Walter Macken by Ultan Macken

Author:Ultan Macken [Macken, Ultan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78117-011-3
Publisher: Mercier Press
Published: 2012-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

After his splendid defence of I Am Alone, he began submitting his book of short stories and was hopeful it would become his fourth book to be published. Lovat Dickson’s first reaction to the short story idea wasn’t very encouraging:

Macmillan & Co. Ltd.

12th October 1948

Walter Macken Esq.,

31 Ardpatrick Road.

Dear Macken,

Thank you for your letter of Oct 2nd and Oct 7th. I have delayed writing to you until I had a chance to read your introduction and the short story. Let me say at once that the short story is quite charming, although I think it could be tightened up at the beginning. The reader does not realise what you are getting at while the descriptions of the band, delightful in itself, is going on. It is only when the boys emerge and particularly Joe, that the themes become clear. If I were you, I should try to reduce the first four pages to two pages.

I think you will find that you will heighten the effect if you do that. It is not easy to criticise the Introduction, because there you have an excellent idea, and you have something worth saying. But here again I think you write at too much length. The point you are making is that it is a fatal thing for a person to sweep through a small town without observing the life that is going on there. But that point will be made emphatically enough if you say it only once, as you do at the beginning, and if you do not turn several times to curse the unobservant. There are fine bits in this Introduction. The description of Galway is very impressive, although I don’t like ‘carpeted with fish: back grounded by the blue misty mountains’; and I don’t like ‘She was a very beautiful girl, perfect as to figure and form.’ The other bits of your writing are so much better than that.

You realise, of course, that an Introduction of this length is a very solemn thing to attach to a book of short stories. All that you say is this Introduction could really be said in a short story itself, the title story perhaps, and there it would be more effective than if you present it with an introduction, which some readers will skip and others will quarrel with.

I know that the point you are making in the Introduction is a spelling out of the background to all the stories that are included in the collection. But I am sure that will be clear enough in the stories themselves, and it need only take ten or twelve lines to say why you are calling the book – ‘Tales of a Citie’. I am not sure by the way about that title. I note the way you have spelt ‘Citie’ and the explanation you give of the origins of Galway explain it all. But before the reader begins he will think it is a book about the streets of the Metropolis.

I am sure that the best thing for your style will be to discipline it a little more.

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