Reading Notes: Joseph O'Neill in Trinidad
One day last week, I happened upon a Web-page discussion of Netherland, Joseph O’Neill’s astonishingly beautiful new book. I had just finished reading the novel, I think, when I read that Mr O’Neill published a piece about a Trinidadian death-row prisoner in an issue of Granta entitled “Overachievers.” My heart leapt. “Overachievers” is one of the handful of old Grantas that I’ve held on to. Now, where was it?
My friend Migs will perhaps remind me by providing the dates, but late last year or early this year, I sent two boxes, filled mostly with Grantas, to him in Manila. I was very happy to do so. Granta is a “magazine of new writing” in book form. “Issues” stack up nicely on the bookshelf, although not so handsomely as Grand Street, most of which I still have, in storage. And there you have it: stacking up and storage. I’m not putting anything in storage anymore; I’m getting rid of what I’ve already got. (The knell for my possession of Grand Street will sound sooner or later.) So: what to do with all the Grantas?
Why not send them to Migs? Although I enjoy reading Granta, when I do read it, I believe that it is a publication for young writers. The best image that I can come up with for Granta — an indication why my work will never be published there — is that of a barrier island: Granta stands between the chaos of miscellaneous publications in erratic, short-lived “little” magazines and the marmoreal stillness of established outlets. Granta began life as a student publication — over a century ago, at Cambridge — and the aura of experimentation still drifts through most issues. People lucky enough to be published in Granta have arrived, but, in most cases, only just.
Established writers make occasional appearances. Ian McEwan published chunks of Atonement and Saturday in Granta, as I recall because I read both of them before those novels came out. Last Fall, an interview with Richard Ford appeared in Granta 99. Reading the interview prompted me to reconsider this writer, whom I hadn’t warmed to before. I read, for the first time, his most famous novel to date, The Sportswriter. As I was packing up back issues of Granta, I came across two that contained stories by Mr Ford, and I set them aside. One of them gave its name to the title of Granta 72, and it is in this issue, “The Overachievers,” that Joseph O’Neill’s non-fiction story, “The Ascent of Man,” appeared in 2000.
2000! So long ago! I’m not surprised that I didn’t read the piece at the time. The ostensible subject — the death sentence pronounced upon a man who, in a frenzy after having, apparently, unintentionally killed his girlfriend, cut her up in pieces and stowed her, mostly, in his latrine — is the last sort of thing that I’ll read under the normal rules of triage. The discovery that this unprepossessing material was handled by the author of Netherland, however, changes everything.
Toward the end of “The Ascent of Man,” the author, who, as a barrister working pro bono, seeks to save the killer from the gallows, stands at the edge of a beach to witness the laying of eggs by a leatherback turtle. (Mr O’Neill is a past-master of juxtaposition.)
She lugged herself back down towards the sea. The moon was out now, and the clouds dispersed by the breeze. She entered the luminous foam and slowly swam out, ready to eat jellyfish. It had taken her an hour or so.
Opponents of capital punishment often argue their case pragmatically: for example, that the death penalty has no real deterrent effect; that because guilt can rarely be established with total certainty, innocent people are sent to their deaths. But the fundamental position of them is that no matter how terrible the offence, or conclusive the evidence, or pardonable the urge for retribution, it is wrong to execute a human being. Why this should be so is almost beyond persuasive articulation: but not, I realized as I walked up the beach towards the mangroves, beyond revelation.