Burning Inwards is a fifteen story short-story anthology. A Burning In man or woman is someone who has become defensive, self-protective and, perhaps, harmful to self or others following on some personal trauma. He understands he is in flight or fight mode for his very survival. He laments a lack of flourishing in his own life, and especially when he compares it to others. In this anthology we meet fifteen such persons in fifteen such dilemmas; a teacher who has suffered a tragic loss, a priest who’s hens are coming home to roost, a young father who is struggling to insert himself in his estranged son’s childhood, a failed professional footballer who finds solace and purpose in racism and nationalism, a bookshop owner who seeks justice and forgiveness in ProLife activism, a young man who has come to question whether his label of special-needs has best served him, a twin who struggles to work-out the reason behind her failing relationship with her brother and many more.
In these stories I explore the thinking of the narrator-character as he/she tries to self-justify their chosen course of action midst a dilemma or retrospectively on an episode from childhood. The reader is left to decide the degree of the narrator’s reliability in telling the story. The stories challenge popular and cliched conceptions of duty, care, love and responsibility. The majority of the stories are set within fractured interpersonal relationships and displaced locations prompted by family break-up, emigration, loneliness, memory and vocation. Reviews of the book to date note an original, unexpected and deep consideration of issues very current to 2020s Irish society at varying levels of family, local-community and national interest.
My Writing Life
Many of the stories have developed from scenes in two novels which I am still writing. In making free-standing stories out of these scenes I have been able to deepen and develop the characterisation and plot of the bigger works. Writing and publishing this collection has also given some punctuation and affirmation to my writing-life; given a sense of something that has been achieved along the way.
In my academic and professional life I was often drawn into discussions and argument with teachers, medical-workers, care-workers and therapists about their own flourishing, indeed often lack-of flourishing, that their jobs gave them; ranging from a solid and nourishing sense of self-fulfilment to a barren and frustrating personal exhaustion. Similarly in my professional and personal life I would have engaged with children, parents, grandparents and solitary-professions where lives had become peppered with incidents of regret, shame, disappointment, neglect and sense of having been let-down or inadequately supported. Much of my reading and writing in the field of Philosophy of Education would have influenced me in my efforts at trying to understand these situations; how they came about? How they manifested themselves in incident or personal-disposition? How might they be reflected upon in order to bring about some growth, or to stop a cycle of repetition? Much of my writing, in these short stories and in my two novels, grapple with these ideas. I am much given to the writers/philosophers who espouse the idea that we are, from birth, driven by a desire to lead a good life, and that we must give deep consideration to what such a ‘good life’ might be like, and to find pathways and exercises in our home-life and work-life to optimise it’s achievement. I hope there is in my plots and characters evidence of such self-examination and personal-agency.
I continue to work on my novels with each draft, hopefully, incrementally bring the work to its conclusion. In the meantime I also hope to develop some of these short-stories into one-man spoken-word ‘events’ for book-festivals and conferences.
(c) John Fintan McCutcheon
About Burning Inwards:
Burning Inwards by John Fintan McCutcheon is a fifteen story short-story anthology. A Burning In man or woman is someone who has become defensive, self-protective and harmful following on some personal trauma. He understands he is in flight or fight mode for his very survival. In this anthology we meet fifteen such persons in fifteen such dilemmas; a teacher who has suffered a tragic loss, a priest who’s hens are coming home to roost, a young father who is struggling to insert himself in his estranged son’s childhood, a failed professional footballer who finds solace in racism, a bookshop owner who seeks justice in ProLife activism and many more.
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