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Warrenpoint
The author was brought up in Warrenpoint and in this book describes his family life and the characters involved including his frail delicate mother, his brother who died of pneumonia at 14 months, and above all his father, a proud, resolute policeman with the RUC. In a house where "religion was practised but never discussed" he wrestled with the ideas of Augustine and Rousseau, and developed a passion for music and literature, bringing to bear on Yeats and Eliot, Keats and Synge the same fortitude he saw and loved in his father.
196 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 5, 2021
John Wilson, in Books & Culture, wrote "this is one of the finest memoirs I've read in the past quarter century." In 2008. I immediately ordered the book. I've started it at least five times, but could not get any traction.
A funny thing happened. Recently I read Paul Theroux's travel memoir Kingdom by the Sea. He referenced Warrenpoint. Ah, yes, Warrenpoint! I thought. Discovering the context of a Catholic family in Protestant North Ireland put the wind in my reading sails.
The failure of fathers is a well-worn groove in memoirs. How refreshing to read of a son's respect while honestly assessing his father.
My father gave me an impression of concentration; I never saw him loose or wayward, but he implied that whatever had to be said was already said, already embodied in its entirely sufficient forms: law, custom, the daily routine. He lived as if speech were rationed and you had to save up coupons for it: there was no place for extravagance. If a new situation arose, requiring comment, one was free to speak, but sparingly.
Even now, after many years, I have "no better measure of the fitness of things" than the recalled image of my father, in uniform, walking up Charlotte Street toward the square, intent upon his purpose.
I was astounded when Donoghue wrote that he didn't stop growing until he was 6'7"! I searched his name and discovered he died at age 92 on April 6, 2021.
Like all good book, this just made my to-read list longer. Near the top of the list is Donoghue's book On Eloquence.
A funny thing happened. Recently I read Paul Theroux's travel memoir Kingdom by the Sea. He referenced Warrenpoint. Ah, yes, Warrenpoint! I thought. Discovering the context of a Catholic family in Protestant North Ireland put the wind in my reading sails.
The failure of fathers is a well-worn groove in memoirs. How refreshing to read of a son's respect while honestly assessing his father.
My father gave me an impression of concentration; I never saw him loose or wayward, but he implied that whatever had to be said was already said, already embodied in its entirely sufficient forms: law, custom, the daily routine. He lived as if speech were rationed and you had to save up coupons for it: there was no place for extravagance. If a new situation arose, requiring comment, one was free to speak, but sparingly.
Even now, after many years, I have "no better measure of the fitness of things" than the recalled image of my father, in uniform, walking up Charlotte Street toward the square, intent upon his purpose.
I was astounded when Donoghue wrote that he didn't stop growing until he was 6'7"! I searched his name and discovered he died at age 92 on April 6, 2021.
Like all good book, this just made my to-read list longer. Near the top of the list is Donoghue's book On Eloquence.
May 9, 2021
Insightful, intellectual but wandering in places and quite disturbing, though honest account of being a Roman Catholic family resident in the RUC station of Warrenpoint before The Troubles broke out. Very well written, Denis Donoghue is without doubt a remarkable intellect, who recalls vividly his childhood in this book with many very touching stories and personal anecdotes as well as social observations of the time and in the early 1990s. Sorely missed, no doubt.
December 21, 2014
A little past the midpoint of this terrific memoir, Donoghue tells us what he's up to: "All I wanted was to observe a relation between myself and structures I had not invented."
In Donoghue's case, the "structures he had not invented" are books and poems. This humane and gentlemanly critic has spent his life seeking his own reflection in literature, and this memoir is only his most explicit attempt.
And so the cover of the trade paperback that I read, published by Dalkey Archive, is one of the more fitting covers I have ever seen--though it took me a while to catch on. The coast of Donoghue's hometown of Warrenpoint runs along the bottom. The words "Denis Donoghue Warrenpoint A Memoir" occupy the middle. And the same image of the Warrenpoint coast runs along the top, this upside down--as if reflected through the title of the book. Or, more to the point, as if reflected through literature.
Donoghue's literary sensibility makes him a skeptical memoirist. He continually insists that he does not recall ever having the standard memoirist feelings of oedipal resentment, over-riding ambition, or radical hatred for the established order. He refuses the confessional approach. So when he does take a stand--on the influence of the Church in Northern Ireland, on the strengths and weaknesses of his education, on his father's character, or, perhaps most memorably, on The Troubles--one finds oneself leaning in, slowing down, and reading him very, very carefully.
In Donoghue's case, the "structures he had not invented" are books and poems. This humane and gentlemanly critic has spent his life seeking his own reflection in literature, and this memoir is only his most explicit attempt.
And so the cover of the trade paperback that I read, published by Dalkey Archive, is one of the more fitting covers I have ever seen--though it took me a while to catch on. The coast of Donoghue's hometown of Warrenpoint runs along the bottom. The words "Denis Donoghue Warrenpoint A Memoir" occupy the middle. And the same image of the Warrenpoint coast runs along the top, this upside down--as if reflected through the title of the book. Or, more to the point, as if reflected through literature.
Donoghue's literary sensibility makes him a skeptical memoirist. He continually insists that he does not recall ever having the standard memoirist feelings of oedipal resentment, over-riding ambition, or radical hatred for the established order. He refuses the confessional approach. So when he does take a stand--on the influence of the Church in Northern Ireland, on the strengths and weaknesses of his education, on his father's character, or, perhaps most memorably, on The Troubles--one finds oneself leaning in, slowing down, and reading him very, very carefully.
November 23, 2008
The narrator relates his family life in Ireland after the Irish republic is formed. His father moves to Ulster to work while the narrator goes to school. His mother is epileptic but manages well inspite of lack of good medical care.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews