Backlisted - A Goat's Song by Dermot Healy

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Joining John and Andy this week are novelist Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto, Winterwood) and Unbound's editor-at-large Rachael Kerr. We got together to discuss Dermot Healy's remarkable second novel A Goat's Song (1994) and the peripatetic life of its author, one of the great Irish writers of recent times. Patrick, Rachael and John all knew, worked and occasionally drank with Dermot Healy and this special episode reflects their personal connections with a much-loved and much-missed man. Also in this edition Andy considers the most recent novel of another legendary Irish writer, Girl by Edna O'Brien; while John shares his admiration for Shola Von Reinhold's Lote, winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses 2021.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)07:56 - Lote by Shola Von Reinhold13:27 - Girl by Edna O'Brien19:26 - A Goats Song by Dermot Healy* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. right and finally all i'm going to say before we start is I'm so jazzed about doing this book and this episode and this writer. I cannot tell you this is the highlight of the year so far for me. I'm keeping my powder dry, but my God, it's ready to explode any minute.

Fantastic. Patrick, thank you so much. Rachel, thank you so much. So let's hit the ground.'ll we won't hit it running we'll hit it strongly I'm trying to I'm I'm bouncing up and down in my chair come on okay let's go right I'm gonna ask Rachel where she's where she is in a minute well I know where she is it's all it's all smoke and mirrors listeners uh but I don't know where Patrick is where are you. Well, I know where she is. It's all smoke and mirrors, listeners. But I don't know where Patrick is. Where are you, Patrick?

Where are you calling us from? I'm at home in Carrick and Shannon, which is in County Leitrim in the Irish Midlands. And I've been living here for about two years, two and a half years now. And it's by the River Shannon. So it's, I suppose, the cliche rustic idol for the young novelist. That's a window behind you, isn't it? Yeah, I've got a window here.

I don't know if it's a window behind me. No, it's a bookshelf, actually. I've just checked. Oh, I can see it. And what can you see out your nearest window? You've got to see some crows. And what can you see out your nearest window? You've got to see some crows.

They're building and they're stealing all this mattress stuffing from my wife's flower beds and things. And, you know, it's pretty much a tranquil scene. You know, one might be moved to poesy if one was so disposed. However, we know there's no money in that. Yeah, you're right. You're dead right. Rachel Kerr. Oh, I'm so delighted to be reunited,

even via the electrics with Rachel. Rachel, where are you? I'm downstairs from where John is. I'm sitting at my desk in Oxfordshire. I hear lockdown's been terrible, is it? He won't, he can't hear this. We put him in the Mr and Mrs booth, so he can't hear you. Well, you'll note my fancy headphones,

which I was forced to buy because John's wonderful voice, which many backlisted listeners have referred to as chocolatey or whatever. It's quite resonant and it booms quite a lot. If you're trying to edit... Truly not, my dear. If you're trying to edit novels, it's quite hard. Are those, in fact, ear protectors rather than headphones? They're noise-cancelling headphones, darling.

It's like having Brian Blessed upstairs, yeah. It is a bit like that. James, darling. It's like having Brian Blessed upstairs, yeah. It is a bit like that. Well, my dear son shares John Mitchinson's resonant voice and he got a big stereo for his birthday. So the combination of him singing along like Bryn Turfle with Neutral Milk Hotel.

Sorry, mate, if you ever listen to this, but you won't, so that's fine. That's fine. I think it would be fair to say that our children will never be Backlisted listeners. God forbid. Shall we commence? Shall we crack on? Let us do it. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books.

Today, you find us on the west coast of Ireland, on the Mullet Peninsula in Mayo, sometime in the early 1990s. The waves are fierce, breaking with sullen violence into the cliffs, and on the rocks below us a man stands looking out towards the island of Inishglora. He's holding an envelope, and as he turns, the wind and spray plaster his black hair across his face, and we see that he's smiling. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read.

And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we are delighted to be joined by the writer Patrick McCabe and the publisher Rachel Kerr. Hello, Rachel. Hello, Patrick. Patrick McCabe is the author of The Butcher Boy, which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction, and along with Breakfast on Pluto, was both shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a feature film by Neil Jordan. His novel Winterwood was named the 2007 Hughes & Hughes Irish Independent Irish Novel of the Year, and his 14th novel, Pogue Mahone, will be published in April 2022 by, yes, listeners, Unbound.

It is described by his editor. Who is your editor, Patrick? John Mitchinson! It is described by his editor as combining the supernatural terror of Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel with the experimental Elan of Lanny by Max Porter and the mesmeric ventriloquism of Dux Newburyport by Lucy Ellman. Have you vetted that and are you happy with it?

Oh, yeah, I think it's probably very accurate. But, I mean, I suppose when you finish a book, you don't really know who it's influenced by. But, I mean, all of those people that have been mentioned would mean a lot to me anyway. So it's got to be pretty accurate, I think. Phew, that could have gone really badly. What a diplomat.

Welcome, Patrick. We're also joined today by Rachel Kerr. Rachel is a publisher. She's worked for Jonathan Cape, Picador and Harville and is now editor-at-large for Unbound. As discussed, Rachel shares living space with

John Mitchinson from Backlisted. But they are currently in different rooms, listeners, because they can't be trusted to... It would be who's afraid of Virginia Woolf if we recorded them together. It frequently is. So they've been separated. A lot of blood under the bridge.

Rachel has previously appeared on episodes 44, which was about Charles Sprawson's Haunts of the Black Masseur, 83, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, and Bruce Chapwin's Utz, Utz, Utz. Welcome back, Rachel. Thanks very much for coming. It's a great pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Well, the book that Patrick and Rachel have chosen is A Goat Song by Dermot Healy, which was the winner of the Encore Award for a second novel in 1994 and published by Harville shortly before Rachel and I both joined. It was reissued in a new edition by Faber in 2015. It's a novel set on the winds, sea-swept west coast of Ireland. A novel about love and the loss of love, which begins with the playwright Jack Ferris picking over the wreckage of his relationship with Catherine Adams, an actress from the north, as he tries to summon her back through an act of imagination, not just their fractured relationship, but the whole troubled history of modern Ireland returns to haunt him.

It is, we hope to demonstrate, not just one of the great modern Irish novels, but one of the best works of fiction published in English since the war. But before we face the spume and thunder of the Atlantic, Andy, do you want to ask me a question? Shall we start? Shall we do it that way? Let's do it that way round. Let's do it that way round. John, I'm idly wondering what you've been reading this week. Well, my book is the winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the prize that along with the writers Guy Gunaratne and Ely Williams, I've been judging for the last, I guess, 10 months. And, you know, I think I've said before, read over 55 novels.

And this book, Lote by Sherlock von Reinhold, is the winner and an incredibly worthy winner. We, I think all three of us in the end had two books that we really loved. We loved all of them on the long list and the short list, but there were two that really stood out. Louise Sagasti's Musical Offering, which I talked about on a previous podcast, and Lote. And I have to say, Lote is the most wonderful novel, one of the best debut novels I've read in a very long time. It's dazzling in lots of ways. It manages to combine really 21st century themes, queer history, the recovery of lost black artists

with lush kind of almost old-fashioned beauty of language. So it's very simplest and there's nothing really particularly simple or straightforward about Lote, I have to say, is a kind of art historical detective story. The protagonist, Matilda, is a young researcher. She's obsessed with the bright young things of the 1920s, notably the aesthetic, Stephen Tennant, and also the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Stephen Tennant, and also the artist of the Harlem Renaissance, particularly a gay poet and painter, Richard Bruce Nugent. And anyway, in the course of her research into these twinned worlds,

she uncovers the traces of a lost black modernist woman poet called Hermia Druitt. And her obsession with finding out more about Druitt takes her to Dunn, which is a small European town. It's never kind of really placed, but that's where Hermia Druitt lived during the 1930s. And she became involved with, along with Stephen Tennant and Nancy Cunard, a cult, a hermetic cult in the kind of, in the old dawn, the golden dawn sort of school called Lote. The Lote O's they were called, and it was a kind of reinvention of the idea of the Lotus Eaters who were, you know, dedicated to luxury and pleasure and featured in Homer. So there, the Hermia Druitt story becomes entwined with an artist residency that's also in Dunn.

And the artists at that residency are dedicated to a particularly kind of obscure and kind of abstract critical theory, art theory, run by a Derrida-like kind of guru figure called John Garot. So there's a lot of humour in the book, particularly the skewering of the art theory bollocks that the devotees of Garot spout. But anyway, what I love about the book is it ticks all the postmodern boxes.

The text of two other books are threaded through the narrative. One's a work of art history and the other is a novel, another novel. There's something incredibly old fashioned about the book as well. It's about truth, the old Keats line, you know, beauty is truth and truth is beauty. And I guess that's why I was trying to think of books I could recommend that would give you a flavour of it. And the closest I can come to is Araboor by Huismans. It's got the same heady mix of ideas and ornaments and the same sort of sense of the characters

being in an intoxicated heightened state a lot of the time. I absolutely loved it and recommend it hugely. It's an amazing, amazing debut and I think Shola von Reinhold will go on to write more I absolutely loved it and recommend it hugely. It's an amazing, amazing debut. And I think Shola von Reinhold will go on to write more extraordinary fiction. I'm really, really pleased it's won the prize. And here, I'm just going to give you a little flavour. Erskine Lilly is a character that Matilda meets in Dunn and is also fascinated by the cult of Lot.

Of course, everyone knows the Lotus Eaters from Homer. The book gives another account, saying, when dull Odysseus looked upon all this, he was horrified he could not distinguish man from woman. They insulted his sense of goodness, this effeminate people who loved nothing more than to dine upon the lotus and decorate endlessly, to lose themselves in the holy act of adornment, which the book of luxuries calls volution. The volute, you see, is divine. The sinuous line, the serpentine line, the corolla, the curl, the twist, the wall, the spiral and so on, are all related in their volution, convolution, revolution. Volution is the essential and irreducible aspect of ornamentation,

just as the phoneme is the smallest irreducible unit of sound in language. Locked into each coil, each curl of ornament, just like the coil and curl of your hair, and my hair, darling, afro hair, as we call it, the secret salvation of us all. So that's Loat by Shola von Reinhold, published by Jacaranda Books as part of their brilliant programme, 20 in 2020, where they published 20 black British writers in the same year. Yeah.

Andy, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading Girl by the novelist Edna O'Brien. So this was published a couple of years ago, and I think year before last? Yeah, maybe. If anyone doesn't know what this novel is about, it's specifically, it's about the kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram. And it was published to some acclaim and some controversy, which really what Edna O'Brien has been doing for the last 60 years.

Her first novels, The Country Girls, 1960, The Lonely Girl in 1962, and Girls in Their Married Bliss, 1964, were very controversial in the era in which they were published. And there's clearly a line that she's willing to draw between those novels and this novel 60 years later simply by calling it Girl. And it's about one of the schoolgirls who is kidnapped, escapes, what happens to her next one of the schoolgirls who is kidnapped, escapes.

What happens to her next? And whether escape is possible in the different layers of a patriarchal society? It's very intense. It's very shocking. It's very intense. It's very shocking. I found it difficult to read at points such as the combined grimness of the subject matter and the brilliance of the prose. The thing I'd like to say about it to bat-listed listeners, which I think will be of interest to them, is I can't think of another author, and I ask my colleagues joining me here for this podcast if they can, can you think of another author who has written a new politically engaged

novel in a new style at the age of 88? No, I can't. No way. It's pretty remarkable, isn't it? I'm not seeking to patronise anyone here. I just think it's worth noting that it is incredibly unusual for novelists in their late 80s to produce such forceful work and to stir up such... forceful work and to stir up such, I don't want to say controversy, debate, to be willing to stir up such debate. She was a great friend. Edna O'Brien was a great friend of Philip Roth. Philip Roth, of course, had a famous hot streak towards the end of his career in his seventies, but that was fairly, that was considered unusual. We're talking about someone who's now 90 years old

and clearly does not want to stop, sees no reason to stop, sees no reason to slow down or mellow. If you read the acknowledgements of Girl, she clearly has an army of people working with her to supply the sheer mind-boggling amounts of research and interview material. But when you read the novel, it functions seemingly wholly as the product of one writer's vision. And I'm not going to read anything from it because I very much want to, I'll focus to be on Dermot Healy,

but I would commend it to you. It's not a great beach read. You know, I won't lie. And it may well be that writers who are on the ground, as it were, are more able to faithfully reproduce the issues that Nigeria faces at the moment. But in terms of being the product of somebody firing on all cylinders so late in their career, it's astonishing.

You must have met Edna O'Brien. Presumably you have. Oh, I have indeed, yeah, yeah. I met her on a number of occasions, once in Australia and once at a festival I ran in Monaghan, where I live. And, you know, she was firing on all cylinders then too, so, you know. I think she has no other way to fire, yeah. I remember seeing one of the very early Hay festivals

and she was on stage with Derek Walcott and there was a real gale, I mean, it was a hooli. So there was this incredible, the tent was shaking and she was talking about Joyce in this incredible, it was just one of those great, she had to raise her voice, but somehow she managed to project, and it felt like the elements were unleashing. Her book on Joyce is really good, you know.

Yeah, it's really good. It's full of interesting facts, like the amount of money, the amount that he got from Harriet Weaver, and today's money for drink and steak and fun times and the West Bank or whatever, the Dumago was a million quid. Yeah.

I just got stuck at that page. I couldn't get beyond it. A million quid. How many bottles of the most beautiful wine in Paris would that have bought them? As Hemingway said, there they are again, the right royal Irish tribe of them crying poverty.

Well, I am glad. I am glad we brought her into the room. And now let's usher her out. We'll be back in just a sec patrick when did you first read a goat song or first encounter the work of dermot healy well i was familiar with his work long before a goat song was published he used to publish in small magazines, you know, it was the time of the small literary magazine, I suppose, period 1976, 1977. And there were various little pamphlets and things, you know, Icarus from Trinity College and Cyphers from Dublin. And Dermot used to publish regularly in these things.

And Dermot used to publish regularly in these things. And I suppose what was very kind of important to us at that time was the notion of style. You know, Ireland, I suppose, was a country that was it was like England, but different. And it was turbulent and, you know, didn't have the Industrial Revolution. And so it had a different kind of growth, but the same. So it was kind of bound up, any style that you might attempt to kind of contrive had to be bound up with some kind of truth to your experience. And I found that although Dermot was difficult as a stylist in these magazines, it was quite outstanding. And not because it was trying to do something else, but because it was trying, as he subsequently did in The Goat Song, to unite

all these various influences in a way that was true and authentic. And the first time I came across it really working was in his book, Banished Misfortune, which is the name of an Irish reel, actually, which is significant considering you played Planxty there. And it's not that often, if you go back to that period, that you will see Irish folk music woven seamlessly and all self-consciously into the style. And that's why I mentioned the uniqueness of the Irish experience. Not that it's better or worse or anything else.

It's just different. And, you know, for authenticity, these various strands that for one reason or another were not present in Irish fiction that I could see at that time, made his work stand out to me. And his work was spread, you know, his work as a writer is spread fairly equally in those terms, isn't it, between drama and poetry and fiction.

Yeah. And I sometimes wonder, you know, I never made up my mind about this because his plays were extraordinary, but they needed a director that understood him. And I don't think that was ever found. Those plays, I've seen them done at various times, and some of them I liked better than others. Some of them were extraordinary, but they never got the audience that they merited. And I mean, there were so many strings to his bow as a writer.

For example, one aspect of it that I think is probably the most outstanding of all are his works, his writings, which haven't been collected. And if there's any publisher listening to this, you know, that has a few bob to spare. His works on visual art are second to none. I mean, my wife is a painter and she keeps these things and I haven't got a great visual eye, but there were a few things that he wrote about painters whom I respect that just floored me. One of the things I was, I couldn't believe, in fact, as I was reading, is every time he changed register, he utterly mastered the register. He was so good at any

one register that a lesser writer would have stuck with that for as long as they could. It's a very interesting observation. And he was like that in conversation as well. Yeah, he absolutely was. So, Rach, when did you first read A Goat's Song? Well, I first read A Goat's Song when we were about to publish The Bend for Home. It was one of the

first books that i read because i knew i was going to be working on the bend for home which i don't think had actually been delivered yet so but it was one of those things was like well i better read up on him and it just completely blew me away and and it was it was very much that experience of when earth have i not heard of this person before? And that sense that he has, and Patrick just alluded to it, and we'll talk more about travelling around with him, being with him when you see him meeting people. And it happens a lot in this book that Jack needs to write down what people say, and that's very much like Dermot.

When I met him, he came on as a sort of chaotic kind of wild man, but you look at the work and it's so incredibly precise in a way. He's nailing feelings and the patterns of speech and the way alcohol works on the body or how fears pile up on one another. It just completely blew me away when I read it. And it's one of those books that I've given to literally dozens of people. I was a tiny bit worried when we went to the bookshelf to see whether we actually had any copies left because I've given so many away because I love it so much. I'm privileged to be able to talk to the three of you who knew Dermot and have so much knowledge of his work uh as a as a a newcomer really but John could you give listeners just a little portrait of what it was like to publish Dermot Healy he was a writer that that I think he he he felt

comfortable when he had a human relationship and and where he could show you his world and he could show you where it was coming from and we I mean I mean, Rachel and I spent, spent, you know, we went to two or three times, spent time with him and Helen and, and, you know, walked with, walked with the dogs and the cats and the various animals. So in a way, not all writers are like that. Some of them are very happy for you for you just, just to work on the text or just to, you know, but I think with Dermot, he was letting you into his world. It was like, you understand this is whether it was going to Ellen's Bar or walking along the Strand or being in the centre of Sligo, or he sent us up Ben Bulban, you know, this amazing big mountain one time and found it hilarious that it had really caused my brother in particular a massive kind of panic attack. It was a long, long walk.

Anyway, yeah, he's amazing. I mean, one of the great publishing experiences of my life was working with Dermot. Well, I'm going to read the blurb on the back of the current Faber edition in a minute and see if any of you wrote it but before we do that and set the book up for listeners we should hear from both Dermot himself and his editor Bill Swainson and this is a clip of

Bill visiting Dermot at home from a documentary called Writing in the Sky Hey, how are you? How's it going? Bill visiting Dermot at home from a documentary called Writing in the Sky. Hey, how are you? How's it going? It was the writer Aidan Higgins introduced me to Bill Swainson. He became my editor for a number of years, and I have to say he had great patience with me while I was trying to finish my third book, A Goat's Song.

But the poem itself is a long poem. It's a long poem. It was on for about 100 pages. And that's been a long time in the writing. Ten, eleven, maybe longer. It's about the average length for a book. Come on. Yeah, he takes longer than other people. But the great thing about him is that he won't be rushed into letting something out when it's not ready,

when it's not as good as it can be. And sometimes he's not sure why it's not ready, when it's not as good as it can be. And sometimes he's not sure why it's not ready, but the instinct is absolutely certain it's not ready. About two or three years before A Goat's Song was published, all the elements for the novel were there, but the engine that was going to drive it, the thing that would give it the spark of real fictional life, hadn't quite arrived.

And then one day, Dermot rang and said he was sending a new chapter, and he thought he was on to something. And that chapter was the chapter in which Jonathan Adams enters the novel as a character for the first time. What's it like hearing from Dermot and Bill there? Slightly heartbreaking. It's brilliant. Yeah, it's very odd. It's been very odd having so much time with Dermot this week, you know, because he died in 2014, 66.

And it'd be fair to say, Patrick, it was pretty, it wasn't expected, was it? No, not at all. No, it is harrowing, you know, it's difficult. But I think it's important that we have these kind of discussions because it still bewilders me as to how you know enough time has passed now for dust to have settled and people to say what on earth is going on that this book is not constantly referred to i mean people speak of the canon

you know and they purr with kind of self-regard as to how important the canon is, whatever it is, if it means as much as it used to, I don't know. But Dermot Healy is never included in it. And that's really shameful. Yeah, it is. Well, I was going to save this for the end of the programme, but I'm going to say it and I'm going to show my hand. I am the trustworthy witness here, right, because they all knew Dermot.

I had not read, although Mitch and Rachel had tried to get me in my hand, right? I am the trustworthy witness here, right? Because they all knew, Dermot. I had not read, although Mitch and Rachel had tried to get me to read this book 25 years ago, and I fobbed them off. I hadn't read a Goat song before this week, or the Ben for Home. And I thought all week whether I was going to put it in these terms. But I've decided I will, because listeners who've stuck with us for the last five and a half years, you've never heard me say the thing that I'm about to say. And that is, I think A Goat's Song is one of the best novels I have ever read. Good man, Andy. That's a very good thing to hear.

I wouldn't say that unless I meant it. I'm picking up what Patrick said. I'm picking up what Patrick said. I could not believe as I read this novel, A, how good it is, and B, that I hadn't already read it. Why weren't people that I didn't know pressing this into my hand? Why isn't this being written about all the time? It is the most extraordinary,

Most extraordinary technical and soulful achievement. And it's not like those two things always go together. My brain fizzed and I was deeply moved by it. So there you go. And that is how I felt. I'm not trying to amp that up. Why would you? Why would you?

That's exactly how I felt about it. Amazing, amazing book. Rachel, do you think you might be prevailed upon to read the blurb? Which edition do you want me to read the blurb from? Whichever one you wrote. I didn't write. I don't know. I might have written one on this one.

Right, so. That'll have been written by Swains. This is probably written by Bill, yeah. And it starts with a quote from James Kellman that says, it's a beautiful piece of work, no doubt about it, the real stuff. And it says, set in the west of Ireland, a goat song tells the story of a love affair. The novel opens at a moment of crisis in the life of playwright Jack Ferris, when misunderstandings, alcohol and despair have driven his actress lover Catherine away.

In an attempt to come to terms with his loss, Jack determines to recreate Catherine in his imagination. But the story he must tell acknowledges that the imagination is not a safe place. Very soon, two worlds come vividly to life, one Presbyterian, the other Catholic, both rooted in opposites, yet each fascinated by the other. Thus the past is recreated, from Catherine's RUC father's early ambition to be a preacher, to a show band dance in Mayo in a marquee buffeted by Atlantic winds, where that first love between Jack and Catherine is revisited. But Healy is no sentimentalist. He keeps the wheel of his novel turning, moving us to the conflict in the North and all the pressures it brings to bear on the couple,

until we are led inexorably back to a present transformed by everything we have discovered along the way. Both a celebration of love and a lament for its loss, A Goat's Song is a novel of rich characterisation and a great formal beauty, which achieves the redemptive power of tragedy. And then there's a very nice quote from Mr Patrick McKay. Can I say something? I've got the proof. I've got my proof copy over here.

And can I say, there are significant differences to the blurb that you've just read to the one that was on. Oh, really? You've got to love Harville. You've got to love those editorial standards. You know, can you imagine today rewriting the blurb from the proof for the one that goes on? Well, you say that, Johnny. I've got the Faber edition here, which is the current edition that's in print. It's got a completely different blurb on there. Yeah.

It's in print. It's got a completely different blurb on there. It's completely different. Jack Ferris, playwright, drunk, is mired in contemplative misery in a fisherman's cottage on the windy and bleak west coast of Ireland, mourning his love affair with Catherine Adams, an actress and Protestant from the north. He summons her instead in his imagination. In doing so, he tells the story of her father, Jonathan,

failed parson and retired RUC man, shamed into exile by a moment of violence in Derry years ago. Masterly, elegiac, a goat's song conjures the contrasting landscapes and opposing myths of a nation divided.

And then there's a very nice quote from, oh, Patrick McCabe. Yeah. That's alright. It's not bad. That's pretty good i mean it's worth hearing the blurb twice because we want to settle the the subject of the book i've got so my question for you patrick is um so first of all a goat song is a novel's a novel written by Jack Ferris, at least it is from after the first section, which is an element which I really enjoyed and thought was foxy and fascinating.

And I wondered whether you felt, I mean, this may be connected, it may not, the extent to which Dermot was an Irish writer adopting experimental forms or a European writer writing about Ireland or neither of those things because if you were in his company for any significant amount of time you would realize that you were in the company of someone who was actually Seamus Heaney's term comes to mind because I asked Heaney about him at that festival he said Healey not Heaney Healey is sui generis he belongs in no country except his own so if you were to run the flag up the pole you would have to put healy's name on it or his colors because it's the only place that he would properly exist in the place that he created himself which is true in many ways like the the the prize winner that you've just read i mean that's john that's a fascinating country of the mind already, you know, that this person, the writer's created all these worlds, but it comes from their own world, as it were. Yeah. And I think that it's probably the landscape and the topography reminded me of Newfoundland, perhaps, or the novels of Alistair MacLeod and everything else.

But ultimately, it's an adventure in language and thought and myth. And I mean, I would like to liberate someone like Dermot Healy from the well-intentioned kind of accolade of being a fabulous Irish writer. I mean, it irritates a lot of people, this sort of thing, anyway. I mean, when you bring nationality into it, I mean, it's unavoidable. I couldn't really think of Philip Larkin

as anything but an English writer, and yet he's not. But he is, do you know what I mean? So it is problematic. Or Barbara Pym. You couldn't say she was anything but an English writer, you know. But you don't want to limit the imagination to these unfortunate categories and yet at the same time one of the extraordinary i we use the word a lot

but remarkable extraordinary things about a goat song is how it has the bravery to um render the political via the personal. You know, you're saying we don't want to limit him to being an Irish writer. It's a pretty incredible novel if you want to borrow your way down into the recent history of Ireland. Surely an extremely risky undertaking. But not, I would suggest, the most successful aspects of the novel. Ireland, surely an extremely risky undertaking. But not, I would suggest, the most successful aspects of the novel.

The sections in Belfast have the kind of weight of kind of grim reportage about them in a way that the, I don't want to be unkind with saying that, but I have to say that there's such an extraordinary book of peaks and valleys and troughs that if you place those passages or those chapters against the Jonathan Adams sections or the early parts of The Love Affair and The Squabbles, they dip, I think. And I think that sometimes comes from wanting to do too much, that you want to tell the story of your country, but you tell this. It's almost like the story should come from your bloodstream and tell you in a way. I found my eyes glazing over quite, quite a bit at that point. because when I read those sections, I just feel that it's like Jack is very like Dermot in that. Dermot would always talk to everybody.

And that sort of, I remember being on a road driving him through Ireland and there were some travellers on the side of the road who had piles of bits of tin and iron and stuff. And he said, stop the car, Rachel, stop the car. I need to go out and talk to the tinkers. And that was sort of, he always wanted to talk to people. And I feel a certain amount of affection for that Belfast section because it's such a, I don't know whether I felt that the first time I read it, but I certainly, on the second time of reading, I feel that section, it feels like a man trapped in a sort of, in the history that he's trying to understand. Oh, I don't doubt any of that. I'm just giving you my response as a reader and what was working magnificently.

The Adam sections and the girls, you're just surfing on a kind of crystalline imagination there that just, you cannot stop. You cannot stop. But when you crash into the grim urban landscape of Belfast, and he has his notebook, and he's listening to the ex-British soldier, and then he's listening to the Provo, I say, okay, okay,

we get it. We get it. I know what you're saying. It's worth saying, you know this this book is if one of the most famous examples of editorial slash and burn that i've ever ever heard i mean dermot arrived with it i mean you know the legend is with more or less in a carrier bag and he and bill they they took he took half the book out it was was nearly twice as long. It was over 700 pages long. I have no idea what were in those other three or 400 pages that they took out, but it's almost impossible to imagine.

Well, does it beg a question, and I'd like to address this to the panel if you don't mind. You know, our tendency is is particularly these days of prize winning and everything else that you know you go for the perfectly crafted beautifully carved gem without a word wasted right but if i could evoke uh bob dylan who said you know for example the eagles you always know when the eagles are playing where the next note is going to land. He says, I don't care about that. I prefer the basement tapes. What he means is there are loose ends all over the place.

And there are spaces where things can happen. Now, my question for the panel is, should you go, when you're dealing with a writer of such profound, prodigious gifts as this, should you go with something that creates its own world and if it has long chairs and if it has, you know, illogicalities in the plot, are you not doing a great disservice to the magic of the words

by trying to shoehorn it into something which suits the market effectively? So would it have been better in a way, published the whole original manuscript or even an alternative version of it? I don't know. Patrick, you're pushing on an open door here. I'm liberated from having to make these decisions. My experience of reading it for the first time was the strength of the whole is partly down to pacing and range of styles on display. And taken as a whole, I think that novel benefits from those registers that are on display in those sections. Accept it.

And then you could actually probably then compare it in a way, looking at it like this, to Ulysses. You know, if you say, well, Ulysses isn't a novel really you could dip in and out of Ulysses at any time some of the passages work others don't and then they can work at different times yeah one thing that's interesting to me he writes after Goethe's song he writes he's writing poetry all the time. And his poetry is very sparse, very beautifully worked. A lot of it is to do with the natural world and where he's living. He's a very fine poet. We might hear a bit of it later. But his fiction becomes much more, I mean, Sudden Times, which is the book he wrote, the second Harville book he did when we were there, and then Long Time No See are almost all dialogue.

I'd have to read those books again carefully to know whether I thought that there was something lost in that process. The reason I think the books took so long is he was meticulous. He worked very, very hard at a sentence level on what he was doing. Here's a clip of Dermot offering advice to his poetry students, again from the film Writing in the Sky. And this touches on some of the things we've already talked about. And I'm jumping ahead and saying he's about to give you some very good advice. and I'm jumping ahead and saying he's about to give you some very good advice, listeners.

When you get into a poem in a deep way, there's little rhythms, but there's also the fact that a lot of the descriptions are left to you as a reader. The risk is telling the reader what to think. In other words, if you start telling the reader what's beautiful, you actually can kill off the beauty of the object that you're trying to think. In other words, if you start telling the reader what's beautiful, you actually can kill off the beauty of the object that you're trying to describe. You have to watch that you don't over-indulge in the rhyme, if you know what I mean, that you don't actually

do it to escape the responsibilities of having to think. The rhyme will come in in its own time. If you're doing a poem, do it completely, write the whole way through in one sitting, and then leave it sit for as long as you can. If you let a poem rest in your head and leave it sit for about six months, seven months, you'd be quite amazed how you're able to work on it with a certain freedom.

Or six months or ten years or however long it took So Patrick, could we hear a little bit from a goat song please This piece is from a chapter called A Taxi Through New York at Midnight Her eyes closed as she waited for his reply. The darkness seemed to last a long time.

He sat into a taxi in New York. He was quite happy to find the warm upholstery against his back. How long have you been driving taxis? He asked the figure behind the wheel. This is not a taxi, the man replied. I've always wanted to go on a taxi through New York, said Jack, looking at the city. The man replied with words Jack could not understand. They passed beneath high buildings and arcades lit up and small ponds that were behind dark trees. A brilliant sign for gangs,

that were behind dark trees. A brilliant sign for kings, undertakers, sped by. Jack continued to talk away about America. Kafka never went, you know, he said. Is that so? Is that so, said the chauffeur. No, said Jack. It just goes to show you,

said the chauffeur. Aye, said Jack, but he got there all the same. For you see, he explained, Jack, time is not linear. It doesn't go in straight lines. I've been in taxis with Dermot when he actually engaged in those kind of conversations. Yes. It used to amaze me somehow when he'd break through a barrier and it would work.

Now, nine times out of ten, it wouldn't. But the next thing you know, on one or two occasions, you know, the taxi driver or the chauffeur or whoever it was would melt and, you know, you'd be out of the conversation altogether while he and Dermot discussed, you know, the longevity of the iris or the, you know, the fiction of Borges. And you say, how did that happen? Well, he was just, he was brave, I suppose, and relentless.

He just, that was the way he lived his life. Brave is the word. He was not intimidated by anything, really, you felt. You know, he would read stuff and find he'd find stuff you know you he'd find stuff in t.s elliott or in dylan thomas or yeah that other people didn't didn't see they didn't see it that happened a lot yeah that happened a lot as i was extraordinarily keen yeah and i i think that originality that that ability to see, it's what makes the book. What makes The Goat Song, I think, is that it's always just, you know,

this could be a very sentimental book if you wanted it to be. Oh, all the elements are there. It's about a love affair that goes wrong. It's one of the most harrowing, brilliant, and I think psychologically complex presentations of what happens between two people who are in love that I've ever read. And as you say, there are things that came out of it this time that it's got to be 20 years since I read it last. Surely that's the sign of a good book or a good work of art.

News that stays news, as old Mr. Pound has. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, I was talking about it being a novel within a novel, which to some, you know, you could, you can see it as a, certainly the back three quarters of the book are a novel within a novel. But in fact, it's several novels really it is yeah that's why i think it's a little bit like ulysses that way the episodic nature of it and the yeah

circles within circles could i read a little bit related to that actually it's not from a goat song it's from the ben for home which is his memoir which is the the memoir you guys published and another i mean another astonishing underrated masterpiece in my view. Well, you know, I finished reading one of the best novels I've ever read, A Goat's Song, and then I read one of the best memoirs I've ever read, The Ben for Home. So I'm reeling from the quality of what you've made me read. But The Ben for Home, again, has several sections within it as a memoir,

several discrete sections. And Patrick, you were talking about how Dermot was surrounded by women for a lot of his... Yeah, his aunt and his mother were very, very colourful characters. And particularly in the Ben for Home, there are voices come through loud and clear, all the way down through history, really. Well, this is the beginning of chapter 33,

which is relatively near the end of the book. And I wanted to read this because, well, for three reasons. It features Dermot caring for his aunt Maisie, who is 90 and his mother who is in her early 80s and I wanted to read it because it's dialogue which is something I'd like

to talk about in a minute. It's mostly dialogue and his experience as a dramatist and his ear for how people talk is just spectacular I think, here. And also because I myself am going through similar issues in my life at the moment, and I found this just funny and moving.

It's very sincere. That's exactly right. That's what's good about it, yeah. Yeah, when he needs to stop and step back from his own artistry it's a different artistry he can put it in its place which is it's it's wonderful it's wonderful anyway i shall i'll read it i'll do my best chapter 33 what age was somerset maugham when he died asks maizey that's uh that's his aunt what age was Somerset Maugham when he died? Asks Maisie. That's his aunt. What age was Somerset Maugham when he died?

Asks Maisie. He was 96, I think, I say. Mother watches us. She's wearing a blue cardigan buttoned to the neck. She looks away. Was he indeed? Says Maisie. He was.

He couldn't be rid of, I suppose. Mother studies her beads. She kicks. She sighs. And Vincent Price died today, I add. God bless us. And he still, I said, trying to make a joke, had all his teeth. Some do, nodded Maisie. Let me out of here, cries mother as she jumps to her feet. The girl has arranged to collect me in the car. Stop where you are, I say, pushing her back into the chair. But the girl is waiting, she complains. There's no girl. Dear God, is there nothing I can do? She holds the bag dearly in her lap and kicks at me. They're outside!

She glares wildly, waiting for me. No, they're not. Yes, they are. The car is outside. There's no car. Una is in America. Helen is in Sligo. There's no car. She puts the handbag down, lifts her beads out of it,

then lifts the bag again and slowly, bead by bead, trails her rosary back into it. I have an arrangement, she says, rising. What are you saying, Winnie? asks Maisie. Look! I shout, opening the curtain behind her. There's no one. But Mother stares straight ahead at the sitting room door, the handbag over her arm. There is no one, shouts Maisie.

Who is that old woman, asks Mother, pointing at Maisie. Who is she? Sitting down again, she throws Maisie a caustic stare, so I lift her up till her feet are off the ground and carry her to the door. He's abusing me, shrieks mother. I put her down. Arm in arm, we walk out of the living room, along the corridor, past the mirror that now fills the hallway and stop at the front door. I open the door and we step out into the cold October evening. Her fingers dig into my wrist. She turns her head, scrutinising what is out there.

You see, I say, there's no one. Flower pot, she says. Yes yes that's the flower pot Eileen's light is on she says it is she studies Eileen's house for a moment her head cocked as her eyes vainly try to focus on the familiar Eileen's house floats in the gathering dusk. Winnie turns away abruptly. She's finished with all that. We come back slowly. Tour the rooms. Halt a moment in the kitchen. Return and stand before the mirror. She touches her hair.

When we re-enter the sitting room, she pauses and studies Maisie, who smiles at her. I leave her back in the armchair. She dips into her bag for her beads, lifts the Virgin's prayer, puts it away, writes her glasses and closes her eyes. Who was to collect her has not come. Roddy Doyle wins the Booker Prize on the TV.

I hope you'll bear with me for reading that in full. No, it's really good. Booker Prize on the TV. I hope you'll bear with me for reading that in full because I just found the recall. First of all, the recall. Yeah, it's unearthly, yeah. When did he write that? Was he keeping notes? Did he go upstairs? Did he do it three years later?

When did he do it? And second of all, that line, which seems like a little pathetic drop or joke at the end there about roddy dore winning the booker prize on tv is an acknowledgement of dermot's status as a writer and how he might feel about what's going on in the room when something else could be happening outside i've a magnificent piece of writing he's very alive to other people's psychological states at any given time. Can you hear my dog in the background? Yes, we can.

We can. The contribution is valued. What he's very good at is rendering other people's psychic or psychological states without imposing himself on them. It's not describing that. It's just embodying it in the characters. Every page of a goat song has something in it that you sort of think, you know, it's like a sort of how does he know that? How does it sort of, I'm feeling that with that character.

This is a book written entirely in the third person. And yet if you're so close in and you're so, he's just embodying it with very few words. And there's a bit that I wanted to read that was in there about when Jack puts himself into the hospital at Christmas at the beginning of the book. Yeah, yeah. Jack has come to a stage where he's got himself in a, he's literally checked himself into the local hospital,

to the psychiatric ward. And he's talking, he talks to all the other people in the, you know, with some marvellous, almost Beckett-like conversations between him and the other inmates. This is him describing the evening. Each man in the hospital sets up house for the night and breaks camp the following morning.

Next begins the arduous task of walking, walking along the same path if necessary, walking with eyes down and intent, walking without sympathy, walking in the same path if necessary walking with eyes down and intent walking without sympathy walking in the center of another creature with the head held arrogantly back stalking feverishly stopping to listen stopping as if there was another following you as you followed someone who wasn't there walking sometimes in slippers but mostly going back to the boots you wore the first day you came into the hospital. Then the walking stops. The motor has sensed the uselessness.

The drugs have made the instinct paper thin. Collapsed into a chair, the mind is frightened and tired. The sense of illusion makes the men and the women sorry. Though some, more highly charged than others, keep on, and the others will never start out physically at all instead of their bodies they set their minds out to roam going if necessary along the same path at night time all collect tired by their beds for the newcomers this is always a moment of dread the old timers from mayo who have been walking like Job through the land of Nod, this is the moment

of heart's desire. They pull back the sheets with perfect care, then begins the little industry of going to bed. Now they prepare for the moment when sleep takes them off during the night. Sleep is the perfect wanderer. He carries nothing at all. All he needs is a mind to journey in and to rest in. They lie preparing for him. Isn't it lovely? It's just mesmerising, Rach. Absolutely mesmerising, right?

Patrick, I was thinking about what you were saying about why compromise the writing by having to force it into the shape of a sellable book. Well, it's something that's been on my mind for a couple of years, really. I don't know. I mean, what happened to the 300 pages? Maybe Bill still got them. Well, somebody might have them.

I don't sense with this book that it was chopped for commercial purposes so much as probably, you know, we don't know, it may have been incredibly repetitive or whatever. And Bill is not a kind of editor who would do unnecessary harm to a book, I don't think. No, no, I'm perfectly aware of that. D do unnecessary harm to a book, I don't think. No, no, I'm perfectly aware of that. Dermot wanted to do it. It may well be that it was repetitive.

You see, at least if we knew that, that would be something, and it was good and approved the book, and that may well be the case. This is relevant. This is a comment. This is Bill again talking about what it was like being a longstanding editor or collaborator with Dermot. One of the really interesting things about Dermot was that in 1980, and probably long before, he knew what the four or five books were that he was going to write. He was enormously patient and

very clear about when a book was ready. A Fight with Shadows, or Fighting with Shadows as it became, was probably 10 years in the writing. A Goat Song was at least eight years in the writing. And many of these books he'd been living with, it wasn't that they were present in 1970-something, but they grew into themselves in the course of his writing life. And that's something I've not really seen before. In 1980, you would easily have described him as an Irish hippie. He had fantastic red hair, very good looking, very attractive to women, but enormously good fun, enormously good company. 20 years later, when we published A Goat's Song,

he'd lived a bit and lived a bit harder. He'd been out on fishing boats, been at sea and been at, you know, been at sea and been at sea. He'd been at sea and been at sea is what Bill says there, which has really made me pause for thoughts. So how does he get from growing up in a small town Midlands background to becoming this maverick man of the West? There was always an element of the kind of outlaw bottom. And that's not entirely uncommon. And, you know, the Irish, well, England too, you know,

there are people who like to live outside the, you know, John Lennon, you know, Luke Kelly, all these people, you know. There was a time when the arts were synonymous with these things. Not so much now. It's kind of more a career, it seems to me. But in those years when I would have met him, he would have looked like pretty much the standard London squat hippie, all right, but with an extraordinary kind of level of refinement

that came from his mother and her sisters, you know, which is not uncommon in small towns as well, you know, that she would have attempted to, knowing the wild kind of charmer that she had reared, that she would also have a duty to keep them on the straight and narrow as best she could, you know, with varying degrees of success, because no matter where he went, people followed him. You know, it was a joy to behold. It was an extraordinary thing to behold.

I remember in the London years going into this bar. It was next door to a National Front bar in Brixton. And there was this big hubbub in the back bar. And I went in and said, what's going on here? And Dermot was in the center of it. And there were all, it was the time of the miners' strike. And they were discussing politics and they were discussing poetry. But he was like this kind of extraordinary Roman candle, you know, that was burning so bright, you know, that everybody was attracted to it. But this would be,

you know, when he was in the fall of his health. We all know that you can only do that for so long. I mean, we all know this. Brandon Behan was another one. Yeah. There's not an awful lot you can really do about it. But as regards the kind of

nautical drift, as it were, it does seem like there are almost two creative dermots. So this wide open horizon one, and there's the small inland one, but there's then also the London one, which is much under examined because in this book, The Banished Misfortune Short Story Collection, there's a really, really cosmopolitan story in that about an acid trip. I was just about to say that I have never,

maybe never read such a brilliant description in prose of an acid trip. Pretty good, isn't it? But I think that it wasn't much different from the way he was thinking then anyway, because I think it was the acid i'd be worried about the dermot was so fantastical in conversation at that time that the that the the acid probably picked packed up its bags and went home and said it's too wild out here

there's a very good interview where they got the he got the interviewer says to him you know you had a mental breakdown and it's it's brilliant it's very dumb and interviewer says to him, you know, you had a mental breakdown. And it's brilliant. It's very dumb. And he just says, I'm not sure I did have a mental breakdown. I'm not sure I did have a mental breakdown. And I think that thing about him being, and I think the other thing that we, you know, you can't think or talk about this book without alcohol coming up.

There's a very good little piece that Timothy O'Grady wrote, Tim O'Grady, a novelist and a friend of Dermot's too, and a wonderful writer. He quotes Christopher McLehose, who was at Havel, saying that he thought that it was an important European novel and that it will be come to see as an equivalent magnitude to Under the Volcano, and not just for the obvious reasons. And I wonder if it's that obvious reason bit that's the issue, isn't it?

Which is, it's a book that is shot through with drinking, the effects of drinking, the damage of drinking, and the pleasures of drinking, as Under the Volcano is. And I've often wondered whether that stereotype, Patrick, of the Irish, you know, the hard-living, hard-drinking Irish writer is a fantastically unhelpful one. Well, isn't it curious, though, when I've grown up with that one, how remote it seems now?

Like, when you think of an Irish writer now, what do you think of? You certainly don't see Brendan Behan coming barreling through the door with his tie, his skew, F this and F that. You think of a really elegant, articulate female writer, don't you? Yeah, all happy. Sally Rooney, yeah.

That's who you think of. And obviously things change, but pubs were a very, very big part of literary life and a very exciting part of literary life and a very exciting part of literary life in many ways. I mean, the usual kind of denigration is, oh, Dublin is a city of, you know, dreamers and, you know, people who never write books. But, you know, when I met Dermot first, he was in the company of Liam O'Flaherty, you know, and these were very, very big people, you know, and, you know, there was a sense of an apprenticeship for a young writer at that time.

I wouldn't have had the nerve to, you know, to address Liam O'Flaherty because I didn't have his life experience. So there might be a sense if you were in his company, you could learn something from him. And that was the same day, actually, Dermot himself told me that Seamus Heaney had accepted six of his poems for a magazine. I would date it around 1978. And Dermot would pretend not to be pushed one way or another, but his eyes were a gleam. He really, he really did respect Seamus Heaney. Then I start wondering what it is I lost.

What was that thing, that important thing I left behind me on the dreaming road? And then comes the moment when returning home, I turn perchance their way and there they are,

the familiars I lost that morning, sifting by the dark tree that marks the edge of their watery bed. A tossed acre of amber reeds, feather-headed, frail, summoning. And this is when they truly exist, when you come upon them at the last moment and the eye suddenly catches them nodding in their bed of cinnamon getting ready in a flurry of whispering to leave you again yeah that's from his uh his last collection of poetry the reed bed um he became very obsessed with those geese towards the end,

these amazing barnacle geese that would fly over. It was kind of like, he called it an ancient clock. But Heaney reading that poem, Heaney said he kind of inherited the mantle of Patrick Kavanagh. He said celebrating the passionate transitory, which that poem is all about, I think, the coming and the going and the passing of time look we've got to wind up in a minute and there's a chapter in um a goat's

song called oh no don't stop the carnival everyone who listens to this show knows how much we like music here and how much we like folk music and I'm just going to read a paragraph or two from this chapter, which was so exquisitely written. I read this two or three times just for the pleasure of the prose. I'm just going to share that with you now. Across the gate that opened into a field, a huge banner announced the Folk Festival. The banner plunged in the wind like a

parachute behind a seaplane touching down. A string of bulbs had fallen with a spray of light into a corner of the field. The wind was fierce. The marquee billowed. The girls came up the road through lines of parked cars. A few acres of stony land away was the Atlantic. The girls clung to each other's arms, balancing and laughing against the gusts. The marquee with sails illuminated shook like a grounded ship. The things we do, shouted Sarah. What? screamed Catherine. The generator hummed and gave off a stench of dark oil. The stewards, laughing to each other, swung bits of twine with a darning needle at the end to pierce tickets.

They drank by turn from a bottle and slagged those they knew. Inside, the new generation were screaming for Planxty. The musicians must have come on because a great roar arose. Over the speakers came the bodhran and the mandolin, the bouzouki and the pipes. And then Andy Irvine began singing A Blacksmith Courted Me. So that's Planxty recorded on The Late Late Show in 1972. Brilliant. Performing that song, The Black Sea.

Did you know that Dermot Healy was a roadie for Planxty? No. Yeah. Oh, that's incredible. So he'd very much approve of that as a signature sign out. Aw. That's so great. I couldn't be happier.

Brilliant. Now it's time for us to leave. Jack and Catherine, step out of the wind and set the evening fire. Huge thanks to Patrick and Rachel for summoning up the shade of the much-missed Dermot Healy, to Nicky Birch for making our electronic seance sound so alive, and to Unbound for the brandy and creme de menthe. You can download all 139 previous episodes of this thing. Plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website,

backlisted.fm. And we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too. You can also show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We aim to survive without paid for advertising. Your generosity helps us to do that. All patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early. And for less than a brace of pints of Guinness at Ellen's Bar in Mojaro, lock listeners get two extra lock listeds a month. Our version of the tin-roofed, surf-pounded

cottage, where we three get to sit up all night listening to songs, watching films and reading books, because that's what we enjoy. Oh, can you hear my dog's going bananas outside the door? Can you hear that? This is the dog show we've always threatened. Yeah, okay. The bark of a dog flew by. It's the great last line. Lock listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. And this week's batch are Corinne McChesney, thank you very much. Catherine Phipps, Jane Williamson, and Jeff Brighthope.

Thank you very much. And Jeff, thank you for your amazing story about William Maxwell that you sent us on Twitter this week. That was superb. Cass Penfold, Milvia Herrera, Gero Rourke and Nick Davis. Rachel, is there anything you would like to say about Dermot? Because we're actually going to finish by hearing from Dermot. I think he should have the last word.

Is there anything you'd like to say about the book or about him that we haven't touched on? I forgot to say anything about driving around Ireland with him when we published A Bend for Home with 200 copies in the back and driving all over Belmullet and Galway and places that were, there were no bookshops. And where we went to, he'd go and do a reading in a pub or in a village shop or wherever that people would gather and i'd have i'd get i'd get all the books out of the back of the car and i'd have my little cash box

and we'd he'd give a reading and dozens of people would turn up to these things it was it was fantastic and we would at the end of it everybody would kind of repair to the pub and have a drink and everyone would start singing and i was dermot was like, are you going to join in, Rachel? You can't just sit there. So the only songs I could remember all the words to were Joni Mitchell songs. And so they'd be all singing. They were singing amazing. Dermot had just, he could sing anything.

There were people singing all around me. And there was the noble call. So whoever just finished singing had to point to you and Dermot had just, he could sing anything. There were people singing all around me. And there was the noble call, so whoever just finished singing had to point to you, and Dermot would point at me every time. And I would pipe up, the wind is in from Africa. And last night I couldn't sleep. And I heard Helen behind me. Dermot's wife was behind me. This must have been when we were actually in Sligo.

And Helen behind me said, sure, that's the first time I've heard a song whispered and I'm doing my best here Well listen thanks everybody and just personally I would like to say thank you to John and Rachel and Patrick and everyone just for bat listed for existing

that I got to read this book so thank you an amazing thing Of course I don't know that I had a mental breakdown because you're telling me but I don't actually know that I had to read this book. So thank you. An amazing thing. Well, of course, I don't know that I had a mental breakdown because you're telling me, but I don't actually know that I had a mental breakdown or that I had. I think that always from when I was young, I was kind of the same as anybody else,

except that I put it into language. And so therefore, by telling my story, I've made an impression on people who already have had their own problems and now they see it echoed in someone's writing. And I just thought that it was time that some of these dogs be put to rest. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon.

It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.