Camarade by Theo Dorgan
When asked what the inspiration was for this novel, as I have been, the only honest answer I can give is “I don’t rightly know.”
I will qualify this answer presently, but I am utterly beyond remembering what the first impulse was, the unremarkable urge to set down the first words on paper, to embark on the long inquiry into what story was hoping to be told.
When I occasionally teach a poetry workshop, and sometimes in an interview when I think my interlocutor is prepared to take my word for it, I tell them that we don’t write the poems, the poems write us. A poem can begin with an insistent rhythm in the head or in the breath, or it may begin with a phrase, even a word, very occasionally a whole chunk of the thing, may present itself, cadence, lines, verses even, will announce their commanding presence — and you’re away. The job then, using all the resources of learned craft, is to capture the thing, to make a framework that will hold and sustain it. This not to claim that in some sese or other the poem somehow pre-exists its writing down — a glib charge often laid against those of us whom experience persuades that the poem is first given. A gift.
Full Attention
Let us say that a poem suggests itself — you are free to refuse it. You may give it only scant attention, let it fall from the mind in your preoccupation with more pressing worldly or emotional matters. Fine, but what exactly is happening when you switch on with your full attention? The key is in those two words, full attention. Something is happening in you, to you, and it’s expressing itself in the mechanics of language. Whatever it is, it’s of sufficient urgency to command your full attention. Obediently, in a very particular kind of trance, you set yourself to follow the summons. Later, the first draft somehow grasped and noted down, the deliberative mind will set about its work of clarifying, sifting and settling. But it starts from lightning, from that first flash of inspiration. As Robert Graves puts it, in his poem ‘Dance of Words’, “To make them move you must start from lightning… rely on chance or so-called chance/Once lightning interpenetrates the dance”
Well, I have written two novels now, and the experience has been somewhat different. In the case of Making Way, I can trace an origin point, a picture that came to mind on the edge of falling asleep, a young woman, her legs dangling over the water on a quayside, chatting to an older man aboard a sailboat. Next morning I began to write out their conversation, and everything flowed from following what that conversation prompted. In the case of Camarade, there was no such prompt. Or, to be absolutely scrupulous, none that I can now recall. It seems to me that one morning, without making any conscious decision to do so, I sat down and began to write Joseph’s story. Once started, I kept going, day after day, wondering what came next, writing it out so as to discover what came next. Much of what happens in the book came as a surprise to me, but I do not mean to suggest here a kind of faux naivety. Once I saw Joseph lived in Blackpool, my native parish, I knew I would have to describe the place, would want to draw on my own memories. Once the ugly young pup of a Branchman appeared, I knew there would have to be a resolution of the conflict between him and Joseph. I did not know until it happened that Joseph would shoot him, but as soon as that appeared on the page I knew that his Grandfather would want to get him offside as soon as possible. And I saw, just before writing it, that Joseph would be sent off to Paris, placed in the care of his grandfather’s staunch comrade, Henri. And now that I’d sent Joseph off to Paris, I had to figure out what to do with him. That was fine, but I did not expect to find that Joseph would never go home again — when that became clear, there were certain consequences for the unfolding of the story. When Joseph fell in love, I was saddened and surprised that it didn’t work out — and that of course sent the story off again in a particular and largely unexpected direction. What I am trying to describe here is a kind of dance — exposition extrapolated from given sets of circumstance, following the logic of circumstance, interspersed with unexpected and unpredictable lightnings, moments that broke in unexpectedly from outside the unfolding story and shaped it in ways I had not foreseen.
No Plan
No plan, then, unless we can give the term ‘plan’ to a growing intuition of how the story wished to shape itself, in what tone and form and to what end. If I say, I wrote this book to see how the story would come out, that I was myself constantly surprised by what was happening, I know perfectly well that, in the words of Coleridge, “…these things will by few be understood, and by fewer granted.” Perhaps it might shed some light on the business if I say, in conclusion, that after Camarade had come out into the world, I had two very minor revelations. The first was a sudden memory of hearing, while still in primary school, that Tomás Óg MacCurtain, son of the martyred Lord Mayor, had suddenly snapped on a street down town and shot dead, in broad daylight, a Branchman who had been dogging his every step for a long time. I remember, child that I was, telling myself “you must remember this”. And the other minor revelation after the fact? Joseph grows up with his grandfather and a group of lodgers, all of whom had served under the grandfather in a flying column. I remembered weeks after publication, seen in the Crawford gallery when I was very young, Seán Keating’s wonderful painting, ‘Men of The South’. The first time I saw it I was entranced, I knew it would stay with me forever, and so it has. Was that the first manifestation in my consciousness of Michael John and the men who served under him? I simply don’t know, I certainly never thought of this before the book appeared.
Perhaps there will be other such revelations of buried memories, prompts and small inspirations working their little magics in my unconscious? I don’t know.
Just as I still have no idea what prompted me to embark on Camarade.
(c) Theo Dorgan
About Camarade by Theo Dorgan:
In this masterful new work, award-winning author Theo Dorgan has written a philosophical thriller of extraordinary depth. An Irishman in Paris considers the weight and impact of a single violent act that forced him to flee Ireland forty years ago. When Vincent, a young Algerian friend, suggests Joseph should write his life story, Joseph embarks on a self-examination that will lay bare, perhaps especially to himself, what has been a singular and surprising life.
Set against the evocative backdrops of Paris and Cork, Camarade explores a life shaped by one fateful moment and the quiet violence of self-reckoning. The story unfolds in a dual timeline: Joseph’s present-day existence in Paris, with its muted rhythms and introspective solitude, and his youth in 1960s Ireland, raised on his grandfather’s stories of the Flying Column and revolution.
After one violent act, Joseph finds himself exiled in France during the turbulent decades of the Algerian Crisis and May ’68, where he discovers comradeship, unexpected freedom in careful neutrality.
As Joseph writes, he confronts the central question of his life: did a single act of life-changing violence make him who he is, or was he always destined to become this man?
Written in precise, contemplative prose, Camarade examines how we construct meaning from our past while questioning the nature of authenticity and self-awareness. At once, an intimate character study, a meditation on history, violence and the enduring impact of our choices. This novel asks us to consider the space between who we imagine we are destined to be and who we eventually become. Moving with the tension of a thriller while exploring profound philosophical questions, Camarade confirms Theo Dorgan’s place as one of our most thoughtful and elegant literary voices.
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