       |
Life
1910-1988 [pseud. “Michael McGrian”]; b. Cathcor Muir, Co. Down; raised in Cavan, various jobs travelling round America, 1930-38; RAF navigator in World War II; ‘Myself and Some Ducks’, his earliest piece published in The Bell in 1945 under pseudonym Michael McGrian were censored by printers; his novels include The Ferret Fancier (1963); As Towns with Fire (1968) and others, the topic is usually RAF wartime experience; became member of Aosdana in 1981; settled in London; father of 12 children (acc. cover notice of Ferret). DIW DIL [FDA] OCIL
[ top ]
Works| Short fiction |
|
| Novels |
|
[ top ]
Criticism
John Cronin, ‘Prose’, in Michael Longley, ed., Causeway: The Arts in Ulster (1971), pp.72-94, espec. pp.73-74; see also J. W. Foster, Forces and Themes in Ulster Fiction (1974).
[ top ]
References
The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed., Seamus Deane (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, notes only theme of growth in adversity [J. W. Foster, ed.], 940.
[ top ]
Quotations
The Ferret Fancier (1983): ‘Time and a windless noon, the leaves on the trees limp in the heavy sun and the time he had first learned to appreciate a tree - a thing bone-bare and then clad in a cloud of feathers.’ (p.1.)
Flann O’Brien: Reading his early novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), West found ‘long passages in imitation of Joycean parody as devastatingly dull.’ (See ‘Inspired Nonsense’ [review] reprinted in Rüdiger Imhof, ed., Alive-alive O! Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, Dublin: Wolfhound 1985, p.55.)
[ top ]
Notes
As Towns With Fire (1968) - Christopher MacMannan is an Irishman in England in the late 1930s waiting with the rest of the world for the coming conflagration; reviewing his past life and reflecting on ‘everything’s awful wisdom’, drifts from woman to woman, meeting and marrying Moly Chester; ... with the crazy logic of war he finds himself (at heart a pacifist), helping to obliterate German towns as a member of the RAF Pathfinder unit; describes fear filled childhood in bigoted Ireland; Londoners life during blitz, and self-absorbed world of airmen [on] night-raids. Cover picture is David McKittrick oil painting [unnamed].
Namesake: This author is not to be confused with Anthony West (1914-1987), the son of Rebecca West and H. G. Wells, author of Heritage (1955) and other novels (though an autobiography of his neglected childhood in substance.)
[West was not in Frank Ormsby, Northern Windows: An Anthology of ]
[ top ]