Strumpet City: One City One Book Edition

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is the impossible Irish novel. The great master of the short story, Frank O'Connor, writing in 1942, claimed that it was simply not possible to write a social novel in Ireland. In Russia, he said, an author such as Chehkov could "write as easily of a princess as of a peasant girl or a merchant's daughter" but in Ireland "the moment a writer raises his eyes from the slums and cabins, he finds nothing but a vicious and ignorant middle-class, and for aristocracy the remnants of an English garrison, alien in religion and education. From such material he finds it almost impossible to create a picture of life . . . a realistic literature is clearly impossible."

At a more fundamental level, though, the novel is the story of Dublin in its most turbulent period. Most have taken the ‘Strumpet’ of the title to be an illusion to Dublin’s teeming brothels “the haunts of sin” which Leopold Bloom was accused of visiting just a few years before. But Plunkett clearly meant it to be descriptive of the city itself in the same way that Denis Johnston, from whom he borrowed the title, did: Here is a book possessed of a rare integrity and genuine pathos by a writer born in 1920 into the testing Dublin working class world that had, a generation earlier, produced James Stephens. Considering that much of Plunkett's inspiration came from his reverence for James Larkin, as well as a life-long belief in labour politics – will be in no doubt that the author's sympathies lie with the poor and with the workers' struggle for a better life.

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Strumpet Cityis vivid social history come to life in a claustrophobic, battered and unforgiving city stumbling towards change. The series also showcases the appearance of many stars of Irish soaps who were latterly to make prolonged appearance in future episodes of Glenroe and Fair City, people like Brendan Caldwell, Eileen Colgan, Donal Farmer and Alan Stanford. Having attended the Municipal School of Music, where he studied violin and viola, he was employed as a clerk with the Dublin Gas Company from 1937, becoming the family bread earner following the death of his father. The other event of 'special significance' for him was meeting Jim Larkin and joining the Workers’ Union of Ireland. He recalled: '”We found a bare hallway, a bare suitcase, a room with a bare floor and a rough wooden table on which Jim Larkin was seated , under a bare electric light bulb suspended by its cobwebbed cord.

Plunkett himself later confirmed this “I wanted Dublin itself to be the hero, you know, in a mystical kind of way, with Larkin as a sort of ‘Deus ex machina’.” It was the city, and not just the inhabitants of its Nighttown, that lay prostrate and prostituted; defiled by corrupt intrigues between slum landlords and city councillors – indeed many of the councillors were themselves landlords. Its superficial beauty and fading grandeur hid disease and decay. Lily Maxwell, the only prostitute to feature in the novel, epitomises the city’s condition. She believes she is diseased although she, like the city, and like its most oppressed citizenry, remains proud, beautiful and capable of deliverance. Plunkett’s nostalgic love for the old city, it sights, its smells, its people, is evident throughout. Tom Wall is a former Assistant General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. His Masters Degree thesis in UCD is titled “Understanding Irish Social Partnership ‑ An Assessment of Corporatist and Post-Corporatist Perspectives” (2004). But the Soviet visit had one good outcome – it helped Plunkett resolve to leave the union job and to seek full-time work with Radio Eireann. During the early 1950s he had begun contributing talks, short stories and plays to the station (having earlier played for a time with its Orchestra) and in 1955 he applied for and got a full time staff post there as Assistant Head of Drama and Variety. He found himself an intellectual atmosphere led by people he said had “culture and integrity”. The Head of the Drama and Variety department was Michael O'hAodha and others there included novelists Francis Mac Manus and Philip Rooney and poet Roibeaird O'Farachain. Asked by Niall Sheridan on Writer in Profilewhat was the function of Literature, James Plunkett said it was to “reveal the reality of what surrounds us", to find and share a '' moment of recognition of a truth" - something as Sean O'Faolain also saw would cause the reader to say: "That's exactly it". James Plunkett died on May 28th 2003, aged 83. a b Freitag, Barbara (1 January 1995). "Literature rewrites history: James Connolly and James Larkin Larger than Life". In Leerssen, Joseph Theodoor; Weel, Adriaan van der; Westerweel, Bart (eds.). Forging in the Smithy: National Identity and Representation in Anglo-Irish Literary History. International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL) Leiden 1991: Volume 1 of The Literature of Politics and the Politics of Literature. Costerus New Series. Vol.98. Rodopi. p.243. ISBN 978-90-5183-759-9 . Retrieved 24 May 2015.

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The brilliant and much-loved TV series, originally screened by RTE in 1980, is fondly remembered by many but to read the book is to immerse yourself in social and historical writing akin to Chekhov and Tolstoy. Strumpet City is the great, sweeping Irish historical novel of the 20th century. Related products Like many others, I watched Hugh Leonard’s adaptation of James Plunkett’s Strumpet City on RTE television in 1980, we all sat glued to the television screen each week, eagerly awaiting each episode as it unfolded. So I was delighted this was chosen in our Book Club as the read for May as I finally got a chance to read it and also revisit the television series (hired on DVD whilst reading the book). Connolly, Shaun (8 February 2014). "Buttimer and Panti drown out empty rhetoric in homophobia debate". Irish Examiner . Retrieved 24 May 2015.