Friday, February 29, 2008
Books: The Telling Year - Belfast 1972
What I remember of 1972 is searching through front page headlines to see who’d been killed the night before, and all but on one occasion being thankful it wasn’t anyone I knew. Even traumatic events like Bloody Sunday quickly faded as Republican and Loyalists took it upon themselves to conduct a particularly nasty game of tit for tat, snuffing out the lives of many ordinary people in the wider population as a kind of macabre tally of success. One Protestant assassinated one night, possibly meant two Catholics the next: a bloody arithmetic, that seemed to have no end. In the middle of it were journalists, the local variety used to writing up stories about lost budgies, new roads, and lovely girls who, in three years of sustained civil disorder barely knew what had hit them. It was Malachi O’Doherty’s first year as a journalist. A year he recounts with unremitting honesty in his book, A The Telling Year: Belfast 1972. You can read my review from this month’s Fortnight magazine here.
Mick Fealty @ 07:32 AM
It’s a nice book - really get a sense of time and place - and a young man’s angst.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 09:10 AMMick,
The book is quite clearly called ‘The Telling Year’, yet you twice call it ‘A Telling Year’.
Attention to detail, please!
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:03 AMEven though my brain was quite clearly telling me it was ‘The’ and not ‘A’ my typing finger went on a delinquent solo run all of its own making.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:38 AMMick given, a) the men who fill the role of first and deputy first ministers b) legislation about smoking in the work place,do you really think it likely that their offices are “smoke filled”?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:53 AMA worth while read you reckon Dewi?
I read that McKay book, Northern Prods. What an eye-opener this was, and belies the line taken by the middle-class Unionists on here.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:54 AMI think when you said “eye-opener” what you meant to say was “bag of shite”.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:57 AMEven as a strong supporter of Fortnight, I was curious as to the rationale behind their reduced rate of subscription applying to “unwaged/students/prisoners”. What is the rationale for itemising “prisoners” who presumably are “unwaged” - and is this concession patronising or privileging? Or to be consistent why not target “women” - as is clear from this edition of Fortnight women are virtually absent as contributors.
And yes, Malachis book is the tops (to get back to the original point).
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:57 AMChekov
As someone who has had quite a few experiences of being on the wrong side of sectarianism, I found it frighteningly real.
Are you saying she made up the interviews, were the people fictitious, did she take licence. or perhaps she just caught them in unguarded moments?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:01 PMA worth while read you reckon Dewi? - yeah - different from the usual. I’ll try that Mckay (still got your book by the way….in Glasgow sometime in March…)
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:06 PMPE,
I too have read McKay’s book, in fact I bought it a second time after it failed to return from a friend who borrowed it. But what, pray, has that got to do with Malachi’s book?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:07 PMI’m not going to get into a discussion about that book here, but suffice to say she knew the book she wanted to write before doing any research for it. I know for example of a number of interviews which didn’t make the book. I wonder why that was?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:16 PMChekov,
I take it you are unaware of the metaphor(?), “all smoke and mirrors”.Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:16 PMNothing in this context. Just thought I’d mention it, don’t mean to derail conversation.
Dewi
Bring the telling year as well if you have still got it, saves me buying it.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:18 PMWill do PE. Some of the scenes in the book are very vivid. Once he blew a whistle when BA forces were outside his house…..you can imagine what happened next. One of the questions frequently asked here is to name anyone who the Provos saved in defensive mode. Malachi O’Doherty’s brother was one - saved from Loyalists by the IRA.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 12:44 PMPrince
I read that McKay book, Northern Prods. What an eye-opener this was, and belies the line taken by the middle-class Unionists on here.
Except when you realise that the subjects in McKay’s book are not representative of Northern Prods, and therefore the impression given by the book is false (albeit perhaps an impression that you are happy to have.)
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 01:34 PMI would also like to add that Susan McKay’s book is infiitely superior to O’Doherty’s. She never puts herself at the centre of the analysis like O’Doherty does (and did in the ‘Trouble with Guns’. If it’s a history book, stick to that discipline), just speaks to the great and the good and the not so good of Ulster Protestants.
An infinitely more subtle, insightful and invaluable contribution than O’Doherty’s anecdotal frivolity.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 02:24 PMAnd anyone who thinks that McKay speaks to ‘unrepresentative’ Loyalists hasn’t read the book. She speaks to all shades, including people like Ivan Cooper, Tom Paulin and Gary Mitchell, as well as the more enlightened Unionist politicians.
This is more interesting than Malachi any day.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 02:28 PMI have to say I found Malachi’s book disappointing, it’s neither fish, fowl nor good red meat. Is it an eye witness account of Belfast 1972 from a journo’s perspective? Is it a heart searching account of a young man’s journey into political awareness? Or a gritty account of life as a fledgling reporter in a local newspaper at a time of extraordinary change?
Well it’s kinda all and none of these, combine Ivan Little’s “Little by Little” with Kevin Myer’s book and you’re nearly there, borrow it from a friend or otherwise give it a miss.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 02:38 PMAnd anyone who thinks that McKay speaks to ‘unrepresentative’ Loyalists hasn’t read the book
Clearly untrue, since I have read it.
She speaks to all shades, including people like Ivan Cooper, Tom Paulin and Gary Mitchell, as well as the more enlightened Unionist politicians.
Most of the subjects fall into one of two categories:
- not-very-intelligent or thoughtful bigots
- intelligent and thoughtful people, but who aren’t unionists (or at least strong unionists)The large majority of Protestants who fall into neither category don’t figure prominently in McKay’s subject list.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 02:41 PMGaribaldy
To be fair. If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t know it.
Robbie/Harry
Thanks for the intro on Malachi’s book.
Willow.
>>Except when you realise that the subjects in McKay’s book are not representative of Northern Prods, and therefore the impression given by the book is false (albeit perhaps an impression that you are happy to have.)<<
That is a wee bit unfair Willow, what are you trying to say? I found the book shocking, is it any less truthful for your jumping up and down crying foul?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 03:05 PMNice of Susan McKay’s editor to pop onto Slugger, isn’t it? Or is it Susan herself?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 03:09 PM*To be fair. If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t know it.*
Completely unfair Eoghan, neither you nor Garibaldy have ever met me yet you are both fully aware of my background to an extent that is far in excess of anything that I know about you.
So in what way do I strive to conceal my background?
Simply because I do not conform to stereotypical preconceptions does not mean that I in some way try to hide or disavow my upbringing.
Are we all to be placed in neat little boxes that conform to our identities at birth?
As a politically libertarian Derry born Muslim convert I think I have no need to be ashamed of my political beliefs make of them what you will ;-)
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 03:20 PMPrince
That is a wee bit unfair Willow, what are you trying to say?
I don’t think it’s unfair, but I do think it was unfair of McKay to present an unrepresentative picture of “Northern Protestants”, especially given that it was a very negative picture.
I found the book shocking, is it any less truthful for your jumping up and down crying foul?
It is less truthful if it presents something as representative which is not. Just as a book about “Irish Catholics” would be less truthful if, say, it featured an unrepresentative list of subjects biased towards extreme violent republicans and devout, daily Mass-goers, than if it featured a full and representative list of subjects.
In what ways were you shocked?
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 03:21 PMHarry,
My own thoughts on it are at my own site. My own view is simply that it is autobiographical, and that it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
The comparison with McKay’s book is a little bizarre, since they bare little resemblance to one another in style, form or content.
Maybe it’s because I remember the livid chaos of the time that I related to it so well. And how people leapt on journalism like that of the Sunday Times Insight team to gain some inkling of what on earth it was all about.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 03:37 PMPrince
No pass here Willow. Please explain to me why I would be happy to have such an impression of Prods?
So that you can more easily justify to yourself your support for the actions of nationalist terrorists? So that as someone who identifies with the opposing tribe, you can feel superior? Just two possible reasons, but I am happy to accept that neither apply to you, and apologise for making the assumption.
Are you for real? Have you read it at all? Describing me and mine, because of an accident of birth, a catholic in pejorative language, using euphemisms like vermin for catholics/Nationalists that I thought were only found in the vestiges of hate arena’s like Mr Vance’s ATW. Denying that bloody sunday ever happened, and that they deserved it anyway. I could go on, but what is the point. It was shocking, or perhaps not to some.
Yes, I have read it, and I recall feeling perhaps less shock than yourself (I have personally encountered such disgusting bigotry among Protestants [and also Roman Catholics]). I also recall feeling anger that people with such repugnant and disgusting views were being given prominence in a book supposedly about Protestants generally. I know that such people exist – but I also know that they are a small minority, and that their views are not in any way representative of Ulster Protestants.
That is why I am concerned that you think the book “belies the line taken by the middle-class Unionists on here” – implying as it does that you think the specimens selected for McKay’s book reflect better the general Protestant attitude than do the many reasonable posters on here.
And the reason I suggested that perhaps you were happy to think such was because otherwise I would have hoped that you would have realised that McKay’s book did not survey a representative sample of subjects.
Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 @ 03:50 PM
