skip to main content

COSC – JOHN MCGAHERN

COSC 3 Image Name: COSC 3

This week’s episode of COSC from Cláracha Gaeilge, RTÉ, looks back at the banning of John McGahern’s second novel The Dark. The controversial novel and the unfolding events turned young McGahern into a cause célebre; it cost him his career as a primary school teacher, stifled his creativity and ultimately forced him to emigrate in search of work. Ireland was not prepared for the taboo subjects he would write about in 1965 but McGahern was way ahead of his time in tackling issues that would only be admitted and openly spoken about decades later.

This last episode in the COSC series features contributions from Doireann Ní Bhriain, Declan Kiberd, Diarmaid Ferriter, Aoife Bhreathnach and Joe O’ Toole. 

It features previously unseen footage from a BBC film shot in Ireland in 1966. The programme includes John’s personal musings and recollections on an episode of his life that became known as, TheMcGahern Affair– featuring previous interview segments from The Pat Kenny Show, Undercover Profile, State of Mindand A Private World.

It was May 1965, when 260 copies of The Dark, published by Faber & Faber in London, were seized on import by Irish Customs Officials in Dublin. 

The batch was immediately forwarded to the Censorship Board for inspection. Six weeks later the book was banned due to its ‘indecent and obscene’content. 

So, what is this book about and why did it rattle cages and shake people to their core?

“…..there was nothing soft or humorous about what happened in 1965 to John McGahern. It was hard, it was vicious, it was tawdry, it was about the public humiliation of an artist in his own land, writing with searing honesty about his own people and he felt that deeply”. Diarmaid Ferriter, Historian