Theo Dorgan: 'I never left Cork... I just live elsewhere'

Set in Paris and Cork, Theo Dorgan’s second novel is a fine piece of writing and a fascinating character study of Blackpool-born Joseph, who is forced to go into exile after he shoots and wounds a policeman in his native city.

Best known as a poet, Theo didn’t find writing Camarade difficult in any way.

Speaking from Greece where he was on holidays recently, Theo says: “I suppose what poetry and the novel have in common is storytelling. But this novel is a story stretched out over a long period of time – a whole life really.”

Joseph is 70 when, at the advice of a friend, he starts writing a sort of autobiography, an examination of a singular life that poses a question. Did that single violent act that forced Joseph to flee Cork 40 years ago make him who he is, or was he always destined to become this person?

“I still haven’t made my mind up about that,” says Dorgan.

“There’s a kind of reckoning there. I toyed with the idea of forcing it to a conclusion. But Joseph resisted me, so I let it be. We don’t know (at the end of the novel) what happens next for him.”

While writing the novel, Theo discovered there was a connection between an incident he recalled from his childhood and Joseph’s shooting of a cop. This only came to him as he was writing.

“When I was a boy in school, we heard about an extraordinary incident. Tomás Óg MacCurtain, son of the martyred Lord Mayor, was dogged by a special branch man, persecuted by him.

“One day, in Patrick Street, Tomás pulled out a revolver and shot the policeman. (According to records, the policeman was ‘mortally wounded’.)

“That memory only surfaced when I was well into Joseph’s story. It struck me forcefully when I was a child and then it disappeared. It must have been there subconsciously the whole time.”

That incident happened in 1940, and Tomás Óg was sentenced to death. However, he was granted clemency and released after seven years. He later served on the IRA Executive and died in 1994.

Is there much of Theo in his character Joseph? “I don’t think so, no. Except perhaps that when I was a young man, I had this dream that maybe I would end up solitary and living in a book-lined apartment on the second floor of a block of flats in Paris.”

That is Joseph’s life, financed by working as a one-to-one teacher of English; forming friendships, having occasional affairs and living ethically, using whatever influence he has to uphold civility.

Theo, 72, whose first novel, Making Way, was published in 2013, is married to the poet, Paula Meehan.

“I’ve been very fortunate in my life,” he says. “What I like about Joseph – and why I followed him with such interest – is that he was content to play the cards he was dealt.”

Theo makes it sound like his protagonist takes him on a journey through the pages, with a will of his own.

“You write something to find out what it is you’re thinking and then, afterwards, you discover what you have been thinking.”

Camarade is very much populated by good men, as well as strong women.

“There aren’t enough books about good, decent men. I’ve met so many in my life.

“I have wonderful, nourishing, positive and powerful women in my life, including my sisters.

“My brothers are good men too and my male friends.

“Maybe at some level, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that there are good men in the world with an ethical sense of responsibility.”

Joseph, who was orphaned as a young boy when his parents died in a car accident, was reared by his thoroughly decent grandfather, Michael John.

Mick, as he is known, fought in the War of Independence but refused to take part in the Irish Civil War as he couldn’t countenance shooting people that he had previously defended.

When Joseph shoots the policeman (provoked by persecution), Mick is able to call on a French friend, Henri, with whom he fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Henri looks after Joseph when he moves to Paris, making introductions and finding a job for him in the library of the Sorbonne.

It’s a lowly job, but it’s understood that Joseph can embark on self-education in the university library, reading and studying.

“It’s not the president of the Sorbonne who takes him in. It’s the porters,” explains Theo.

“When I was at UCC (studying English and philosophy) I had great friendships with the gardeners and the security men. They were all our friends. They looked out for us.

“It was a smaller university then of course.”

Theo wrote part of his novel at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris.

“I found all these people (in the book.) The last time I was in Paris, I was slightly disconcerted that they weren’t around!”

While in the City of Light, Theo, who knows it quite well, walked around the streets and noted restaurants and cafes that Joseph would frequent and the baker that he would go to.

Totally at home in Paris, there is an observation made by one of the characters in Camarade that Joseph turned his back on Ireland.

But Theo says Joseph is “immersed in Ireland, at a remove.” His book shelves are heaving with books about Ireland, its history, politics and literature.

Like Theo, Joseph is political, but just as his creator is non-ideological, so too is this Cork man in Paris.

“Henri and the other characters in the book don’t have an ideology. They just have a sense of being part of a permanent resistance,” says Theo. “It’s very healing in society to have that.”

Like Paris, but perhaps in a different way, Cork is “a very sophisticated city”, remarks Theo, who lives in Dublin. “I never left Cork. I just live elsewhere. Writing the Blackpool sequences in Camarade was pure pleasure.”

Camarade, by Theo Dorgan, published by Mercier Press, will be launched on June 17 at Waterstones in Cork at 6.30pm.