The Pornographer Book

Of all McGahern's novels, I have heard the least about The Pornographer. I don't have an explanation why this is, only the suspicion that it may have something to do with some readers' and critics' discomfort at a vulgarity that McGahern makes no attempt to either justify or finally reject. The element of sexual fantasy in the novel is not one of ecstatic physical love that some books use to draw readers, but a kind of mocking turned against the protagonist, who is unable to deal with his own relationship with an older woman, and who ministers helplessly to his aunt dying in hospital. As in all McGahern's work, the pages are permeated by a sharp understanding of human behavior, especially the human tendency to evade reality.

I will also point out that not only does McGahern do what other novelists don't do, he also doesn't do what other novelists do repeatedly and predictably. For example, he doesn't insert "drinking scenes" awkwardly into the exposition. The protagonist is always drinking but very rarely drunk. Without resorting to dramatic passages of drunkenness, McGahern manages to insinuate alcohol into the very fabric of the novel, which is a much darker presence. Also, his women characters are not flimsy placeholders that serve only to explain the motivations of the men, as I've seen in so many of the novels I've read. Each has her own motivations, which follow logically from her personality rather than her sex, and by their actions these characters drive the plot in crucial ways, in contrast to the male protagonist who, like so many of Joyce's characters in Dubliners, suffers from a profound moral paralysis.