Strumpet City: One City One Book Edition

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Following his death in May 2003 James Plunkett’s obituaries emphasised his humble beginnings, his consistent trade unionism and, of course, his talent, but did not remark that his Strumpet City is Ireland’s greatest historical novel. This failure may result from reluctance to ask two questions: how historical novels differ from others and where Plunkett’s book fits amongst them.

Heavily publicized and amid the usual whinging from nonentities about the diversion of scarce resources, the first episode was promised for a wintry Sunday evening in late 1980. A huge audience tuned in, many of whom half-expected yet another national disaster. plays down militant nationalism, confining its expression largely to the old cook, Miss Gilchrist) and anti-clerical. Readers of James Plunkett published two further novels, Farewell Companions (1977), which partly drew on his childhood and early adult experience, and The Circus Animals (1990), which included incidents drawn from the controversy surrounding the Russia visit of 1955. Nowhere was this more evident than in drama. Although the national broadcaster had produced two well-written soap operas, most of its few attempts at historical fiction were embarrassing to watch. Badly scripted, badly structured and dominated by hammy scene stealing, they were seen more as an attempt to the drama department to justify its underfunded existence rather than as an attempt to entertain.The preachers have gone from comforting to exploiting us. They take advantage of our vulnerability and naivete and 'steal' the last coin we have.

Connolly, Shaun (8 February 2014). "Buttimer and Panti drown out empty rhetoric in homophobia debate". Irish Examiner . Retrieved 24 May 2015. Special mention should also be made of Mrs Bradshaw, an upper class lady, who while trying to help in small ways cannot see the bigger picture and would be quite content for things to sty as they are, with the poor getting occasional handouts but otherwise knowing their place. Strumpet City is Dublin City Libraries' One City, One Book Choice for 2013". Gill Books . Retrieved 15 October 2022. Plunkett possessed an honourable social consciousness, and endures as an artist through his great Dublin novel, writes But this is not a work of heroic propaganda. Plunkett infuses characters with whom he would not agree with vivid, detailed life. One of the finest portraits in the book, indeed, is that of the priggish Father O'Connor and his slow journey towards a fuller humanity – O'Connor is rich enough to be worth a novel to himself. This is whyIt seems significant that the area Plunkett was born in, Irishtown, is bounded by both the poorer district of Ringsend and the well-to-do suburb of Sandymount – hence, perhaps, the accuracy with which Plunkett captures both ends of the social spectrum in The writing in this book is poetic and eloquent and gives a real insight into that part of history just before the world would be plunged into the dreadful darkness of the first World War. General Tom Barry’s Cork No. 3 (West Cork) Brigade wiped out an eighteen-man Auxiliary patrol at Kilmichael, on the Macroom–Dunmanway road, Co. Cork. It was immensely popular when it was published. [ citation needed] The writing is direct and powerfully evokes the over-population, the terrible poverty and the peculiar intimacy of pre-independence Dublin. [ citation needed] One theme is the essential goodness of people and the tenderness which survives the brutality of deprivation. The popularity of the novel also owed something to events in Ireland in the early 1970s, as The Troubles made the more traditional iconography of the insurrectionary period troublesome, while economic stagnation and social crisis fostered empathy for the former Dublin of tenements, working class heroes and vagrant balladeers. [ citation needed] We are all living in our own strumpet cities with politicians promising us heaven when they give us hell.

The power of Strumpet City comes from the human stories that illustrate this drama. One of the first reviewers was the playwright Denis Johnson (whose play on Robert Emmet had given Plunkett his title). He wrote: " Something of much more impact ( than a biography) - a novel in which the story of Dublin's industrial upheavals from 1908 to 1914 are seen through the eyes of a carefully selected group of characters playing out their parts in counterpoint. In spite of the title, the City itself is not at the centre of the picture. It is the people that interest Jim Plunkett as should be the case in any social document as readable as this." At a more fundamental level, though, the novel is the story of Dublin in its most turbulent period. Most have taken the ‘Strumpet’ of the title to be an illusion to Dublin’s teeming brothels “the haunts of sin” which Leopold Bloom was accused of visiting just a few years before. But Plunkett clearly meant it to be descriptive of the city itself in the same way that Denis Johnston, from whom he borrowed the title, did: Strumpet Cityis vivid social history come to life in a claustrophobic, battered and unforgiving city stumbling towards change.

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There is a terrible accident at a coal yard and you feel empathy for big Mulhall and the further poverty his family will suffer in its wake. a b Freitag, Barbara (1 January 1995). "Literature rewrites history: James Connolly and James Larkin Larger than Life". In Leerssen, Joseph Theodoor; Weel, Adriaan van der; Westerweel, Bart (eds.). Forging in the Smithy: National Identity and Representation in Anglo-Irish Literary History. International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL) Leiden 1991: Volume 1 of The Literature of Politics and the Politics of Literature. Costerus New Series. Vol.98. Rodopi. p.243. ISBN 978-90-5183-759-9 . Retrieved 24 May 2015. is, above all, a great defiance of this contempt for the poor. Its realism is not just a reflection of the way things were: it is also a statement of the way things should be, that attention must be paid to those whom history treats as the anonymous masses. We might give what he is doing the name of defiant realism.