The Writer’s Torch: Reading Stories from The Bell
Edited by Philip Boumans, Elke D’hoker, and Declan Meade
A need for renewal is the thrust of this collection, which pairs stories from The Bell with responses from contemporary authors.
It’s a canny approach, considering the relative unfamiliarity of today’s reader with the magazine, a staple of mid-century Irish letters. The introduction attempts to contextualise its importance by comparing it to the British periodical, Horizon.
If the latter was framed as an intellectual sanctuary from the binary oppositions of wartime politics, in isolated Ireland The Bell provided a haven for writing which sought to expose the hollow orthodoxies of church and state in light of the harsh realities of daily experience.
Naturally, the genre most often chosen to explore these realities was realism, and it is no surprise that these pages are peopled disproportionately by teachers, clerics and other archetypal characters.
For all that, the success of the best pieces here feels extraneous to their social content. Mary Lavin’s ‘A Story with a Pattern’ stands out for its interrogation of the nature of narrative itself, whereas John Hewitt’s ‘Mould’ is as forensic an examination of the horrors of self-isolation as Nicole Flattery’s updated response to it.
Once subtitled ‘A Survey of Irish Life’, perhaps the legacy of The Bell is at once more modest and more lasting: as a nursery to the day’s talent, it is echoed in our time by The Stinging Fly, to whom we owe thanks for this illuminating project.
Words: Diarmuid McGreal
