Getting the Words Right: A Festschrift in Honour of Eamon Maher celebrates Maher’s illustrious career as writer, editor, collaborator, translator and series founder. Maher, the author of four monographs, nearly 220 articles and book chapters, and (co-)editor of almost 30 texts, has had a profound impact on Irish studies and Franco-Irish studies. Featuring chapters of consistently high quality, the Festschrift avoids the lack of cohesion that sometimes plagues edited collections. Instead, chapters fall into discernible categories: tribute articles; those focused on Maher’s interests; and those featuring other new work.
The tribute articles are singularly clever. Alexandra MacLennan interviews Maher’s long-time collaborators and suggests that his “way of being” fosters “intellectual and institutional fruitfulness”. Patricia Medcalf surveys Guinness’s advertising history, using Maher’s birth through adolescence as her timeframe. Brian J Murphy and Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire explore “the important role …research communities can play” to honour Maher’s role in Franco-Irish academic communities, and Anne Goarzin moves from Maher’s collaborative skills to how community works in John McGahern’s canon and between academics. Two chapters (Mary S Pierse and Harry White) focus on George Moore, who, like Maher, hails from Tallaght/Tipperary. Such chapters display depth as well as warmth.
Most chapters plumb Maher’s areas of expertise. Thus, excellent new studies of John McGahern review the roles of ritual (Andrew Auge), intertextual references (Bertrand Cardin) and bioregionalism (Eamon Wall) in McGahern’s canon. Other chapters explore Franco-Irish subjects like Edna O’Brien’s French reception (Grace Neville); Franco-Irish historical sympathy (Pierre Joannon); and French theory’s role in Ireland’s study of religion (Catherine Maignant). Michael Cronin, Sarah Nolan, Anne Fogarty and Barry Houlihan all variously engage translation, and Vic Merriman and John Littleton nod toward Maher’s interest in religion.
The remaining chapters’ diversity serves as a reminder of Maher’s broad intellectual reach. Derek Hand engages with a little-discussed Bowen short story; Sylvie Mikowski considers children in recent Irish fiction. Marisol Morales-Ladrón explores biographical fiction, and María Elena Jaime De Pablos examines Lia Mills’s Another Alice and trauma. Pilar Villar-Argáiz compellingly identifies transparency in Colette Bryce’s poetry, and Eugene O’Brien analyses Micheal O’Siadhail’s The Gossamer Wall.
Voices of the dead speak again, telling unheard stories of the IRA ceasefire 30 years on
Liars by Sarah Manguso: A deft portrait of a dysfunctional marriage of unequals
The Island: WH Auden and the Last of Englishness by Nicholas Jenkins – Opening the lid on a hermetically sealed sex life
Prequel by Rachel Maddow: A rip-roaring account of American fascists that comes at the cost of historical analysis
Ultimately, this collection will benefit many scholars, making it a most fitting tribute to a true powerhouse in Irish and Franco-Irish Studies.
Kate Costello-Sullivan is professor of modern Irish literature at Le Moyne College
