Your story “So Late in the Day” unfolds like a mystery, beginning on what seems to be a normal workday for its main character, Cathal, but turns out to be something quite different. Did you have this structure in mind when you started writing?
Well, it’s an odd one, this. The story came to me while I was discussing the differences between drama and tension (which are sometimes near-opposites to me) in a fiction-writing workshop. One of my students asked if I could come up with an example of a tense story with little or no drama. I invented the story of a clerk who goes to the office, leaves after nothing much has happened, then takes the bus back home to an empty house, where he can’t find the cat, then finds the cat and eats a frozen meal, then watches a documentary about Lady Diana getting married and cries silently while watching. I didn’t really know what I was doing in that lesson or where it would lead, but, when I got to the documentary and his sadness, I realized that I was describing this man’s wedding day—the day he was supposed to be married. And that his going to work and coming home were full of tension and loss because of what was not happening. For years, I taught using this example, until one day a student asked if I had written the story—and I realized that I had better sit down and write it before someone else did.
So I started out with July 29th, because it was the date when Lady Diana married, and that worked well, because the story could aptly begin with the hot, unwanted sun shining, in Cathal’s point of view. The writer is always looking for someone who’s genuinely ailing or finding it difficult to cope, someone who is out in the deep water. In this case, I knew what was ailing my character, why he was so agitated. I’ve taught creative writing for half my life—and structure is what I keep coming back to, what I rely on to save me when I get into trouble out there. With Cathal, I thought about it being a sunny morning and how he would make himself go to the office that day, which should have been his wedding day, because he didn’t want to lose out on his pay. This was the point at which his relationship with money began to be interesting—which led me to how he got into the trouble he gets into.
The story reveals details one by one, through flashbacks. How did you settle on the right pace for those revelations?
By ear, mostly. If the story doesn’t sound like it’s going at the right pace, the pace is probably off and may be disconnected from the point of view. I see Cathal as a man who can hardly put one foot in front of the other at some points during this day, who is weighed down by disappointment and anger and his lack of skills, his lack of generosity, who is unable to give or to live or love wholeheartedly. It was important that the prose not be fluent or flowing, because his thoughts and memories are not. My feeling for him was to use repetition (and more commas than I was allowed!). I don’t like the prose to go on at a steady clip; it’s important for it to be marbled with the little trills and minor moments and pauses, with what seems to be inessential. I believe that every good story is told with varying degrees of reluctance. Often, the short-story narrator is less willing than the narrator in a novel—which is one of the reasons that short stories are shorter.
In the course of the story, our view of Cathal changes dramatically. We go from feeling sympathetic toward him to recoiling (or, at least, I do). If the story continued beyond this point, do you think our view would change again?
What a lovely question.
Yes, I like to think that if the story continued there’s a possibility that we might come to feel sympathetic toward him. It’s unfair to judge people on their appearance as central characters in a short story. They may very well be at their worst. This man grew up in a misogynistic household. Cathal’s father laughed when his brother pulled the chair out from under his mother as she was sitting down with her plate after serving their supper. I’m sorry to say that this scene is autobiographical: my own brother did this to my mother when I was a child, and it was treated so casually, as though little or nothing had happened. It stayed with me all my life. I’m just sad that Cathal is not able to share the little he has so that he can have a chance of a good life with a decent woman. It’s the not giving in this case that’s crippling.
Why did you write “So Late in the Day” from Cathal’s perspective and not from Sabine’s?
Well, it’s an exploration of misogyny. (The working title was “Misogyny.”) Maybe I needed to think about misogyny, Irish style, from a man’s point of view. I also like writing stories in which the adult protagonists are culpable in the trouble they endure. Maybe I wanted to explore why misogyny no longer works for men in our changing society. Of course I know that it never actually did, that all it really did was destroy relationships and prevent us from having a democracy—but what it meant to Cathal on the day that should or could have been a joyous one spoke to me, and I just had to go in there and take a look at the world through his eyes, follow what his gaze fell on and all the disappointment that was locked up in his heart. It also seemed apt to look at what our misogynistic society had done to him. I can’t say I like Cathal, but this man is lost and struggling—and lost and struggling people make for good central characters. Maybe he’s learned something from Sabine. Maybe he’ll put his hand in his pocket the next time. Maybe there won’t be a next time.
You say that “Misogyny” was a working title for the story. But, when you first came up with the premise for this story, your purpose was not to explore that theme but to think about creating a narrative with tension but no drama. How did the theme become part of it?
I haven’t ever once started with or thought very much (if at all) about theme. My tendency is to seek out a character who is struggling and then to go into the source of the struggle and have faith that there is a story there. If I listen. Listening is a big part of writing. Of course this sometimes doesn’t work, and I have to go back to the blank page, but I don’t believe that such work is ever wasted. It’s just a bad day at work, you’ve nothing to show for it—but everyone has those.
The story implies that Cathal acquired at least some of his misogyny from his father’s example. Is it that straightforward? Is it more broadly cultural, as Cynthia suggests? Is it innate to who he is?
I don’t like to think of misogyny as innate. I’ve never once thought of this. (The question itself is frightening.) I think Cathal was taught how to treat women badly; he was badly raised and spoiled. Maybe this story is an exploration of how a man who was badly raised cannot manage in a world where women expect more. Maybe there’s some optimism at the heart of it?
Last year you published a novel, “Small Things Like These,” that revolved around the horrific abuse of “fallen” women, imprisoned in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. Did that form of institutionalized abuse start you thinking about other, milder manifestations of misogyny in Irish culture?
I don’t know that there was ever a time when I didn’t wonder in one way or another over why things were so badly divided between men and women. At no point did it ever make sense, as the women I encountered were every bit as capable and bright and handy as the men. And the girls as able as the boys. As a girl, I was not allowed to serve at Mass, to set foot on the altar. Boys, too, suffered, as they were taught that girls were dirty—which made us perversely desirable. That’s where the sexual desire was based—on our being what they shouldn’t have. So many young women suffered in those laundries over the years. I can’t say that the writing of “Small Things Like These” led to my thinking about milder manifestations. In any case, it’s difficult to say what’s mild, because the consequences simply aren’t measurable.
