Language can be twisted and tortured into any shape, to any end. There are a million words that humans use and, therefore, as good as an infinity of ways of saying any one thing. As malleable and pliable as language is, it can still be broken. We live in a world that demands a lot from language. The short spaces of time where I did write were darkened by secrecy and shame The only ambition I ever had was to be a writer, so for 30 years I did everything except write. John McGahern, I imagine, existed for much of his creative life in this fecund place of silence and darkness of a particular quality, beyond the limits of empathy, beyond the boundaries of easy explanation, beyond the reach of his peers. There is a particular type of darkness that attends this silence: where the light that’s required to see isn’t refracted or prismed or compromised by ambient conditions this is a darkness that allows worlds to be imagined that don’t exist, for them to be cast in the sharpest relief. This silence allows the extension of human empathy to a point beyond its natural limit, so that it surpasses its own potential for connection, and allows a glimpse of the truth of the human condition. All silences except the final one are broken eventually. There is a particular type of silence that precedes the creative process: unbroken, empty of struggle, imbued with a very temporary immaculateness.
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