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The Master
Bryan MacMahon is one of Ireland's finest writers. A Kerryman, he is also one of its most famous teachers. The world has beaten a path to Listowel to look at, and listen to, The Master.
This book is an eloquent and colourful chronicle of a rich and happy it is the story of a man who loves literature and his fellow man and who has ever been a fighter for both.
From the day when he took up a teaching post in his native Listowel he has shown himself as a dedicated and enlightened teacher, a short-story writer of international stature, and a public speaker of the rarest verve and vitality.
He is also a man in love with language, not only English which he uses so magically, but also with Irish and indeed Shelta, the secret language of the travelling people, a knowledge which he uses to such effect in his play and novel The Honey Spike.
In a telling phrase, Bryan MacMahon quotes the saying that "a teacher leaves the track of his teeth on a parish for three generations." There is no doubt that his work has been for the good not merely of his native area, but also of his pupils, his fellow teachers and readers everywhere.
He is a rare national this wise, witty and frank book will provide him with "a monument more lasting than bronze."
This book is an eloquent and colourful chronicle of a rich and happy it is the story of a man who loves literature and his fellow man and who has ever been a fighter for both.
From the day when he took up a teaching post in his native Listowel he has shown himself as a dedicated and enlightened teacher, a short-story writer of international stature, and a public speaker of the rarest verve and vitality.
He is also a man in love with language, not only English which he uses so magically, but also with Irish and indeed Shelta, the secret language of the travelling people, a knowledge which he uses to such effect in his play and novel The Honey Spike.
In a telling phrase, Bryan MacMahon quotes the saying that "a teacher leaves the track of his teeth on a parish for three generations." There is no doubt that his work has been for the good not merely of his native area, but also of his pupils, his fellow teachers and readers everywhere.
He is a rare national this wise, witty and frank book will provide him with "a monument more lasting than bronze."
187 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
4 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Bryan MacMahon
36 books1 followerBryan MacMahon (29 September 1909 – 13 February 1998) was an Irish playwright, novelist and short story writer from Listowel, County Kerry. A schoolteacher by training, his works include The Lion Tamer and The Red Petticoat. He wrote an autobiography, The Master, and his works include an English translation of the Irish Gaelic autobiography of Peig Sayers.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_M...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_M...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 1, 2017
I am no longer a university student. For at least one year I will not be in school at all, which, since I am predisposed to love academia and life in an academic environment, troubles me quite a bit. No matter how difficult life as a student has been these past four years, no matter the anxiety or the self-imposed pressure to perform well, I have relished every moment as a student, and I have striven to maximize the academic potential of every experience. Like Bryan MacMahon, “I seem always to have been in school”; perhaps most importantly, I have come to cherish and appreciate its ubiquitous presence in my life.
While I have always known, in the superficial way that one admits the truth of a well-worn cliché, that one can learn much outside the university classroom, I never took this platitude seriously. I was made for the classroom, I used to think, and while one may be able to learn from the travails of commonplace, non-academic life, I assumed that my true education was almost exclusively confined to seminars, lectures, books, and research. My recent experience in Ireland, coupled with my close study of Irish folklore, has prompted me to revisit the notion that there is much to learn outside of the academic cloister of the university, sustained architecturally by its red brick and white columns and institutionally by the clearly delineated roles and responsibilities of students and professors. In particular, Bryan MacMahon has motivated this nascent revision of what I had once assumed. “I continue to maintain that there are other ‘universities,’” he writes. “There is the University of the Library, lately that of the Paperback, the University of Travel, and the University of the Common Man.” He expresses a special affection for the “Academy of the Market Place,” whose classes he attended as a child. There, he not only learned the art of trade, but also the rich lives of ordinary people, “their passions and their dislikes, their subjects of conversation and the rhythm and content of the unusual dialect.” He by no means wasted his time with such study, he asserts. In fact, he took actual notes on “the surnames and the names of the townlands printed on the shafts of their carts,” and, later, on what those place-names mean and the stories and secrets that are buried in them. MacMahon is a student of Irish folk culture; his teachers are the rustic people of North Kerry who, while farmers, merchants, and tradesmen and women, are poets as well.
This is a repeated theme in the work of MacMahon. While he is a characteristic intellectual—he scatters subtle allusions to James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, classical writers, and Irish myth across his short stories and memoirs—he is, at the same time, keenly aware that artistic achievement can take many forms. In fact, he puts forth a theory that “all art […] comes up out of clay. […] It is refined, projected, and later imitated or developed in the city where, for a time, it blooms like a flower.” This flower, MacMahon writes, “becomes a seed-pod which explodes and scatters its seeds. […] With luck, each seed comes to rest on a fertile plot and there renews its life-cycle.” The folklore in the marketplace outside MacMahon’s home comes from ordinary people, and these people are tied intimately to the earth. In this sense, their artistic achievement comes up out of clay, is soon noticed by writers such as MacMahon or the initiators of the Irish Renaissance, and is later studied by students, like me, who revel in the literary qualities of this earthy, poetic prose.
MacMahon, like so many other twentieth century Irish writers, is a chronicler and poet. He preserves the folk culture of the people of Listowel and the Irish Travelers whom he studied so closely and, at the same time, discusses this folk-literature from his own intellectual perspective. Perhaps most importantly, he communicates to me, the reader, Irish tales and poetry that I may not otherwise have been able to access and enjoy myself. I am enamored.
MacMahon maintains that in Ireland, literary value “still survives in the minds and speech of what the world would call simple men and women.” These people, their customs, and their stories therefore “[add] up to the ideal seed-bed in which a writer may exercise his craft.” In a different, yet nevertheless similar sense, I discovered this to be true with respect to my own recent studies in West Kerry. The writers I read—the Blasket islanders, the North Kerry authors, and the folk-poets of Ireland—allowed me to explore a part of myself hitherto undisclosed. There truly are universities beyond academia, quite unlike the school that I have attended these past four years. They are to be found in the farms of West Kerry, its ancient ruins, its shops and pubs, and amidst its kindhearted and hospitable people. Perhaps ironically, it was a university course led by two professors that nurtured this realization. Bryan MacMahon, the Master himself, would have been proud.
While I have always known, in the superficial way that one admits the truth of a well-worn cliché, that one can learn much outside the university classroom, I never took this platitude seriously. I was made for the classroom, I used to think, and while one may be able to learn from the travails of commonplace, non-academic life, I assumed that my true education was almost exclusively confined to seminars, lectures, books, and research. My recent experience in Ireland, coupled with my close study of Irish folklore, has prompted me to revisit the notion that there is much to learn outside of the academic cloister of the university, sustained architecturally by its red brick and white columns and institutionally by the clearly delineated roles and responsibilities of students and professors. In particular, Bryan MacMahon has motivated this nascent revision of what I had once assumed. “I continue to maintain that there are other ‘universities,’” he writes. “There is the University of the Library, lately that of the Paperback, the University of Travel, and the University of the Common Man.” He expresses a special affection for the “Academy of the Market Place,” whose classes he attended as a child. There, he not only learned the art of trade, but also the rich lives of ordinary people, “their passions and their dislikes, their subjects of conversation and the rhythm and content of the unusual dialect.” He by no means wasted his time with such study, he asserts. In fact, he took actual notes on “the surnames and the names of the townlands printed on the shafts of their carts,” and, later, on what those place-names mean and the stories and secrets that are buried in them. MacMahon is a student of Irish folk culture; his teachers are the rustic people of North Kerry who, while farmers, merchants, and tradesmen and women, are poets as well.
This is a repeated theme in the work of MacMahon. While he is a characteristic intellectual—he scatters subtle allusions to James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, classical writers, and Irish myth across his short stories and memoirs—he is, at the same time, keenly aware that artistic achievement can take many forms. In fact, he puts forth a theory that “all art […] comes up out of clay. […] It is refined, projected, and later imitated or developed in the city where, for a time, it blooms like a flower.” This flower, MacMahon writes, “becomes a seed-pod which explodes and scatters its seeds. […] With luck, each seed comes to rest on a fertile plot and there renews its life-cycle.” The folklore in the marketplace outside MacMahon’s home comes from ordinary people, and these people are tied intimately to the earth. In this sense, their artistic achievement comes up out of clay, is soon noticed by writers such as MacMahon or the initiators of the Irish Renaissance, and is later studied by students, like me, who revel in the literary qualities of this earthy, poetic prose.
MacMahon, like so many other twentieth century Irish writers, is a chronicler and poet. He preserves the folk culture of the people of Listowel and the Irish Travelers whom he studied so closely and, at the same time, discusses this folk-literature from his own intellectual perspective. Perhaps most importantly, he communicates to me, the reader, Irish tales and poetry that I may not otherwise have been able to access and enjoy myself. I am enamored.
MacMahon maintains that in Ireland, literary value “still survives in the minds and speech of what the world would call simple men and women.” These people, their customs, and their stories therefore “[add] up to the ideal seed-bed in which a writer may exercise his craft.” In a different, yet nevertheless similar sense, I discovered this to be true with respect to my own recent studies in West Kerry. The writers I read—the Blasket islanders, the North Kerry authors, and the folk-poets of Ireland—allowed me to explore a part of myself hitherto undisclosed. There truly are universities beyond academia, quite unlike the school that I have attended these past four years. They are to be found in the farms of West Kerry, its ancient ruins, its shops and pubs, and amidst its kindhearted and hospitable people. Perhaps ironically, it was a university course led by two professors that nurtured this realization. Bryan MacMahon, the Master himself, would have been proud.
April 21, 2021
Kind and tender narration of a lifetime in teaching in rural Ireland mixed with the perks of being a world famous author spending some time in the United States teaching creative writing. The bits about school teaching include wise advice to anyone in the teaching profession, while the more personal reminiscences cover the idiosyncrasies of Ireland and its traditions.
May 21, 2019
Autobiography of a teacher in Ireland. Interesting.
206 pages
206 pages
April 11, 2019
Random book picked up from shelves of library, fascinating insight into an older Ireland.
August 3, 2022
A beautifully written memoir that reveals the author's passion for his teaching and his writing. Small nuggets of wisdom in every chapter.
December 25, 2015
Wonderfully warm, wise and erudite. The reflections of a schoolteacher and writer of plays, novels, short stories, but a teacher most of all. A very human and loving evocation of a life well lived. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews