Life
1955- [fam. Pat McCabe]; b. Clones, Co. Monaghan; ed. locally and St.
Macartan’s; ed. St. Patrick’s TTC, Drumcondra, Dublin; worked
as remedial teacher in Balbriggan, where he wrote Carn (1989; rep. 1993), the story of an eponymous small border-town in Ulster which undergoes economic rejuvenation and then ruin; gigged in ballad and country & western groups
with Jake Lukeman, Paddy Hanrahan and the Oklahoma Showband; won Hennessy Short Story Award (Irish Press) with “The Call”, 1979; appt. teacher at Kingsbury Day Special School, London, 1980; issued The Adventures of Shay Mouse
(1985), a children’s story; issued Music on Clinton Street
(1986), a novel; settled with wife and 2 dgs. in London, 1987; issued The Butcher Boy (1992), the first-person narrative of
Francie Brady, son of a dysfunctional family who becomes a murderer after a trial of misfortunes at the hands of a careless community and state; published by Peter Straus at Picador
after initial rejection by Aidan Ellis, going on to become winner of
Irish Times Literature Award (Fiction), 1992, Aer Lingus Irish Lit.
Prize for Fiction 1992; also shortlisted for the Booker Fiction Prize, 1992 and filmed by Neil Jordan in 1996 (released in 1997), with McCabe himself in
a small part as the town drunk; a play, ‘‘Frank Pig Says Hello’’, based on Butcher Boy, was premiered Dublin Theatre Festival,
1992, being produced by Joe Byrne of Co-Motion Theatre Co.; Loco County Lonesome
opened at 1994 Dublin Theatre Festival with less success; The Dead
School (1994), based on teaching experience in Ireland and concerning
Raphael Bell, the faith-and-fatherland school-teacher, and Malachy Dudgeon,
the hippie-generation student teacher who becomes his nemesis and his
own; gave up teaching to write full-time; returned to Dublin, and then
moved to Sligo; Breakfast on Pluto (1998), named after 1969 hit
‘single’ by Don Partridge, the narrative of a small-town trans-sexual,
Patrick ‘Pussy’ Braden, illegitimate child of local priest in “Tyreelin” who flees after the death of a friend and lives in London as a prostitute only to become inadvertantly involved in an IRA pub-bombing;
shortlisted for Booker Prize; elected Monaghan Man of the Year, 1998; issued Mondo Desperado (1999),
a collection of short stories offering a satirical view of Irish fiction and centred on prize-winning writer Phildy Hackball of Barntrosna; issued Emerald Germs of Ireland
(2001), in which Pat McNab, a wannabe show-band star, turns serial
killer in rural Ireland; issued Call Me the Breeze (2003), a novel set in a border town called “Scotsfield” and centred on the lovesick writer-to-be Joey Tallon; McCabe now lives in Collooney, Co. Sligo, with his wife and two dgs.; 2 early stories broadcast on RTÉ; plays broadcast on BBC and RTÉ. OCIL DIL
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Works
Fiction, Music on Clinton Street (Dublin: Raven Arts 1986),
152pp; Carn (Nuffield: Aiden Ellis 1989), 252pp; Do., (London:
Picador 1993), 252pp., and Do. (NY: Dial 1997); The Butcher
Boy (London: Picador 1992; num. reps. incl. 1998); The Dead School
(London: Picador 1995); Breakfast on Pluto (London: Picador
1998; rep. 1999), 200pp.;Mondo Desperado (London: Picador 1999;
rep. 2000), 228pp. [stories]; Emerald Germs of Ireland (London:
Picador 2001), 380pp.; Call Me the Breeze (London: Faber &
Faber 2003), 308pp.
Children’s fiction, The Adventures of Shay Mouse: The Mouse from Longford (Dublin: Raven Arts [1985]); Do., (Dublin: New Island 1994), 64pp.; Breakfast on Pluto (London: Picador: 1998), 200pp.; Mondo Desperado (London: Picador 1999), 239pp.
Drama, ‘‘Frank Pig Says Hello’’, in John Farleigh, ed., Far from the Land: Contemporary Irish Plays (London: Methuen 1998), also in John Farleigh, ed., Far from the Land: New Irish Plays (London: Methuen 1998).
Miscellaneous, ‘‘Girls’’ [short story], The Big Issue [Éire] (June 1995); ‘Ships and shadows and invisible men’, in The Guardian ([Sat.] 4 Sept. 2004) [infra].
Also Contrib. short fiction to Panurge, The Irish Times, Cork Examiner, &c.
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Criticism
Aubrey Dillon-Malone, review of Pat McCabe, Music on Clinton Street
(1987) [with other fiction works], in Books Ireland (May 1987),
p.95.
Rüdiger Imhof, ‘The Fiction of Patrick McCabe’, Linen Hall Review, 9, 2 (Autumn 1992), pp.99-100.
John Waters, interview with Patrick McCabe, Irish Times (31 Oct. 1992), Weekend, p.5.
Pat Collins talks to Pat McCabe’, Film West, 20 (Spring 1995), pp.10-14.
Thomas Kilroy, ‘Book of the Day’, review of The Dead School (1995), in Irish Times (17 May 1995).
Kate Grimond, review of The Dead School, in Spectator (24 June 1995).
George O’Brien, review Carn [rep. edn.] (Delta 1997), in The Washington Post, ‘Book World’ (26 January 1997).
Patrick Brennan, ‘From Britpop to Yeatspop’, Irish Times (7 Feb. 1997).
Alan Riding, ‘Challenging Ireland’s Demons With a Laugh’, in New York Times (29 March 1998).
Shirley Kelly, ‘A lad I used to know around with …’ ,[interview], in Books Ireland (May 1998), pp.117-18.
John Kelly, interview with Pat McCabe, in Irish Times (16 May 1998).
Ruth Scurr, ‘Transvestite Troubles’, review of Breakfast on Pluto, in Times Literary Supplement (29 May 1998), p.25.
George O’Brien review of Breakfast on Pluto (1998), in Irish Times (30 May 1998).
John Dunne, review of Breakfast on Pluto, in Books Ireland (Sept. 1998), p.212.
Clare Wallace, ‘Running Amuck: Manic Logic in Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy’, in Irish Studies Review, 6, 2 (August 1988), pp.157-64.
Gerry Smyth, The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London: Pluto Press 1997) [on The Butcher Boy], pp.81-84.
Christopher FitzSimon, ‘St. Macartan, Minnie the Minx and Mondo Movies: Elliptical Peregrinations Through the Subconscious of a Monaghan Writer Traumatised by Cows and the Brilliance of James Joyce’ [interview article], in Irish University Review, 28, 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp.175-89.
Martyn Bedford, ‘Satire Rebounds’, review of Mondo Desperado, in Literary Review (Sept. 1999), pp.50-51.
Joe Jackson, interview with Patrick McCabe (‘When Love Hurts’, in The Irish Times, Weekend, 3 June 2000).
John Scaggs, ‘Who is Francie Pig?: Self-Identity and Narrative Reliability in The Butcher Boy’, in Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 200) [cp.52.].
Robert MacFarlane, review of Emerald Germs of Ireland, in Times Literary Supplement (19 Jan. 2001).
James M. Smyth, ‘Remembering Ireland's Architecture of Containment: “Telling” Stories in The Butcher Boy and States of Fear’, in Eire-Ireland: Journal of Irish Studies (Fall/Winter 2001) [q.pp.].
Aisling Foster, 'Germs, Madness and Murder', review of Emerald Germs, in The Guardian (27 Jan. 2001).
Derek Hand, ‘Grimy Times in Gullytown’, review of Emerald Germs, in The Irish Times ( 13 Jan. 2001).
Tom Herron, ‘Contamination: Patrick McCabe and Colm Tóibín’s Pathologies of the Republic’, in Liam Harte, & Michael Parker, Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (London: Macmillan 2000) [cp.172].
Linden Peach, The Contemporary Irish Novel: Critical Readings (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2003, 2004).
Aveen McManus, “Narratives of Childhood - A Comparative Study” (MA Diss., Univ. of Ulster 2005) [with Mary Costello, Frances Molloy, Jennifer Johnston, David Park, Glenn Patterson, Seamus Deane, Edna O’Brien]
Daniel Hahn on the British Council’s Contemporary Writers website [online].
Patrick McCabe, “Ships and shadows and invisible men”, in The Guardian (Sat. 4 Sept. 4, 2004).
Aisling Foster, “Germs, Madness and Murder”, in The Guardian (17 Jan. 2001).
Pat Collins talks to Pat McCabe’ about The Butcher Boy, A Mother’s Love’s A Blessing (for television), his views on cinema, the theatre and RTE’, in Film West, 20 (Spring 1995).
Thomas Kilroy, ‘Book of the Day’, review of The Dead School (1995), in Irish Times (17 May 1995), [q.p.].
Kate Grimond, review of The Dead School, in Spectator (24 June 1995), [q.p.].
George O’Brien, review Carn [rep, edn.] (Delta 1997), in The Washington Post, ‘Book World’ (26 January 1997), [q.p.].
George O’Brien review of Breakfast on Pluto (1998), in Irish Times (30 May 1998), [q.p.]; ‘one of the more challenging and intriguing imaginations in Irish fiction today.’
John Dunne, review of Breakfast on Pluto, in Books Ireland (Sept. 1998), p.212.
Martyn Bedford, ‘Satire Rebounds’, review of Mondo Desperado, in Literary Review (Sept. 1999), pp.50-51.
Derek Hand, ‘Grimy Times in Gullytown’, review of Emerald Germs of Ireland (Picador), in The Irish Times (13 Jan. 2001).
Robert MacFarlane, reviewing of Patrick McCabe, Emerald Germs of Ireland (Picador), 380pp., in Times Literary Supplement (19 Jan. 2001).
Tom Gilling, review of Patrick MacCabe, Emerald Germs, HarperCollins, in NY Review of Books (q.d.; 2001).
Arminta Wallace, ‘Madness? There is Methodism in it: Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer [of the Virgin Prunes] mixing music and religion’, interview article, in The Irish Times (16 June 2000).
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Carn (1986), the story of Benny Dolan, son of an IRA family
who is drawn in by the republican traditions of his border county family;
(‘Your grandfather took the bullet in the head. He died a soldier.
And [...] your own father he got it from them too. That’s your breed
son I hope you’re made of the same stuff. I know you are.’);
Josie Keegan is sexually abused by her father Buyer Keegan, then institutionalised;
escapes and lives with Phil Brady in his cottage but is recaptured by
Sister Benignus, a sadistic Reverend Mother; turns to prostitute after
her brief escape in England and return, and is finally ostracised after
her second abuser, Vinnie Culligan, that she has killed the baby with
which he left her pregnant; Sadie Rooney’s teenage dreams are soured
by rude awakenings; Maisie Lynch thinks that ‘three weeks of non-stop
prayer’ will solve the problems in the North; Pat Lacey wishes to
‘hold back the insidious tide of alien values’ that seem to
enter through television (‘The humdrum of daily conversation has
been invaded and supplanted by interweaving plots of American soap operas’).
The Butcher Boy (1992) is the first-person narrative of Francie Brady, son of a dysfunctional family - ‘nothing better than pigs’ in the view of Mrs Nugent, who epitomises the small-town snobbery of the community. It traces his odyssey through social ostracism, delusional paranoia and incarceration in an industrial home [reformatory] home after the deaths of his parents, ending with his murder of Mrs Nugent, loosely based on real events involving the notorious killing of a boy, John Flanagan, by his friend Joe Fee, the model for Francie [?in 1904].
Co-Motion production of Frank Pig Says Hello moves from his Lombard St. venue last Oct. to the Gate this month [Apr. 1993], Francie Byrne’s gradual descent into isolation and madness and murder in small ton Irish Border town brought to life by two actors and a trumpet; the sense of yearning and betrayal in the first-person novel conveyed through spare, droll dialogue; Pat McCabe wrote the play before his novel was accepted; pace and rhythm give the play a lighter tone than the novel. Co-Motion also produced a Sinking of the Titanic and Other Matters (1990) with cast of 20 at SFX Centre, transformed into the hull of the ship, marked the furthest extension of large scale visuals.
A Mother’s Love is a Blessing (RTE 1994), first in half-hour drama series TV; story of a boy’s murder of his mother, her cruelties, and the boy’s attempt to thwart her; beginning ‘The world is a sad place and no mistake [...] On minute you’re as happy as Larry and the next you’re away off with a machine-gun to kill all around you’; black, deliberately shaky tone; set in 1950s with strange anachronisms; borderland between realism, hallucination, and parody (allusions to Psycho); dir. Charlie McCarthy; Pat Kinevane as son; Joan O’Hara as mother; highly regarded by reviewer (Gerry MacNamara, Irish Times, 17 Sept. 1994). Note: A Mother’s Love is a Blessing produced by Backstage Theatre in 1995, with Eithne Ward as Mammy, and Noel Strange as Pat McNab, directed by Mick Reilly; so noticed in Padraic O’Farrell, ‘Amateur Drama’, Irish Times (3 Jan. 1996).
Loco County Lonesome, produced by Co-Motion Theatre Co., in which Paco Phelan returns home after a spell behind bars, eager to settle old scores [1994].
The Butcher Boy was filmed by Neil Jordan with Stephen Rea and m any other Irish actors, with Eamon Owens as the central character, at Warrenpoint, Co. Down, and Clones, Co. Monaghan in 1996 (released in 1997).
US Reviewers: NY Times, “Review of Books” (1 Oct. 1999 [Internet Issue]), calls Butcher Boy ‘part Huck Finn, part Holden Caulfield, part Hannibal Lector.’ Washington Post, ‘Book World’ [q.d], compares The Butcher Boy (1992) to ‘a Beckettian monologue with a plot by Alfred Hitchcock.’
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)