Moving tale of happy marriage and a bittersweet story of love
MEMOIR I’ll Drop You a Line: A life with David Marcus Ita Daly Londubh €14.99
DAVID MARCUS was a soft-spoken courteous man whose judgment and insight into the elusive matter of good writing had a profound effect on literary fiction in this country for half a century. From his twenties, when he founded the magazine Irish Writing, through his years as literary editor of The Irish Press, his many anthologies of short stories and his own novels, he was a uniquely influential figure and a beacon for young and aspiring writers.
One of his major achievements was the founding of the New Irish Writing page in the Press, where many young talents first appeared over the years and where established writers were happy to find a showcase for their work.
This book, by David Marcus’s wife, Ita Daly — novelist and story writer — is a loving tribute; it is also a book full of surprises. When Ita Daly told her parents she intended to marry a Jew, “their first reaction was not to seek out the dusty bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream to toast the happy couple.” To her mother it was quite simple: “You can’t. He’s not baptised.” This was in the 1960s, which the author sees, with some justification, as a kind of dark age in Ireland, though her view that anti-Semitism “lurks ... in hidden places and suddenly flashes into life” will come as a shock, I suspect, to some readers.
It is also startling to read that Marcus’s two elder brothers disowned him because of his marriage though other members of his family, including his younger brother Louis, the film-maker, were supportive. On a personal note, in my many encounters with David Marcus over the years, I thought of him as an untypically quiet Corkman: his Jewishness didn’t really register with me. And all we ever talked about was books.
Ita Daly, 19 years younger than her husband, found some aspects of their marriage difficult at first (this is not a memoir that errs on the side of sticky sentimentality), and like many young wives she saw her husband as a work-in-progress to be reformed steadily or stealthily. The couple had one child, a much-loved daughter Sarah. At times Daly is quite hard on herself. Coming from a large and apparently vociferous family, she had to gradually become accustomed to her husband’s refusal to be drawn into argument; her attempts to provoke rows failed dismally, and she compares herself to Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, half jokingly but with some regret.
David wasn’t particularly sociable, didn’t go to pubs, and rarely had any desire to travel. His other great passion, was classical music. “Music brought him solace ... He spent hours listening to music, his eyes closed, unaware of anything else and in a state of bliss.”
There are some amusing gossipy bits, though Ita Daly is too discreet to name names. Who was the writer who turned up after midnight and started shouting in the street, “Come out and explain to me why you wouldn’t publish my story. Come out you b ..... d and face me like a man?” With a gabardine over his pyjamas, David obliged and quietly told the man, “Get home now – you should be ashamed of yourself.”
This is largely a celebratory book, with some profound insights, a moving portrait of a happy marriage. The end, though, when David Marcus was deep in the grip of dementia, is distressing — a good man laid low and slowly disappearing in the dying of the light. RONAN FARREN
FICTION Bright, Precious Days Jay McInerney Bloomsbury €16.99
The title of Jay McInerney’s latest novel recalls Brightness Falls which was our initial introduction to Russell and Corrine Calloway, a golden couple just starting out in life and love in 1980s Manhattan. In 2006 he revisited them in The Good Life as their society shuddered in the fallout from the attack on the Twin Towers.
In Bright, Precious Days the Calloways are now the middle-aged parents of adored twins, 11-year-olds Jeremy and Storey; all four are rapidly outgrowing their Tribeca loft. Russell runs an independent publishing house while Corrine manages Nourish New York which redistributes food to the needy. It’s 2006 and we’ll observe this couple over two years while Clinton and Obama fight for the Presidency and the collapse of Lehman Brothers brings chaos and uncertainty to the cosmos these gilded New Yorkers inhabit.
Into their already enervated union, McInerney lobs two significant grenades — one professional, one personal — which will strain this tense twosome to the limit. Russell makes a bad editorial decision, imperilling his struggling business. And into Corrine’s life reappears wealthy, attractive Luke McAvock, whom she first met when they both volunteered at Ground Zero. Addiction, infertility, infidelity, moral and literal bankruptcy are seamed into a narrative punctuated with the traditions of rich Americans — charity fundraisers, Hamptons summers, Christmas cocktails and book launches.
Many of these characters are objectionable — selfish, narcissistic, avaricious — but he writes with such brio, capturing their humanity, detailing their desires and disappointments, that you can’t help but be pulled into their extravagant orbit. A seasoned observer of wealthy New Yorkers, McInerney is on terra very firma here and while some critics have objected to his litany of the designer accoutrements vital to their wellbeing, (‘consumer porn’ sneered one), the effect is knowing and amusing.
It’s his understanding about the nature of love and relationships that ultimately is so moving and witty too. After a fight about their sex life, Corrine “settled into her side of the bed with her book, Joan Didion’s memoir about her husband’s death — not necessarily a good sign.” On his fourth marriage, this writer’s take on wedlock is wry, compassionate and wise. Jay McInerney is at DLR Lexicon on Thurs, Sept 8. Tickets from the Pavilion Theatre.
‘It is startling that Marcus’s two brothers disowned him over his marriage’