“I’m just slow,” Mike McCormack admits, speaking in a soft Mayo accent. “My whole fucking metabolism is slow. The fact I became a father at 48, that’s about the pace at which I move.”
Originally from the small town of Louisburgh, Co. Mayo, but based in Galway city for many years, McCormack is now a youthful-looking 50. We’re meeting over a couple of craft beers in Salthill’s Oslo Bar to discuss his just-published third novel, Solar Bones.
Profound, darkly funny and highly experimental, the book is narrated by a deceased engineer named Marcus Conway, who finds himself transported back from a different realm to the kitchen of his family home on All Soul’s Day. With few commas and absolutely no full-stops, the novel is essentially an 85,000 word stream of consciousness, as Conway reflects back over his life and career, taking in love, fatherhood, family, local politics, illness, dementia, and the importance of engineering, amongst other things. It’s a rich, deeply layered and hugely rewarding read.
Solar Bones is McCormack’s first novel since 2005’s Notes From A Coma, and he admits to being anxious about the kind of critical reception it will receive.
“Even writing it, I was nervous about its theme and technique,” he reflects. “It was so domestic in its concerns, I was wondering who would go for it. But then I sat down with the two girls in Tramp Press. They said to me they loved it, and I just knew immediately that they got it.”
Although founded only two years ago by Lisa Coen (formerly of this parish) and Sarah Davis-Goff, Tramp Press has already established a fine reputation as a publisher of quality literary fiction. He picks my copy of the novel off the table and points to their logo on the cover – a small ‘x’ contained within a circle. “Do you know what that stands for?” he asks. “It’s a part of the symbology that hobos and tramps in depression-era America developed, a whole language and code on posts and doors. This is one of them. It says, ‘Here’s a good place to stay, you’ll be looked after. There’s a chance of getting food here!’”
Hopefully this will be the book that finally takes off for McCormack. By his own admission, he lives a fairly hand-to-mouth existence with his wife, Maeve, and their two-year-old son, Saul. “Maeve is an artist, so it’s pretty precarious,” he shrugs. “We’re poor on both sides of the table. I’m a self-employed teacher. I teach in three different universities and the Irish Writers Centre. I have to pick up teaching gigs here, there and everywhere.”
McCormack’s literary CV is short – but his writing is superb. He first burst onto the scene in 1996 with his award-winning, short story collection, Getting It In The Head. A Galway novel, Crowe’s Requiem, followed in 1998. It was seven years before Notes From A Coma appeared. He published a second short story collection, Forensic Songs, in 2012.
Despite much critical acclaim, not one of these titles ever graced the bestsellers lists.
“My first two books managed to get loads of attention and sell nothing, paradoxically,” he sighs. “My first two books in America got starred reviews in USA Today – and USA Today was the biggest selling document in America. Starred review, featured reviews on both of them, and the books still contrived to sell F.A. My last publication with a small independent, Soho Press, a really good publisher, put their weight behind it and the book got huge attention – and nothing. There were a couple of times over the years when it felt like I couldn’t give my work away.”
He’s certainly been around the publishing houses. When Crowe’s Requiem failed to sell, Jonathan Cape gave up the ghost on him.
“Periodically, a cull runs through major publishers and I got dropped,” he recalls. “When you get dropped from a major publisher, it’s a fucking serious proposition. Trying to rebuild and restart your career after that as a middle-aged writer of literary fiction is a seriously difficult challenge.”
His slow rate of production doesn’t help.
“It took me six or seven years to write Notes From A Coma. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing for a lot of that. I suppose it’s in my interest to say that I pissed razorblades writing Solar Bones, but it wasn’t as hard as Coma. Then I wrote a novel between Coma and Forensic Songs that no-one wanted. It was a post–apocalyptic thing set in Mayo, and Mayo was a penal colony. No-one would buy it, no-one would go for it. So I just set it aside.”
It’s never easy to make a crust as a writer of literary fiction, but perhaps McCormack has always been a little jinxed. When Jonathan Cape sent the £2,500 advance for his debut in 1996, somebody stole the cheque.
“I’d almost forgotten about that,” he laughs, when reminded. “When Getting It In The Head was published, it was a really exciting time and a whole month passed by in a purple haze just going out, meeting people, drinking heavily. I was on the dole at the time, so I would have remembered getting a couple of grand.
“I rang up Jonathan Cape and they said, ‘Well, you’ve been paid, but you have it spent!’ I went back through my bank account and there was no trace of it. So I went to the bank and I got them to show me the photocopy of the photo of the ID used to cash the cheque and I saw immediately that it wasn’t me. This was the days in which people used to mail cheques out to people. They sent my cheque to me in this house I was sharing in Prospect Hill and someone picked it up, opened it, saw a cheque for two-and-a-half grand and fucked off with it.”
Did he ever find out who the culprit was? “No. I passed it over to the cops and all that. I do know where they got the ID from, but that didn’t help. I did manage to get the money back from the bank, once I got a solicitor on the case, but it took a full year.”
For all of his ups and downs over the years, Mike McCormack still feels like a successful writer.
“I do, actually,” he affirms. “I’ve written the books I want to write and I didn’t expect to be able to do that. So I do feel successful – and that’s coming from a man with a wife and a child who’s seriously living hand to mouth for a long time.”
He bursts out laughing. “I still am! What am I talking about? Summers are brutal! Summer is when all my teaching dries up. It’s not that long ago we were turning up the cushions of the couch looking for spare change. But I’ve written the books I want to write, and nothing has really infringed upon them in any way.”
Solar Bones is published by Tramp Press