every frame seems to have
somehow lodged in my memory in any case and the acrid colours
chosen by cinematographer, John Alonzo,
have left a lingering sense of pain.


That is the problem with Noir.
It's all about pain.

Fintan O'Toole recently succeeded in placing the Irish Noir Revival
in the context of urban writing and has explained, to many people's
satisfaction, that before now it would have been impossible to have
a secure thread of Irish crime writing.


When I started reading Alan Glynn's books I was reminded of Ibsen.
The astonishingly fine-honed morality of his characters is possibly
heralding a return to more established value systems than those we
have grown accustomed to over the past two decades.
How to "be" in a society that is alien, disrupted, anonymous
without taking on these characteristics oneself?
The highly charged events, often on the verge of melodrama,
were another parallel, I thought.   Also, the characters in both
writers never seem to stop talking. 
In "Winterland" this endless stream of outer consciousness
is used to much humourous effect.

I discover that Alan Glynn has a strong group of faithful readers
and that he is highly regarded in France, where the Polar is almost revered.

"The Dark Fields" is almost allegorical in the frantic drive for fame and fortune
that consumes the protagonist Eddie Spinola.
In "Winterland" a more realistic and "gritty" appraisal of the contemporary social landscape,
the heroine, Gina Rafferty, resorts to behaviours that while being seemingly out of character,
are a direct result of involvement with a criminal fringe of society that most people only
read about in the papers.
Mr Glynn has often referred to his preference for Chandler's writing and sees his
position as a storyteller in the Dime Shocker or Penny Dreadful tradition.
However, I can't get away from the deeper roots that this form of writing has
in the work of 19th Century writers, notably Stevenson , Ibsen and, earlier, Edgar Allen Poe.
Shock always seems to go hand in hand with horror and there is a current
fashion for ghoulish TV dramas that fill the screen with blood that is very much in this tradition
as well.

"Winterland", however, spares the reader from much contemporary "Grand Guignol"
and this is what makes it so evocative and should ensure its continuing
popularity among the reading public.
Books I enjoyed as a teenager now seem truly frightening... and, in many cases,
quite badly written. I don't know if all readers lose their stomach for being shocked
as they grow older, but this has certainly been true for me.

I return with gusto to the old reliables.
Joyce so liked "Ghosts" that he learned Norwegian in order to be able to read Ibsen
in the original language. Coming at a watershed in social events, when people
started flooding into cities to live in cramped conditions, Ibsen documented the
over-lapping lives where social cohesion was in serious conflict with individual
dreams. This is the situation faced by many people living today.
A World recession, raging from city to city, blaring its hysteria from mainstream media
and across the screens that flicker in every public space today insist on alienation and fear.

Irish crime writers have taken centre stage in documenting
this social shift."Winterland" is here, according to Alan Glynn.

We have no choice but to look?