Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson (July 2020)
I've written about this book in the past, so let's start on Memory Lane, and stroll toward the present.
This one was more of a book review than a reading review. Somewhere in the rubble, I pointed out that Wilson masterfully demonstrates how everything in 1990s Belfast is reframed in the context of politics, which is a manifestation of the Catholic-Protestant divide. I also circled the way he explores the long-term consequences of fear, suffering, and violence for a city, though I don't think I fully understood it myself at the time, or at least well enough to explain it.
I noted in this terse summary that there is a difference between someone who supports a political position and someone who actually carries out the ideas. I don't think I explained it very well, so let's try again - what it means is that defending someone you support, or a fellow supporter, is very different from defending actions. Unsurprisingly, this makes sense to people in the context of their own side (our candidate breaks promises out of necessity) but they don't extend the same courtesy to the other side (their candidate is a liar). If this is the only thing you learn from reading Eureka Street, I suppose the time was well spent.
I mention Eureka Street briefly in this surprisingly good post that meanders along the line between fiction and nonfiction, noting that if these characters were based on people Wilson knew, there was no way he could actually write about them, unless of course he renamed them Chuckie or Jake or even Shague Ghintoss - who might be the perfect character to demonstrate the necessity of fiction. Unfortunately, Eureka Street doesn't offer anything in terms of what to do about these people and their qualities, whether it's their casual bigotry, their questionable business aspirations, or their poisonous politics - if anything, the implication is that we can't expect to do much about it at all, except paint the picture in all its detail.
November 3, 2020
I looked through my book notes for a line, any line, that might jump out at me, and although there were some possibilities - embarrassment is an underrated driver of social change, empathy is impossible without imagination, or that the prospect of steady employment often defeats ideology - I didn't see anything that represented the way I felt about Eureka Street. The thing that I've always remembered about this book is the stunning chapter in the center that suddenly changed the entire mood of the story; the thing I learned this time is that I'm finally capable of understanding why the characters got tired of their own plot.
Ultimately, I think Eureka Street is a pretty simple idea - it holds up a mirror to a society, or a moment in a society, that will look anywhere except at itself. You can't change until you know what you are, until you know yourself; self-awareness didn't seem a high priority in 1990s Belfast. I'd love to get my hands on the equivalent for November 3, 2020, in these United States, but I'm not holding my breath. This book will do for today, I think, for at least I recognize these characters, who turn off the news because it only tells them the things they can figure out on their own, though of course they never take that step, and work out the calculations; we know these characters because they refuse to know anything about themselves.
TOA Rating: Four out of four.
