Those bloody, author-thievin’ Irish

In response to the recent spat between Ukrainians and Russians over the true citizenship of Nikolai Gogol, The Guardian books blogger John Mullan questions the whole notion of countries laying claims of ownership on writers. He also takes the opportunity to poke some fun at Ireland, for what he sees as its penchant for stealing authors away from Britain.

Look at the Irish, who have proved particularly skilful at this. They have effortlessly reclaimed all the great authors who fled the country of their birth – Goldsmith, Joyce, Beckett – even though the latter wrote some of his greatest work in French, the language of his adopted country. They have managed to persuade many that Laurence Sterne (born in Ireland because his father was a British soldier stationed there) and William Congreve (born in Yorkshire, but educated partly in Ireland because his father was another British officer) were really Irish. (The fact that both these writers were witty somehow confirms their essential Irishness.) And, their biggest triumph, they have taken possession of Jonathan Swift, perhaps the greatest of all satirists. In fact Swift called himself “English”, spoke of his residence in Dublin as an “exile” in “a land I hate”, and did not even have an Irish accent. But he has long become a great Irish patriot, adorning banknotes and tourist brochures.

Like daytime television (on PBS)

Often, the stories behind books are almost as interesting as the books themselves. In the case of lost manuscripts, speculation abounds concerning the contents of books – in the words of Stuart Kelly, “The lost book, like the person you never dared ask to the dance, becomes infinitely more alluring simply because it can be perfect only in the imagination” – while the stories behind books, often all we have left of them, take on greater significance.

An adapted excerpt of Kelly’s new book, an exploration of the histories of could-have-been famous books that never were called The Book of Lost Books, appears on this week’s online edition of the Weekend Australian. Telling the stories of lost works by Gogol, Plath, Hemingway, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and others, his fascinating account connects books to the vagaries of their writers and historical contexts. In plots reminiscent of daytime TV dramas, writers are stricken with pious desires to burn their manuscripts, boxes of letters are buried in gardens in the anticipation of war, suitcases containing important manuscripts are left at the train station, and scandalous memoirs are destroyed to protect reputations. Oh, the intrigue!

Related links:
Click here for the adapted excerpt of The Book of Lost Books