Alf MacLochlainn

“It would be nice and dramatic if I could say that I woke up on the morning after learning of my father’s mysterious death and faced with terror the thought of dressing myself. Unfortunately it wasn’t a bit like that. The morning of which I write was a fair while after my father’s death and was so ordinary that I am not sure I am really recounting the events of a single morning or perhaps conflating bits and pieces of several mornings, and of course I am sure to be ignoring miscellaneous forgotten scratchings and stretchings and the regular matutinal pee and minor ablutions, regularly inserted at the vest/underpants stage. The deepest probing of my subconscious could hardly find any real terror and would find it difficult to assign any role in the whole proceeding to my father’s life and death, mysterious though any coroner would have to find the latter. My meetings with my father for anything more than ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good night’ had been infrequent until his last years but always quite cordial and he had, I suppose, contributed something to whatever intellectual equipment I possessed.”

—𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘶𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 by Alf Mac Lochlainn

The above passage is from the brilliant first and title story of this collection of short stories and novellas. All the works within cause one to pause—odd syntax, odd narratives, odd subjects intercut with even odder subjects. “Swopping Bikes”, for instance, is centered around the mastery of switching bikes between two cyclists mid-pedal and a predilection for the future tense over the past tense by one of the characters who develops a terminal case of cancer. Even reading that previous sentence back I can only respond with: “What the fuck?” Usually the effect works, even though the prose will certainly distance itself from less intrepid readers. There are times, however, where the style seems to flatten under enigmatic or even pedestrian templates; the final story, “A Narrative of the Proceedings of the 𝘉𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 on its Voyage in Search of the Fruit Tree” is merely a retelling of 𝘔𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘺 with the wispiest of nebular Sci-Fi shrouds. It was boring and uninventive—which is such a stark difference from the rest of the strange and singular concoctions. Whether you use bourbon or Canadian whisky or Tennessee whiskey or rye, a Manhattan is still a Manhattan if you drink enough of them.

Thankfully, Dalkey Archive Press is dedicated to keeping such works in print in perpetuity regardless of their commercial success, irrespective of anyone reading them, solely for their cultural worth. That’s pretty fucking cool. I haven’t loved everything from this publisher, but I sure as hell won’t forget what I’ve read. And that first story from this truly weird and punctilious collection was so uproarious and outlandish that it offset any of the less imaginative portions.

Besides, I’m more of a gimlet guy, myself.… (altro)

Since one of the stories in Past Habitual has the word topology in the title (a rather surreal story about dental cleaning and a meditation about M and W's and dental hygienists' bosoms), I feel justified in using topology to describe my feelings of rel="nofollow" target="_top">Past Habitual by Alf Machlochlainn.

Yay math!

Let's take the earth. I'm going to assume that most of you agree the earth is round. But locally, it doesn't feel round. It, generally, feels pretty flat wherever one is standing. The curvature of the earth is so massive compared to a teensy-tiny person that it can feel mind-boggling that really, we're on a big (almost) sphere when it really seems, in our perspective, to be a flat plane. Such is it with my enjoyment of Past Habitual: give me a page of the book and I'll like it. I'll like the writing. I'll like the words. I'll like the way each page pulls you right into Ireland, one of my favourite places to read about, with its complex history and shifting loyalties. But pull back far enough and I'm like "What the f*ck is going on?" because the stories tend to jump, these massive, unprepared, leaps of logic and time and characters and style and I just don't know. I do not know how to describe it other than baffling. Globally, in respect to Past Habitual, I spent a fair deal of time being baffled.

As for style, there's a lot of almost stream-of-consciousness, memory. The ones focusing on Ireland's past could all be linked, all told from the same characters one may suppose. Themes reappear: the Irish War of Independence and Civil War of the 1920s, Germans coming to Ireland during the Second World War, the Catholic Church, sentences here and there in Irish. The book doesn't explain Ireland for the non-Irish. I don't mind that. I like the narrator's voice most of the time -- not so much when he offers to kill the kittens, but most of the time. It's rural without being idyllic. Most of it feels true, at least, as I've said, locally. Globally? Incomprehensible.

Past Habitual by Alf Machlochlainn went on sale April 13, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.… (altro)