Edna O’Brien at 80. The grand dame of Irish fiction talks to the Observer about religion, hedonism and conscience.
“Someone said to me in Dublin: masses are down, confessions are down, but funerals are up! Religion. You see, I rebelled against the coercive and stifling religion into which I was born and bred. It was very frightening, and all pervasive. I’m glad it has gone. But when you remove spirituality, or the quest for it, from people’s lives, you remove something very precious. Ireland is more secular, but it went to their heads: a kind of hedonism. They’re free, yes, but questions come with freedom. What about conscience? Conscience is an essential thing. It (moral collapse) generated an ethos of envy. I’ll never forget walking along by St Stephen’s Green [Dublin]. There was a big hoarding with an advert on it for a motor car. ‘Enjoy the begrudgery,’ said the slogan. It was very cynical, but very true. Not a healthy sign.”
The Guardian has a quick fire lifestyle interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, ahead of the release of the film of Never Let Me Go.
“Becoming a father had a profound effect on me. You can’t know children until you have a child. It’s the emotional journey. It’s a deep change to your life and the way you look at the world. There’s somebody else you care about rather than yourself, so your whole emotional spectrum changes. Being a father really influenced me when I was writing Never Let Me Go. The characters’ lack of family is an underlying theme.”
Satisfaction is a Penguin Modern Classic: the elegant typeface, the timeless gray and white livery and the accessible price. All of my introductions to Woodhouse, Waugh, James, Fitzgerald, Camus etc, etc, etc. were made in the pages of a PMC. It is 50 years since the first copies of Gatsby ran off the presses at Allen Lane.
‘Sixty-five years ago, when post-war austerity was at its grimmest, Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, whose aim as a publisher was to make the best available to the many at a price
they could afford, launched Penguin Classics, which embodied his ideal. Its first title – a new translation of Homer’s Odyssey – went on to sell over three million copies,
confirming Lane’s reputation for combining the mercenary and the missionary.
Lane was not the first to publish cheap editions of the classics, but he pioneered the up-market paperback.’
Bring back the foxing superhero. Writing in the Times (£), Jonathan Ross denigrates the strapping and sexy new Superman.
‘Back in the day when Superman ruled the newsstands, they never worried that he looked about 40. As a kid, I always rather liked the fact that he was a strapping, mature, adult hero. I felt safe knowing that Superman, with his ridiculously deep chest and old-fashioned hairstyle, was there to make sure that the status quo remained nice and stable and that Brainiac and Mr Mxyzptlk never got the upper hand. He was the father figure of superheroes — the dad with powers who made sure that everything was going to be OK. Of course, back then it wasn’t just comic-book leading men who were greying at the temples. Hell, half of the movie stars in Hollywood were in their early middle years — Bogart, Cagney, Grant, Cooper. No one worried that a film didn’t have enough actors under 25 to lure kids away from Grand Theft Auto on opening weekend, and comics reflected that lack of fear. These were stories for kids, but they were written by adults and, in the early days at least, they featured adults. That, it seems, is no longer an option.’
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