In paid subscriberland, my Dyzma’s Larder post for this month awaits!
Part 1: Introduction & St. Patrick’s Day
Irish literature has always done its own thing. We may have inducted a few Irish modernists into the greater canon of Weltliteratur. But however much the kitsch spinners like to sing fake odes to the Land of Sages and Saints, Irish literature remains an adventure all its own on the margins of the West. A Congo of poetry and prose where even Irish lit scholars I’ve met complain of keeping up with everything coming out of this little island. At least in the Congo, a heart of darkness can be found.
Even so, there are times when a few “global” literary trends find their way to Ireland. And it wasn’t too long after the 1924 publication of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We that the dystopian genre made it to a country that had recently known both a War of Independence and a Civil War, followed by centuries of oppressive British rule and a famine now recognized as a genocidal act. The island’s closeness to its former oppressor’s culture would explain the existence of the literary trend to a degree. But anyone expecting a proto-Orwell to come from the shadows doesn’t understand Ireland or the Irish. Like anything deserving of the adjective of ‘Irish,’ the Irish dystopia is both a subgenre while possessing agendas entirely their own.
But before I go further: a happy St. Paddy’s in advance. I’m glad it’s a Sunday, for spiritual reasons. I also look forward to some Irish stew, colcannon and other Irish goodies. Of course I won’t turn down a Guinness or three: as they told me at St. James Gate, Arthur Guinness’ contract to brew beer at that locale in Dublin for the next 9,000 years is one of the most important documents in Irish history. What’s a man to do when the importance is as great as they say?
And also: slainte to the Irish for beginning to turn the tide in their corrupted country the other day. An attempt by the globalist apparatchik Leo Varadkar to alter the Irish constitution via referendum was thwarted by the people recently. In the last few referendums the Irish chose to surrender to anti-Irish Woke ideas freshly imported from America. The French couldn’t have done a better job of surrendering if they’d tried. Now the Irish are waking up to the seditious nature of their entire political establishment, and to the pernicious ideology driving their actions. I hope the warrior spirit of Cuchulainn is waking up with them!
I mention Cuchulainn for a reason, as you’ll see soon enough. But one last Dyzma’s-Larder-style note for St. Paddys: while the haters try and defame St. Patrick for being “stern” (which in their language means “asshole”), his surviving letters reveal a man who is the opposite of that bs narrative. As indicated not only by his faith but by his sincerely righteous letter to the tyrant Coroticus, the true legacy of St. Patrick is one of freedom. Unlike what the crackpot narratives claim, Patrick did not bring a suppressive belief system to the supposedly free Ancient Irish. Patrick, a former slave, brought the religion of freedom to the Irish. He is the very first Irish freedom fighter in recorded history, if not in the annals of myth.
I hope that everyone brandishing a Guinness, a glass of whiskey or whatever floats St. Brendan’s boat this week will give at least one toast to this great saint and great man whose name you use as an excuse for excessive libations. But if you cannot raise your glass to a saint because anti-Catholic hatred dwells within your soul, do it for Patrick the freedom fighter. And for the freedom of the Irish people in this dark hour, when the country their rebels shed blood for is being stolen from them.
Slainte! And enjoy some good music while you read this post about both saints and sages. In the latter case: the one-and-only Eimar O’Duffy.
Part 2: General Impressions
I would like to begin by commending the Dalkey Archives Press for bringing King Goshawk & The Birds back into print in recent times. And indeed there is much to commend, at least from my end: King Goshawk & The Birds is already my favorite novel of 2024. (of my reading list, that is: not of novels published in 2024) It is a masterful satire that runs the gamut of numerous emotions as seamlessly as a kid playing hopscotch on the playground. The humor has not aged one iota: as long as the reader has a tiny handful of Irish cultural references in mind (like knowing about the hero Cuchulainn, or the Celtic otherworld of Tír na nÓg) you will most certainly laugh. But it is also so much more.
Eimar O’Duffy is little known outside Ireland. While I currently await a book I ordered about the author to make up for the dearth of information elsewhere, I will sadly have to wait until next time to shed light on O’Duffy’s personal motives and history as an author preceding 1926, the year King Goshawk & The Birds was published. And there will be a next time, since King Goshawk & The Birds is the first in a trilogy of satires. (The third one bears the title Asses in Clover, a title only the Irish would come up with) The trilogy itself is titled the Cuanduine trilogy, and (from what I understand) is unified by the character of Cuanduine and the ongoing need to satirize the Irish society of O’Duffy’s day.
The most that can be said is that ten years earlier, O’Duffy, a participant in the Easter Rising, accidentally caused maneuvers intended to distract the British to be canceled, contributing to the Rising’s failure and staining O’Duffy’s life with quite the historical nadir. His involvement would indicate that O’Duffy was an Irish nationalist, while the anti-capitalism of King Goshawk & The Birds would suggest he had something in common with James Connolly, a socialist. It sounds like he became disillusioned a tad bit with Irish nationalism, if not his own love of country, and was motivated to write satires for that reason. Of course, don’t quote me on any of this until I get my O’Duffy book. But the one thing I can affirm is: O’Duffy, more than any satirist I ever read, satirizes out of love and not hatred. The character of the novel does not permit the opposite conclusion to be reached.
Whatever his political views, O’Duffy was unquestionably a traditionalist in the vein of my recent post. One reason I fell in love with this story almost instantly is its premise and the real-world ramifications of that premise, which goes as follows.
King Goshawk is a wealthy capitalist in New York City who owns everything. (There are other mega-rich capitalists, all of whom are kings) There isn’t anything he hasn’t done, no one he doesn’t control, and nothing he cannot do. But he has not yet fulfilled his promise to Guzzelinda, his queen. Long ago, before King Goshawk was the king of the world, he had promised to bring Guzzelinda all the songbirds of the world. In the heat of young love, Guzzelina had lamented how she’d never hear the songs of every songbird out there. When King Goshawk’s bird collectors come to Ireland, a lonesome, poor philosopher - named simply The Philosopher - vows to fight back against King Goshawk with the help of the mythical figures of Ireland. As far as the story’s universe and its framing are concerned - and that framing, like Italo Calvino’s greater literary universe, does include the cosmic parts of the actual universe - only the Philosopher has both the desire and the will to resist King Goshawk. Even if, as a philosopher, he is no Patrick Pearse or Michael Collins.
Already, it appears as if King Goshawk & The Birds has a different goal from the classic dystopia. Yes and no. It depends on whether - unlike Jack London’s insufferable Nietzschean Ubermensch in The Iron Heel - you “believe” in metaphysics. For it is through metaphysics that King Goshawk & The Birds becomes a classic dystopia while the plot follows its own, O’Duffian goals. That and the power of myth.
King Goshawk & The Birds is like classic dystopias in that there is conscious attention given to the dystopia in question. It is too conscious to simply be a novel with a dystopian atmosphere. Like Huxley’s novel, the “purest” dystopian in terms of the genre’s English roots, King Goshawk & The Birds is a satire. But unlike Brave New World, which gives way to dystopia from its satirical premises, King Goshawk & The Birds does not deviate at the satire’s expense. Its satirical foundations are, in fact, sound enough to where a satirical reading and a dystopian reading are equally enriching.
Character-wise, there is a protagonist - albeit an unusual one for the dystopian genre - who is (or feels) alone in his resistance to the great power ready to squash him. The Philosopher may feel very different from Winston as an individual, but his plight is essentially the same.
The differences between King Goshawk & The Birds and other classic dystopias are twofold: 1) there is a blatant resistance to the dystopia; and 2) that salvation comes through tradition. King Goshawk & The Birds, as mentioned before, is strongly traditionalist. And unquestionably the most traditionalist of the classic dystopias, though like all great traditionalists O’Duffy enriches rather than restricts. It is also unusual in that it is a dystopia and a comedy.
Actual resistance, to be sure, is not unheard of among the classic dystopias. In We, D-503 partakes in the resistance movement. In Kallocain, there is speculation of a cult whose behavior contradicts the will of the State. (Behavior that will remind some of the Chinese Communists and their crackdown on Falun Gong) And in Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron, the entire story is about an act of resistance to the dystopia in question.
But generally, resistance isn’t the main point plot-wise, assuming it ever really is. Successful resistance defeats the point of the dystopian genre: as fiction designed to warn its readers against totalitarianism and other enemies of freedom, the instilling of the idea that something as evil as IngSoc can be resisted as easily as 1-2-3 blinds the reader to the genuine threat posed by actors such as these. This point tends to be misunderstood the most by American writers, whose optimism bias and servile loyalty to the happy directive cannot stomach the thought that hope of some kind or a secret resistance won’t ride in on a white horse and save the day. (An artistic-emotional need that utterly ruined the recent TV show adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle) The most popular dystopia of recent times - The Hunger Games - marked the end of the dystopian genre’s function as a literary warning system and the (hopefully not) final victory of the technologically empowered happy directive over a form of art that “makes people so, so sad.”
While authors ideally should aspire to subvert the iron grip of the happy directive by every means necessary, we are stuck with it for now. But the restoration of emotional nuance, multifacetedness and sublimity doesn’t have to wait for the happy directive to grow weak. O’Duffy offers the possibility of continuing dystopian literature in the vein of the classics while using comedy to satisfy the directive’s needs.
O’Duffy also provides the solution to resilience against dystopias: traditionalism. In this case, Irish heritage and myths. Did I mention that I love a story where the actual savior is Irish heritage? Why was this novel not adored by millions of Micks in America back in the day?
Let me be clear as to why this is important: dystopian actors want people to forget their traditions and the values embedded in tradition. Within tradition lies the greater story of how a people came to be. Stories that many might disregard as “unscientific,” but that provide a counterweight to totalitarian narratives. You don’t even have to take my word for it: take Big Brother’s word. “Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past.” Tradition ensures that we, not the totalitarian state, control the past. And everyone who seeks to weaken that control in today’s world is helping give birth to totalitarianism whether they realize it or not. Orwell, himself a traditionalist in terms of his worldview, understood this. Ergo, the importance of the antique shop and the numerous items Winston acquires. Items that convey the possibility of something different.
In O’Duffy’s case, the great heroes of Ireland - with the Philosopher’s assistance - are the spearheads with which the people resist tyranny. Want to know why the anti-Woke dissidents can’t win the culture war? It’s because with the exception of a few Brits, they aren’t traditionalists. In reflection of O’Duffy’s own views King Goshawk & The Birds is not an Irish nationalist novel. Nationalism pertains to political solutions. In O’Duffy’s dystopia, there are no political solutions. King Goshawk owns everything, including the democratic process. What in the hell can democracy do?
This is why America will learn the hard way when its own dystopia arises, which will be soon. And it won’t arrive in the neatly packaged way the mainstream media tells people it will happen. In King Goshawk & The Birds, there are two parties: the Yallogreen Party, and the Greenyallo Party. One tells you to vote for O’Codd; the other, for Coddo. The verdict on democracy here is, I should think, straightforward to everyone reading this.
O’Duffy is unique in his references to actors in a fake, pointless democracy. Scholars, no doubt, will try and backpedal to make it about Eamon de Valera, Europe’s longest-ruling statesman of the 20th century. No doubt there is much light this novel might shed on an historical figure as fundamentally important as him. But that would be to shackle the novel and deny it contemporary relevance: a weapon the enemies of literature utilize routinely to deny ordinary people the simple sustenance and utility of the arts. To allow this deeply relevant satire to enhance your understanding of the times we live in, you must unshackle this book from its time. Release it into our time and permit its knowledge to lead you to your own conclusions.
Part 3: King Goshawk & The Birds As Anti-Capitalist Dystopia
The anti-capitalist dystopia generally has a history of failure. It is a failure because capitalism, while enabled by what might be problematically called an economic ideology, operates in the background by allowing market forces to determine things. It can also co-exist with a small state. It seldom does, to be sure: but the fact that it can makes all the difference no matter how many anti-capitalists scream otherwise. One need only ask Javier Milei of Argentina: I hope he isn’t running out of chainsaws.
This is in contrast to communism and fascism, where a big and total state takes charge in some form or another each and every time. Dystopias formed by these ideologies are believable not only because of the reality of history; but because we understand that a state trying to control the society it rules over will naturally engage in atrocious behavior if only to preserve its power. Atrocious things can happen in the worst iterations of a capitalist society. But are they dystopian, or are they something else? Like, for instance, corporate espionage or environmental disasters? The relative chaos of the marketplace, among other things, makes such a prediction tentative at best.
The anti-capitalist dystopia also arises from the need by leftist ideologues to justify their worldview with anti-capitalist hellholes. Because their vision of utopia involves an all-controlling state - for both communists and fascists alike - their ideological lobotomization kills off their understanding (if they ever had it) that capitalism not only doesn’t function that way, but has led to millions of poor people exiting the lower classes and prospering. Errors like these, more than anything, wreck the anti-capitalist dystopia before it can even leave the ground.
This is one of the reasons why dystopian novels set in right-wing dystopias are few and far between. (Keeping in mind that fascism comes from the left, not from the right, as any honest scholar of Mussolini’s Italy can tell you: it did pollute the right-wing politics of some smaller countries, like Slovakia and Romania; but that doesn’t ipso facto make fascism a right-wing ideology across the board, except to Marxists) Capitalism simply isn’t always dystopian enough. And right-wing dictatorships don’t have the same track record of evil as communist and/or fascist dictatorships. (It is also worth mentioning that even if one disagrees with my assessment of left/right dictatorships, right-wing dictatorships are also rarely sophisticated enough to make them ideal candidates for dystopian literature; that hasn’t, of course, stopped authors from trying)
King Goshawk & The Birds is not a failed anti-capitalist dystopia, however. So what gives? Why does O’Duffy succeed where others fail? Including names titanic in comparison to him, like Jack London?
This is where any and all of you who desire to write an anti-capitalist dystopia need to pay close attention. Here are a few reasons based on my own reading, and what my literary intuition tells me about King Goshawk & The Birds and O’Duffy’s motives:
Irish Nationalism Is On Its Own Spectrum - did you know that the IRA - and I mean the nationalist, often Catholic, lets-bomb-Protestants-and-Brits IRA - was also an ally of the Soviet Union? Tis true. When the IRA code was decoded, lots of communiques with Moscow were deciphered. It was through the Soviets that the IRA received a lot of their weapons.
Anglo-American conservatism, descended from the thinking of Edmund Burke, is (or used to be) anti-communism for a slew of different reasons, private property foremost among them. Irish conservatism did not develop in ways that could fully agree with the Burke school of thought because those who thought that way were the oppressors and therefore enemies of Ireland. Irish conservatism and nationalism is the product of a poor, agrarian and working class population that never had the luxury of even taking private property for granted until relatively recently in their history. (And if the current housing crisis is any indication, that short epoch is over) For this reason, classic communism and Irish nationalism are not irreconcilable concepts for the Irish. They’re wrong about that, as history has indicated. And there are some signs that Irish conservatism is breaking free of that historical molding, especially as the Irish learn of what happened to religious people in the former Eastern bloc. But they’ve made it work thus far in Ireland. So it is what it is.
From this lens, capitalism - as represented by Anglo colonial powers - can very lucidly be perceived as a genuinely dystopian force set to ruin Ireland. After all, how many Irish corporations can you name? (And I mean those that don’t make alcohol)Dystopia As A Cultural Force - dystopias are generally post-culture. We see Winston in 1984 trying to recollect the nursery rhyme about London’s churches. A last, tenuous link to the culture Britons once took for granted before IngSoc took power. And also before today’s Britain, where ordinary Brits have been arrested for flying their own flag in their own country. The greatest value of 1984 is in how it predicted the current British police state.
Perhaps because of how important the Irish cultural revival was for the Irish people, O’Duffy saw that culture is as important an anti-dystopian force as all the rest. When the Irish forget their story, they lose the will to resist someone like King Goshawk. The Irish of today, in other words, will only succeed at resisting the emergent tyranny of Varadkar and his apparatchiks if and when they remember who they are.The Dystopia Must Take Place at Capitalism’s End - write a story about how a corporation is exploiting the little guy and you have a moving story that rankles our sense of justice. But that does not mean it is dystopian. In a rock/paper/scissors type of game, the private sector will always lose to a powerful and determined state. As long as the State and the private sector remain distinctly separate, it will be difficult to convince all but a subset of hardcore leftists that they are living through the story of an actual dystopia. Something, deep down, knows better even if we refuse to accept this consciously.
O’Duffy must have understood this. While King Goshawk’s plan to buy up all the songbirds of Ireland can very well take place when he owns half the world, it has to happen when his power is all-encompassing. (The plot also benefits from this) This rule also applied to Zorg, to a certain extent, in The Fifth Element. In order for corporate interests to supersede the power of the state, it needs a coalition of unified interests, along with very rich billionaires - and, ideally, a weak state with unabashedly corrupt politicians - to have the private sector make the state its bitch. To put it colorfully. Only in such conditions can an anti-capitalist dystopia actually function and remain believable to the reader.1Karel Čapek Is A Necessity For Any Anti-Capitalist Dystopian Author’s Reading List (At Least If They Don’t Want to Suck) - O’Duffy wrote King Goshawk & The Birds when Czech author and playwright Karel Čapek was popular in the British Isles; his plays, at least. His popularity was influential enough in literary Ireland that Flann O’Brien wrote his own version of Čapek’s The Insect Play, titled Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green.
Again, I would need the book on O’Duffy the postal service is incrementally bringing my way to make any sound conclusions. But Čapek’s best-known play was R.U.R., the literary work that gave the world robots and one of Čapek’s plays critical of the symptoms of capitalism. And The Insect Play was a well-disguised yet ascertainable critique of ideological craziness. The former inspires and amplifies the literary directive; the latter tones down any desire (from Marxists, for instance) to get on their high horse about how evil capitalism is.
I think O’Duffy was familiar with and a fan of Karel Čapek. And if not, then they both have a lot in common.
Conclusion
King Goshawk & The Birds is as relevant as its more famous dystopian counterparts. O’Duffy predicted the rising monopolization of the “kings” that today is often referred to as the 1%. He predicted the inevitable impotence of democracy we see today across the West. He predicted the powerlessness of the people without traditionalism. He predicted the ongoing concretization (through King Goshawk’s theft of Ireland’s flora and fauna) of Ireland stimulated by flooding Ireland with migrants whose domicilic needs will necessitate the complete urbanization of the beautiful, green island I like to believe we all know and love.
O’Duffy did all it in a way that is accessible to partisan readers: those who lean right will love that heritage saves the day, while those who lean left will enjoy projecting their hatred of Donald Trump and other billionaires onto the kings. Christians, in turn, can appreciate the spirit of St. Kevin: the saint who stayed in such a still mode of prayer that birds nested and hatched in his open hand. The very birds King Goshawk seeks to steal.
O’Duffy, like Orwell, gave us a warning. To put it poetically in the vein of the birds: Ireland is a canary in the coal mine. It is the first of the songbirds to have its voice snuffed out by King Goshawk. If Ireland does not endure, then neither will we.
China Mieville, though not dystopian in the classic sense, does something similar by setting Perdido Street Station in a “late-stage capitalist” fantasy version of London; but this is riskier, given that “late-stage capitalism” is a Marxist wet dream concept based on the ideological copium that tomorrow, or the day after, Marx’s magical prophecy will come true because capitalism is about to die. And it is about to die because we, the Marxists, say it will; pay no attention to our lack of citations. Perdido Street Station, as a result, is - despite the investment of imagination on Mieville’s part - lacking in full believability.
Good stuff Felix with more titles for my list. I also enjoyed the political angle of your theorizing about dystopian literature and the triumph of tradition. The Goshawk premise sounds like a fairy tale, is that also true for the reading experience? Also humor goes a long way in resistance. I've read O'Brien's The Third Policeman with its wacky and shocking brilliance and originality. Is it on your list for analysis here? I've wondered, if any schema could pin it down, if it is a dream of Hell? Probably too pat, even as a dream murk. Meanwhile the world is changing too fast, we wobble, err, fall and have to grip the rug and it makes it hard to see what's pulling it. Then we see the rug has bits of traditions woven in it.