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The Irish Scene: Gay Guide to Ireland by Mike Parker (Part 2)

14/07/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

The second part of Sean McGouran’s review of MIke Parker’s book, ‘The Irish Scene: Gay Guide to Ireland”

Irish Scene by Mike ParkerSTROKE

 
Derry’s being denied the second university in the mid-1960s was of the first insults the city refused to take lying down.  (The only other place that could convincingly have been given the new university was Armagh [now a ‘city’ again, due to a piece of paper signed by Bessie Windsor], on the grounds of its historical importance and relatively central location.  But Derry had Magee College, ironically, a state-funded Presbyterian foundation set up in the Anglican-Ascendancy city of Derry, in the 1820s to get trainee Ministes away from radical Belfast.  Injury was added to insult when the O’Neill government  gave the university to Coleraine, which patently did not want it, and is now complacently watching most of the degree courses being moved to the Maiden City.  If o’Neill, the only genuine bigot to rule Northern Ireland, had given the city the university we may not have had to put up with twenty-five years of war).
Limerick’s acquisition of a university was less tortured, a section of the National INstitute for Higher Education (rather more similar to a ‘Poly’ in the UK then the IHE’s) about twenty years ago and it became a university about 1992 – it is a very handsome set of buildings in a big park – too good for mere students  [Paul Calf lives!].

GHOST TOWN

As hinted above, Mike Parker has distinct quirks, and he clearly doesn’t like Belfast.  This might make for entertaining reading, but I suspect that Mike hasn’t bothered to visit the place.  He obviously drove around the Mournes (which he describes as “bucolic”), and along the Antrim Coast road, and seems to have been impress by the Giant’s Causeway (I’ve never been).  Anyway, about Belfast, the industrial revolution sort of happened (this is the usual reason why Brits dislike Belfast – it looks like an industrial city – a handsomer version of Oldham).  There’s no mention of the United Irish-persons (Wolfe Tone is mentioned on page 13) or of the 1798 Uprising.  Odly enough, the Gay law appears to have changed of its own accord, no local agency or agent is noted.  Paisley gets abused, and the DUP is called “tiny”; which it is, in UK terms, but it is a major part in local, or even Irish [geographical expression] terms.  Mike also describes our newspapers, “The staunchly Unionist News Letter (including some stomach-churning attitudes to progressive social ideas) sits against the Republican Irish News.  Straddling the two is the responsible Belfast Telegraph”.
I’d have thought, being a journalist, Mike Parker might have taken an interest in the oldest newspaper in the world (it has been regularly published since 1737).  During the 1790s, when Belfast was the revolutionary foco for the whole of these isles, it was somewhat less revolutionary that the Northern Star, which was the organ if the Society of United Irishmen.  As for “stomach-churning attitudes to progressive social ideas”, he doesn’t quote anything; could it be an attack on our (unselected) rulers in Stormont Castle closing down a bit of another hospital?  Is this ethnic solidarity on MIke’s part?  Would the Irish News relish the description of itself as “Republican”?  The Bellylaugh is taken by most people in Northern Ireland – for the advertisements for houses, cars and jobs.  Its editorial policy was smugly suimmed-up about ten years ago as dealing with the “real-life Unionist/Nationalist conflict” (ie no class politics, please, we’re the Ulster bourgeoisie).  As readers know, our community has had more hassle off the BT than the Irish News or the News Letter (which has given Gay ~ er ~ leaders, column-space, in its time).  You’d also have thought that a journalist might have noticed the growth of small, and not so small, publishing houses in the Six Counties, a walk around any bookshop would have done the trick.

COULDN’T BE ARSED?

Mike clearly does not like Prods; Bushmills is described as a “tight-arsed little Protestant town” – as opposed to slack-arsed little Papist towns, undoubtedly.
MIke rather sells the tourist short, practically nothing is written of County Londonderry, Tyrone, Armagh – or Fermanagh.  No Belleek, no Marble Arch caves, no Bo Island, no mention of the Lakes.  Enniskillen is described as a “nationalist town” –  the good people of Skin Town must have been keeping the rest of us in the dark all of these years.  Even in County Down (or “Downshire” is you are an aspirant West Briton) thee is no mention of Mount Stewart, or say, Hillsborough – the list could go on, and there’s plenty of info as the Tourist Office.
If Mike’s little book goes to a second edition, a sub-editor should cast a cold eye on it.  The “history” is rubbish (the Ulster Plantation led to Partition apart from anything else, this is the One Big Boat theory of the Plantation.  It was not a complex series of events spread over more than a century involving from south west Scotland, as well as State-run Plantations in west Ulster, the Hugenots, the Moravians, the Quakers as well as a fair number of villains).  The attitude to the majority of people who live on this geographical expression, is p[atronising (Mike Parker may well be outraged at this assertion, but it is) and to the Ulster Prods is pretty racist.
All of the above may seem like taking a sledgehammer to the proverbial … but there is no reason why GMP should be allowed to add to the gigantic pile of nonsense written by English sentimentalists about, “Ah-land” or the BBC’s “Eye-land”.
Mike Parker isn’t a good enough writer to make the prejudices witty or sardonically memorable.
 

Editorial – this review was written by Sean McGouran in our paper magazine ‘upstart’

 
 
 

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: gay men's press, Mike Parker, The Irish Scene

The Irish Scene: Gay Guide to Ireland by Mike Parker (Part I)

09/07/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

First published in our paper magazine – upstart
 
Publisher: Gay Men’s Press (29 May 1996)
Mike Parker compiled the (English) Northern Scene in this series, which I praised in a previous upstart. Yes: I didn’t much like this book.  MIke, who was so efficient shoving a quart (almost a gallon) quantity into a pint pot in his last outing seems to be one of those people who was lyrical when theyh come across the word “celtic” or even just “Irish”.  He also decides that history loms large here, so he gives us some of it.  “Daniel O’Connell, a brilliant young Kerry man…won the County Clare constituency in the 1828 election.  As a Catholic, however, he was barred from taking his seat.  British Prime Minister William Pitt… scrapped the ban”.
In 1828, O’Connell was in his fifties, PItt the Younger had been dead for a quarter of a century.  The Elder Pitt (Lord Chatsworth) had snuffed it in the 1780s.  Mike also appears to be saying the Irish Labour Party only just got into power recently.  Labour has held Cabinet seats since the 1940s, and has been a constant in government for fifteen years (it is being described these days as “the-even the– Party of government”).  There is also some very odd stuff abut the Celtic Twilight/Literary Renaissance (one would have thought that someone visiting Ireland, whether the political entity or the geographical expression, over the past twenty years might have noticed that we have become less provincial and embarrassed about our contribution to ‘art’ (painting and sculpture) and ‘classical’ music, there is a booming industry in art-books and a quite large discography of the latter).  The ‘folk’ and pop/rock end of things hardly needs mentioning.
Mike Parker admits that he has spent his holidays in Ireland in a Guinness-induced haze, which is fair enough – so do I – in fact, I spend my non-hols in a Guinness-induced haze, if I can manage it.  He also says that the outer rim of Ireland is more interesting that the centre, that’s his business, though I quite like the Irish midlands and south east, which he rather gives short drift.  I think Wexford, town and country are very interesting, but I’m not the author.
The problem here, is that Mike has to write more ‘touristy’ stuff than in his English book, as the “scene”, as such, is not really very big (the whole population of the island is less than Greater Manchester, or Merseyside, or the West Midlands).  He deals with the scene very well.
He compares Limerick with Derry (no ‘Londonderrys’ here – not even for the sake of a bit of alliteration), and rather approves of them, but he does not investigate what effect having a university has had on the town(s) and their scene(s).  Mike appears to believe that Limerick is still brooding on KIng Billy’s government reneging on the Treaty of 1691 – I doubt it.  Limerick was the Holy City of Irish Catholicism for over a century.  This came to a climax during De Valera’s period (if the word “climax” is permissible in the same sentence as “De Valera”).  Dev represented County Clare, just down the road from Limerick City, and his long supremacy is characterised in this book as ‘insular’.

The Pope’s Divisions

Catholic Ireland at that time quite often spoke of itself in the same breath as Communist Russia, and was not in the least fazed by the huge disparity in population and power.  Ireland, (which had not been Catholic in the days of Gaeldom), became, not more Catholic than the Pope – but just as Catholic as the pope wanted.  Missionaries spread out from Ireland through Latin America, the British Empire (and most of the other colonial empires) and the Orient, proselytising with a vigour the Bolshevik might have (and probably did) envy.  All of this was cultural vandalism of the first ordr – but to give the Blackcoats their due, they destroyed pagan, Gaelic Ireland’s immemorial culture before they set out.  Whtever this was – it was decidedly not smug insularity….
Part Two to follow
 
 

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: gay men's press, Mike Parker, The Irish Scene

Northridge High Football Camp by S Joseph Krol

05/07/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

First published in our paper magazine Upstart
Publisher: Gay Men’s Press
 

Northridge High Football Camp by S Joseph Krol

Northridge High Football Camp by S Joseph Krol


I started this book with no preconceived idea about its story line, other than that it would be based on American football in some way.  IN this I was not wrong, though the author does manage to keep the technical language down to the bare minimum, fortunately!
This is not an uplifting book.  It does have a beautifully crafted ending – in fact at the end you are left wondering if there might be a sequel.
The two protagonists (Big Vinnie and Vuch) have little in common, except that they play football  on the same team.  Vuch is the all seeing, all conquering ‘old timer’, and Vinnie as the pleb with some seeming chip on his shoulder, has difficulty in winning over some of the team.  Some of the rest you can guess.
The other main character, Meal, brings a twist at the end of the book.  This twist is not new, it is something widely used in heterosexual books, and I seem to remember a similar one (or two) in gay fiction during the last ten years.
I do not want to go into any further details, as in a lot of respects, this book is shallow, and leaves you wondering if it was worth the price asked for (£8.95) in 1996 – it may have appeared in your local library, or you can hope it will appear in a second-hand bookshop.
In conclusion, this is not a book which inspires.  It will do for a quick read in the bath, or on a train etc., but don’t expect to come out the other end a changed man (or woman).

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: gay men's press, S Joseph Krol

Book Review: Edward Carpenter: Sex Vol. 1

13/04/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Edward Carpenter
Reprinted from Gay Star Issue No 15 Spring 1985
It is a great pleasure to see th work of Edward Carpenter back in print.  Largely forgotten since his death in 1929, immensely popular as a radical writer whilst alive, Carpenter’s recent revival rests primarily on his attempt to develop a socialism linking the personal and the political.  The fact that the selected writings are published by Gay Men’s Press indicates the importance of gayness in Carpenter’s life and though.
Carpenter both delights and infuriates.  Alongside passages of genuine insight can be found both dotty and dangerous.  A highly individualistic thinker, he drew upon many of the intellectual currents of late Victorian Britain – marxism, anarchism, orientalism, mysticism, secularism, and developed, not surprisingly, a most idiosyncratic world view.  He displays, for example, subtely and sensitivity in analysing many of the forms in which women are oppressed in modern society and yet can state, in full mystical flight on force and nature, “I think every women in her heart wishes to be ravished”: and adds by way of bizarre qualification “but naturally it must be by the right man”.
On matters specifically gay it is necessary to be aware of the climate in which he wrote to read him properly.  In the wake of the Oscar Wilde ‘scandal’ and in the context of the public morality of the time discussion, of homosexuality was taboo and Carpenter was deserted by his publisher when he attempted to go into print.  He writes on gayness in a very positive but distanced manner – oscillating between enthusiastic praise of homosexuality’s contribution to the past, present and future of humanity and a rather defensive mode (gays are “they” not “we”) asking for toleration.
Carpenter was also confronted with, and influenced by a very poorly developed intellectual on homosexuality, much of it ill-conceived and censorious.  To a modern reader his talk of ‘congenital’ homosexuality, of the ‘intermediate sex’, of feminine souls in male bodies and vice-versa, will probably seem very dated and confused.  Also, lacking adequate data, he tends to make wild generalisations, attributing for example a sensitive nature to male gays and a forceful persona to lesbians.  He displays methodological naivety (like A L Rowse) in his Great Homosexuals in History approach, assuming that homosexuality is an unproblematic and unchanging category for historical research.  Nonetheless, a much more flexible conception ultimately emerges from these rigidities.  Gayness is no longer seen as the attribute of a type of person, but is rather seen as a universal element present, if only in potential form, in all people.  It is also more than a matter of sexuality for the gay dimension is part of a more general potential in humanity for a fully human existence.  IN this respect Carpenter’s gays (whom he terms Urnings or Uranians) are a type of socialist vanguard:
“the Uranian spirit may lead to something like a general enthusiasm of HUmanity, and … the Uranian people may be destined to form the advance guard of the great movement which will one day transform the common life by substituting the bond of personal affection and compassion for the monetary, legal and other external ties which now control and confine society.  Such a part of course we cannot expect the Uranians to palyunless the capacity for their kind of attachment also exists – though in a germinal and undeveloped state – in the breast of mankind at large.  And modern thought and investigation are clearly tending that way – to confirm that it does so exist”.
Noel Grieg provides a useful introduction combining important biographical material and his own critical assessment of Carpenter’s output.  In short this is a most welcome and handosmely produced book and it bodes well for the rest of the volumes in the series.
Review by Vincent Geoghegan

 
 
 

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: edward carpenter, gay men's press, homosexuality, Noel Grieg

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