Paul Lynch’s recent Booker Prize winner, The Songs of the Prophets, has received well-deserved praise for its careful depiction of parallel Ireland’s gradual descent from democracy to fascist dictatorship. ing. The careful and sensitive way in which this is told is the source of this book’s power and meaning. Interestingly, another Irish writer named Paul has been outlining a similar process since 2017, albeit with a comedic touch.
Paul Howard writes about Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s father Charles, a corrupt local politician seeking more power, in The Trump Shaping Operation. Charles is a disgraced real estate developer, local politician, and right-wing crony capitalist known as the founder of the New Republic political party.
He is famous for wanting to be “stern towards soccer and strict towards the ideals of soccer.” In response to the recession, he founded a document destruction company called Shred Focking Everything, which destroys documents that could provide evidence of wrongdoing. “People aren’t ready to hear what has made this country great for a little over 11 years. All we’re doing is making sure no one finds out,” he said. I tell Ross.
He taught Ross’s daughter to play the Irish property version of Monopoly, what he called “the great and glorious capitalism”, and when Honor tried to buy a house on Capel Street, “she had little money. He took $100 out of the pile and, interestingly enough, put it in a little brown envelope,” and Charles “slipped it into his pocket, that is, ‘off shore.’ He has no regrets about his role at Celtic Tiger and the €48 million he stashed in Andorra. He and his lawyer and friend Hennessy Coughlin O’Hara are “bidding to build this part of the famous wall that Donald Trump wants to build.”
[ Prophet Song by Paul Lynch: Totalitarian twists and turns ]
For Howard, Charles embodies the cultural unconscious of Golden Circle Ireland, and this speaks directly to him in his book in a way that “real” Ireland never could. Here we can avoid the notions of wokeness and political correctness. This mentality is beautifully expressed in a conversation between a mother and her son about COVID-19.I told Delma on the phone, I can’t imagine this happening. [Covid-19] Come to Fox Rock. ”
As Taoisha, Charles aims to emulate Donald Trump and build a wall around Cork
There is truth in fiction, and in Howard’s work satire provides a means to convey this truth. His parallel Ireland is a narrative mirror in which we can smile at the ‘real’ Ireland, but at the same time, it is much more than more normative discourses are willing or able to disclose. Learn more about Ireland.
As Taoisha, Charles aims to emulate Donald Trump and build a wall around Cork. she danced with the tsar, He goes to war with feminists and installs his daughter-in-law Soka, Ross’s wife, in the Senate. Meanwhile, his wife Fionnuala is visiting Russia, highlighting the relationship between Prince Charles and President Vladimir Putin.
Schmidt Happens witnesses Charles openly collaborating with shadowy Russian interests to become Taoiseach, while in Braywatch he is captured trying to rig an election. Charles became Taoisha and moved to Arras an Uachtarein, while Michael D. Higgins and Sabina were banished to the attic and survived on baked beans and toast. Charles is pushing for Ireland to leave, selling off forests and Irish wealth (Newgrange has moved to Moscow’s Gorky Park), and cozying up to Putin. He also burns down Dale.
Once Upon a Time in Donnybrook depicts Ross living in the aftermath of the Leinster House fire, with Charles blaming the EU and claiming that Russia They have an increasingly close relationship with the mafia that provides them. And all this from a character who seemed likeable in a buffoonish sense in the early books. Howard’s fictional truth here is that dictators often begin by gaining popularity, attempting to solve complex problems with seemingly simple solutions.
[ Paul Howard: Ten things I’ve learned writing Ross O’Carroll-Kelly ]
So we have this parallel housing crisis in Ireland, which has been solved by two unique inventions. In Normal Sheep, by living in a “home robe (a living unit about the size of a hot press)” and sleeping in a vampire bed (“people sleeping upright at a 45-degree angle”) We are dealing with ‘sa’.
Howard’s series paints a vision of a familiar Ireland, but one with a bleak future. Charles grows from an entertaining figure to a right-wing, corrupt, broadly fascist leader of a racist, misogynist, classist, and thoroughly capitalist political party, and we, as readers, I still like him. This is the fictional truth of this series. Dictators always start by gaining popularity, by appealing to the most basic of dichotomies to increase that popularity: us vs. them.
Satire allows us to see the truth about the more unpleasant aspects of this imagined parallel Ireland, and to help us avoid it in the future of the real Ireland.
This truth is reflected in modern-day Ireland, with anti-immigration protests breaking out in Irish towns, fires breaking out in some of the buildings where migrants were to be held, and riots in the streets of Dublin. We are witnessing what is happening. People who engage in these acts often protest loudly that they are not racists, just as Charles vocally claims that everything he does is patriotic.
In Songs of the Prophets, Lynch shows the serious consequences of the slide into fascism for Irish and Larry Stack and their children. In Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s series, Howard does the same thing, but Charles (known in south Dublin idiom as ‘Chols’) is portrayed as a charming, loving and very forgiving father. , which is comedically very effective. his classism, racism, and misogyny are mostly played for laughs, but in this book he burns down the Dales and works with the Russian mafia to drain Ireland of its natural resources. Howard makes us laugh and, like great satirists like Swift and Flann O’Brien, makes us think about why we laugh.
Satire allows us to see the truth about the more unpleasant aspects of this imagined parallel Ireland, and to help us avoid it in the future of the real Ireland. Howard’s series provides us with food for laughs and food for thought. May both continue for a long time.
Eugene O’Brien is Professor of Literature and Theory at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, and his latest book is Reading Paul Howard: The Art of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly has just been published.it is part of Routledge Research Series in Irish Writinghe also edits.