Seamus Heaney once characterized the Irish novelist John McGahern as a ruminant, given to chewing the cud. He meant it as a compliment. He was defending McGahern’s third novel, The Leavetaking (1974), against the charge of recycling material from his first, The Barracks (1963). The accusation wasn’t unfair. The death from cancer of McGahern’s mother, […]
Source : Letters from a Scattered Place
