Life
1950- ; b. Sligo, son of professor of education, his mother being a painter;
ed. St. Paul’s College, Raheny, and UCD, commencing in English literature
and turning to Medieval History; first worked as labourer and teacher,
then with the Children’s Theatre Company, Dublin; for a time as a
musician; began writing with short story, ‘Last Rites’, in which
an Irish labourer slits his wrists in a bathing house at Kensal Rise;
contrib. to David Marcus’s New Irish Writing; also Stand, London
Magazine, and Journal of Irish Literature; fnd. member Irish Writers’
Co-Operative with Steve MacDonogh, Dermot Bolger, Desmond Hogan, and Ronan
Sheehan, 1975; Night in Tunisia (1976; London 1979), described
by Sean O’Faolain as ‘one of the most remarkable stories I have
read’, and winner of Guardian Fiction Prize 1979; turned to film
with his script of Travellers (1980); issued The Past (1980),
a novel centred on a jealous character recreting his past love; dir. Angel
(1982), a film; issued The Dream of a Beast (1983), novella; dir.
Company of Wolves (1984), based on a story of Angela Carter, awarded
Best Director by British Critics Circle, 1984; dir. Mona Lisa (1986),
with Bob Hoskin’s as a London cabby infatuated with a high-class
prostitute; dir. High Spirits (1988), with Peter O’Toole,
the tale of an Anglo-Irish family who arouse real ghosts in setting their
home as a “ghost house” for American tourists, disowned by the
director on account of lavish Hollywood production add-ons (‘a dreadful
heartbreaking experience’); dir We’re No Angels (1990),
a comedy with Robert de Niro; dir. The Miracle (1991) [var. 1990],
in which a boy in Bray, Co. Wicklow, falls in love with a woman who turns
out to be his mother; dir. The Crying Game (Autumn 1992), a transexual
encounter on the part of a refugee from the Northern Irish troubles and
reluctant gunman in London [Stephen Rea]; winner of an Oscar for the screen-play,
March 1993, triggering a revival of the Irish Film Board [Bord Scannán]
with £2.5m. funding; dir. Interview with the Vampire (1994),
with Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst and Tom Cruise, based on a novel by Anne
Rice; and Sunrise with Sea-Monster (1995), a novel set against
War of Independence and concerning love of father and son for the same
woman; Michael Collins (1996), with Liam Neeson as Collins; filmed
Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, with Eamonn Owens as Francie
and Stephen Rea as his father, and Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Nugent, for Warner
Brothers; ; In Dreams
(1999), a psychological horror-film with Annette Bening and Aidan
Quinn; issued The End of the Affair (Feb. 2000),
based on the Graham Greene novel, with Julia Moore, Ralph Fiennes and
Stephen Rea; made The Good Thief (2001) [var. Double Down], his
13th feature film, with Nick Nolte, based on Le Flambeur (1955),
Jean-Pierre Melville’s film noir; acquired film rights to Hugo
Hamilton’s The Speckled People (2003); lived at Martello Tce., Bray, and later at Sorrento Terrace, Dalkey, with his companion Brenda Rawn, their two small sons and two of his three
other children; issued Shade (2004), a story of love, murder and lost innocence within a family living in the Boyne Valley; sometime winner of PEN award for life-time achievement. DIL DIW FDA OCIL
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Works
Short Fiction, Night in Tunisia (Writers’ Co-op. 1976;
London: Hogarth Press 1979). Novels, The Past (London: Jonathan
Cape 1980); The Dream of a Beast (Chatto & Windus 1983; Hogarth
Press 1989)); and Sunrise with Sea-Monster (London: Chatto &
Windus 1995), Do., (London: Vintage 1996; rep. 2004), 192pp. [issued in US as Nightlines];
Shade (London: John Murray 2004), 326pp.
Collected Editions, Collected Fiction of Neil Jordan (Vintage 1997), 400pp. Miscellaneous, ‘Sunrise with Sea Monster, selected extracts appeared in Irish Times Weekend, 17 Dec. 1995. Wrote script for Joe Comerford’s Traveller. Also work included by Marcus in Best Irish Short Stories (Elek 1976).
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Criticism
Jane Gilles, The Crying Game [Mod. Classics] (BFI 1997), 80pp.
David Lloyd, Ireland After History (Cork UP 2000), which includes a chapter-long critique of The Crying Game.
Conor McCarthy, ‘Film and politics: Neil Jordan, Bob Quinn and Pat Murphy’, in Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2000), [Chap. 4], pp.165-27
Lori Rogers, Feminine Nation: Performance, Gender and Resistance in the Works of John McGahern and Neil Jordan (Maryland: Univ. Press of America 1998)
Emer Rockett & Kevin Rockett, Neil Jordan: Exploring Boundaries [Contemporary Irish Filmmakers Ser.] (Dublin: Liffey [2003])
Neil Murphy, Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt – An Analysis of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Irish Fiction (Edwin Mellen Press 2004), 286pp. [Chap. 4: Neil Jordan - Dissolving Selves].
Richard Kearney, Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Culture (Dublin: Wolfhound 1988), (p.175;
Conor McCarthy, Modernisation, Crisis and Culture in Ireland, 1969-1992, Four Courts Press 2000, pp.175-76.
Interviews, Profiles and Reviews
Marianne Brace [‘meets the novelist and film-maker with a poetic vision’], ‘Neil Jordan, the writing game’, Saturday Independent [UK] (14 Jan. 1995).
Neil Jordan talks to Sue Lawley, Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4 in Jan. 2000.
Michael Dwyer, ‘Double Take’, interview-article, Irish Times Magazine (7 July 2001); ‘Mr Dark’s Lighter Moment’, in The New York Times (Sunday 6 April 2003), Arts Sect., pp.13-22.
Michael Dwyer, ‘Blood Simple, Jordan talks to Michael Dwyer’,
in The Irish Times (7 Jan. 1995).
Michael Kerrigan reviewing Sunrise with Sea Monster (Chatto & Windus 1995), in Times Literary Supplement 13 Jan 1995).
James Simmons, ‘Return to Form, Neil Jordan’, interview with Books Ireland (Feb. 1995), pp.5-6.
Vincent Browne, ‘Neil Jordan, Profile’, in Film West, 20 (Spring 1995), pp.32-34.
Seamas McSwiney, ‘Treaty makers & film makers’, interview with Neil Jordan, Film West (Autumn 1996), pp.10-16; also in this issue, Muiris Mac conghail, ‘A True Epic’, comment], p.20-21; Vincent Browne, ‘Rebel hearts’, 22.
Alan Riding, ‘Challenging Ireland’s Demons With a Laugh’, in New York Times (29 March 1998).
Hugh Linehan, Thursday Interview with Neil Jordan [Irish Times, 3 Feb. 2000].
Des O’Rawe, review of Emer Rockett & Kevin Rockett, Neil Jordan: Exploring Boundaries, in Fortnight (June 2003).
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Notes
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories
(RTÉ 1987), lists Miracles and Miss Langan, Neil Jordan/dir.
Pat O’Connor (1979); Night in Tunisia, 314, 325-6, Neil Jordan/Pat
O’Connor (1983); Sean [13 epis.], Michael Voysey, Neil Jordan,
Eugene McCabe/Louis Lentin (1980).
Kevin Rockett & John Hill, Ireland and Cinema (1988), Angel [380; 383-4, Neil Jordan; extreme tendency to use Northern violence without dealing with it].
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects Night in Tunisia and Other Stories, title story [1101-06]; BIOG, 1136, b. 1951; he established the Writers’ Co-Operative, 1974; worked with theatre groups in Ireland, England, and America and has had plays produced; well-received films include Angel, Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa [n.dd]; lives in Bray; The Past (1980); The Dream of a Beast (1983; 1989); stories, Night in Tunisia and Other Stories (Co-op. 1976; 1989).
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, eds., Soft Day, A Miscellany Of Contemporary Irish Writing, (Notre Dame/Wolfhound 1980), selects ‘Fragment from a Novel in Progress’ [?The Past].
Irish Short Stories, ed. David Marcus (London: Bodley Head 1980; Sceptre rep. 1992), selects ‘Night in Tunisia’.
Sunrise: ‘ostensibly a boy’s adventure
about wars, spies and being in love with your stepmother, it seems unworthy
of the acclaimed director’ (See Fortnight 336, Feb. 1995;
report on reading and question session at Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast,
12 Jan. 1995.)
Michael Collins (1996), a film aiming to keep ‘out of the realm of hagiography and mythology’, with Liam Neeson as the central character, Stephen Rea as Broy, and Aidan Quinn as Harry Boland (dir. of photography Chris Menges); winner of Venice Film Festival, 1996.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)