Donal Ryan: "I think teenage boys are sometimes given an inordinate burden of guilt for things they haven't done yet, or would probably never do"

Death affects us in strange ways. For Tipperary author Donal Ryan, who lost both of his parents in the last eight or so years, it involved hallucinatory f-bombs.

"I remember being out for runs and suddenly hearing someone go, 'FUCK!'" he begins. "It was down by the riverbank where there weren't many people. I'd go: 'Who the hell is that?' I realised I shouted 'Fuck! without realising it. I'd let out this cry of grief. It was almost always profanity."

Grief runs through his new novel, Where Are The Kings, which follows 12-year-old Jack, who, in the aftermath of his mother's death and his father's disappearance, grows up in the blanket of his two grandparents, three uncles and aunt. Ryan's own grief came much later in life than Jack's, so he worked backwards.

"I had to install the heartbreak that Jack has into that memory of myself and try to imagine how that might have acted on my psyche, and how I might have expressed it, or how I might have ignored it," he explains. "It's an act of remembering how I saw the world. I was thick as shit, I made Jack far more acute and intelligent than I was at 12.

"The places I describe, like Frankie's Arcade, that was a real arcade in Nenagh. I spent half my teenage years there. I dwelt within my own context as much as possible to get back that feeling of what it was like to be downtown, trying to act hard, being scared of the really tough guys. Nenagh's a small town, but it seemed like this endless place, and I loved it."

Ryan still watches lads that age try to act hard while coaching at Aisling Annacotty AFC in Limerick.

"I can see the way young lads try to swagger around, but it's always a very thin layer they put on themselves," he says. "A narrative broke out that young men were by default dangerous, and had to be corralled and told: 'You're dangerous, you better watch it.' The word 'toxic; attached itself by default to 'masculinity', so young men now have this burden of original sin.

"A hulking 15-year-old who has had a hard life can commit terrible acts of violence. There is always a physical danger if somebody is unstable. But I think teenage boys are sometimes given an inordinate burden of guilt for things they haven't done yet, or would probably never do."

Where Are The Kings, Ryan says, is a second pop at articulating his ideal of manhood. He attempted something similar in his 2018 novel From A Low And Quiet Sea which, despite making the Booker Prize longlist, didn't quite land for some people. This time he does it through two of Jack's uncles, Theo and Haulie: a couple of dayshent, joke-cracking Tipp men who are class mechanics too.

"They exude this warmth and compassion for Jack, which they express in an oblique way," says Ryan . "They bring him into the fold, into the workshop. They put him under a car and have him servicing engines so that he feels he belongs.

"I was very aware of how much I was influenced by Kent Haruf's McPheron brothers from his Plainsong books. That idea of these bachelor brothers who, from the outside, could look a bit odd, but who are composed of decency and kindness. I also used lots of my own uncles' avuncular nature.

"Theo and Haulie, for me, represent most men in rural Ireland. Tradesmen who won't be the most loquacious, but have an earthy way of communicating that's profound and true. They're not going to lay their emotions on the line, they're going to fix cars, slag each other, have a laugh, a few pints. It's a simple life, but on the other hand, they'll have longings and yearnings like everybody else. The main thing for me is that they're so decent."

SO-CALLED PADDYWHACKERY

What brings his characters alive is Ryan's way of folding proper Irish dialogue into the story; a Woolfian, Joycean-inspired form where speech and narration blur in the one voice. It makes you feel like you're the one under a car in some garage in Tipp.

Not everyone is a fan of his style though.

"My version of it is far from perfect, but it's kind of my own take on it," he says. "I was immersed in that kind of talk my whole life. I wouldn't have departed too far from my own vernacular when it comes to Theo and Haulie or the other characters. It's such a thin line between actual representation of ordinary speech and this so-called Paddywhackery.

"People often say, 'Oh, I hate Donal Ryan because it's all fucking begorra and begob.' I have never used the words 'begorra' or 'begob'. So, I deny it completely, of course. I remember a lady in Howth once, gosh, she was really incensed, she was fucking purple with rage. She waited until I finished reading a short story at an event, and she pointed her finger at me, she goes, 'You are single-handedly destroying Irish literature!'"

What some label Paddywhackery is really a refreshing way of portraying rural Ireland and Irish people positively, without ever being idealistic. It's a break from the darkness shrouding a lot of Irish fiction set in the 20th century.

"Sometimes Irish literature is Ireland being put up on a post and flogged," Ryan says. "There's this idea that Ireland was the only country on Earth that had mother and baby homes. Terribly evil things happened, undoubtedly. But every country has a past. Every culture, every society, every tribe was different, everything evolves.

"Why we are dwelling in this state of punishment of ourselves is beyond me. And why people of my generation are apologising for things they didn't do is beyond me."

While he has had some novels partly set in London and Congo, the author writes north Tipp so persistently that some critics call it 'Donal Ryan Country'. It has cost him too, with people closer to home than Howth.

"People have seen themselves in my novels. They've been wrong, in fairness, but they've been upset about it," he says. "I won't be specific, but I made some clumsy allusions to certain real-life events. I was told that people were upset about it.

"At the time it seemed necessary. I allowed a character to be profane about certain events, and I shouldn't have. I will forever regret doing that. The idea of causing somebody pain is just anathema to me. I can't bear it. I wish I hadn't done it, but it's done now, and they're out there, and I can't change it unless I go to every bookshop where my books are and take them off the shelf."

MAKE SURE YOU WRITE

This being our student issue, and Ryan teaching creative writing at UL, does he have any advice for prospective authors?

"This sounds like tautology, it's so obvious and simple, but when it comes to writing, you have to write. It's a big mistake I made myself for years," he says. "I always had this smug concept of myself. I'd read books and go, 'I could write way better than that.' Then I'd be thinking, 'You fucking idiot, you've never written anything.'

"I lived in a flat in Limerick for years, and I'd write something, and then I'd look around and go, 'Jesus, can anyone see me doing this? This is embarrassing.' Then I'd burn it in the sink. If I wrote something on a computer, I'd make a point of printing it so I could burn it, to expunge myself of this stupidity.

"You have to go through those crises of confidence, and those timid moments where you're writing in the dark trying to find your voice. Reading is important too. Reading everything: song lyrics, poetry and journalism, and straight-up news. It's so important to make language warm and malleable. You need to make it your own."