James Gordon Farrell
Encyclopedia
James Gordon Farrell known as J.G. Farrell, was a Liverpool
-born novelist of Irish
descent. Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles
, The Siege of Krishnapur
and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial
rule. The Siege of Krishnapur won the 1973 Booker Prize
. On 19 May 2010 it was announced that Troubles had won the Lost Man Booker Prize
, which was a prize created to recognize works published in 1970 (a group that had not previously been open for consideration due to a change in the eligibility rules at the time).
Farrell's career was cut short when he drowned in Ireland at the age of 44.
background, was the second of three brothers. His father, William Farrell, had worked as an accountant in Bengal and in 1929, he married Prudence Josephine Russell, who was a former receptionist and secretary to a doctor. From the age of 12 he attended Rossall
public school in Lancashire
. After World War II, the Farrells moved to Dublin, and from this point on Farrell spent much time in Ireland
: this, perhaps combined with the popularity of Troubles
, leads many to treat him as an Irish writer. After leaving Rossall, he taught in Dublin and also worked for some time on Distant Early Warning Line
in the Canadian Arctic. In 1956 he went to study at Brasenose College, Oxford
; while there he contracted polio
. This would leave him partially crippled and disease would be prominent in his works. In 1960 he left Oxford with Third-class honours
French and Spanish and went to live in France, where he taught at a lycée.
and Albert Camus
(Sayer representing Sartre and Regan representing Camus). The two argue about existentialism: the position that murder can be vindicated as an expedient in overthrowing tyranny (Sartre) versus the stance that there are no ends that justify unjust means (Camus). Bernard Bergonzi
reviewed it in the New Statesman
in the September 20, 1963 issue and said, "Many first novels are excessively autobiographical, but A Man from Elsewhere suffers from the opposite fault of being a cerebral construct, dreamed up out of literature and the contemporary French cinema." Simon Raven
wrote in The Observer
on September 15, 1963 that "Mr. Farrell's style is spare, his plotting lucid and well timed; his expositions of moral or political problems are pungent if occasionally didactic." It entirely lacks the ironic humour and the tender appreciation of human frailty which characterise his later work. Farrell himself came to dislike the book.
Two years after this came The Lung, in which Farrell returned to his real-life trauma of less than a decade earlier: the main character Martin Sands contracts polio and has to spend a long period in hospital. It has been noted that it is somewhat modeled after Farrell, but it is modeled more after Geoffrey Firmin from Malcolm Lowry
1947 novel, Under the Volcano
. The anonymous reviewer for The Observer
on October 31, 1965, wrote that "Mr. Farrell gives the pleasantly solid impression of really having something to write about" and one for The Times Literary Supplement
on November 11, 1965 that "Mr. Farrell's is an effective, potent brew, compounded of desperation and a certain wild hilarity."
In 1967 he published A Girl in the Head. The protagonist, the impoverished Polish count Boris Slattery, lives in the fictional English seaside town of Maidenhair Bay, in the house of the Dongeon family (which is believed to be modeled after V. S. Naipaul
's A House for Mr Biswas
). His marriage to Flower Dongeon is decaying. His companion is Dr. Cohen, who is a dying alcoholic. Boris also has sex with an underaged teenager, June Furlough. He also fantasizes about Ines, a Swedish summer guest, who is the "girl in the head". Boris is believed to be modeled after Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov
's Lolita
. Like its two predecessors, the book met only middling critical and public reaction. In the July 13, 1967 issue of The Listener, Ian Hamilton
wrote that he disliked the novel, and thought it was, at best, an "adroit pastiche" of Samuel Beckett
's deadbeats. Martin Levin wrote in The New York Times Book Review
on March 23, 1969, that he praised the author's "flair for giving the ridiculous an inspired originality". In an anonymous review in The New York Times Book Review
on July 20, 1967, the writer stated that the "verbal assurance and resourcefulness show that Mr. Farrell is not content to coast along merely imitating his previous work. Such a deliberate extension of range is perhaps a hopeful sign for a talent which, after three novels, still has not found the mode in which to fulfil its attractive promise."
tells the comic yet melancholy tale of an English Major, Brendan Archer, who in 1919 goes to County Waterford
in Ireland to meet the woman he believes he may be engaged to marry. From the crumbling Majestic Hotel at Kilnalough, he watches Ireland's fight for independence from Britain. Farrell started writing this book while on a Harkness Fellowship
in the United States and finished it in a tiny flat in Knightsbridge
, London
. He got the idea for the setting from going to Block Island
and seeing the remains of an old burned-down hotel. He won a Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
for the novel, and with the prize money travelled to India to research his next novel.
Farrell's next book The Siege of Krishnapur
and his last completed work The Singapore Grip both continue his story of the collapse of British colonial power. The former deals with the Indian Rebellion of 1857
. Inspired by historical events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow
, the novel is set in the fictional town of Krishnapur, where a besieged British garrison succeeds in holding out for four months against an army of native sepoys, in the face of enormous suffering, before being relieved.
The third of the novels, The Singapore Grip
, centers upon the Japanese capture of the British colonial city of Singapore in 1942, while also exploring at some length the economics and ethics of colonialism at the time, as well as the economic relationship between developed and Third World
countries at the time that Farrell was writing.
The three novels are in general linked only thematically, although Archer, a character in Troubles, reappears in The Singapore Grip
. The protagonist of Farrell's unfinished novel, The Hill Station, is Dr McNab, introduced in The Siege of Krishnapur
; this novel and its accompanying notes make the series a quartet.
When The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973, Farrell used his acceptance speech to attack the sponsors, the Booker Group
, for their business involvement in the agricultural sector in the Third World. In this vein, some readers have found Farrell's critique of colonialism and capitalism in his subsequent novel The Singapore Grip to be heavy-handed, although those new to the book after the crash of 2008 might not find it so.
Charles Sturridge
scripted a film version of Troubles made for British television in 1988 and directed by Christopher Morahan
.
peninsula in southwestern Ireland. A few months later he was found drowned on the coast of Bantry Bay
, apparently from falling in from rocks while angling. He was 44. He is buried in the cemetery of St. James's Church of Ireland church in Durrus
.
The manuscript library at Trinity College, Dublin
holds his papers: Papers of James Gordon Farrell (1935–1979). TCD MSS 9128-60.
Ronald Binns described Farrell's colonial novels as "probably the most ambitious literary project conceived and executed by any British novelist in the 1970s."
In the 1984 novel Foreign Affairs
by Alison Lurie
, Vinnie Miner, the protagonist, reads a Farrell novel on her flight from New York to London. In the 1991 novel The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble, the writer Stephen Cox is modeled after Farrell.
, "the really interesting thing that's happened during my lifetime has been the decline of the British Empire."
Empire Trilogy:
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
-born novelist of Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
descent. Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles
Troubles (novel)
Troubles is a 1970 novel by the English author J.G. Farrell. It won the Lost Man Booker Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Troubles concerns the dilapidation of a once grand Irish hotel , in the midst of the political upheaval during the Irish War of Independence .The novel is the first...
, The Siege of Krishnapur
The Siege of Krishnapur
The Siege of Krishnapur is a novel by the author J. G. Farrell, published in 1973.Inspired by events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the British residents...
and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
rule. The Siege of Krishnapur won the 1973 Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
. On 19 May 2010 it was announced that Troubles had won the Lost Man Booker Prize
Lost Man Booker Prize
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970, described by The New York Times as "an act of literary reparation"...
, which was a prize created to recognize works published in 1970 (a group that had not previously been open for consideration due to a change in the eligibility rules at the time).
Farrell's career was cut short when he drowned in Ireland at the age of 44.
Childhood and education
Farrell, born in Liverpool into a family of Anglo-IrishAnglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
background, was the second of three brothers. His father, William Farrell, had worked as an accountant in Bengal and in 1929, he married Prudence Josephine Russell, who was a former receptionist and secretary to a doctor. From the age of 12 he attended Rossall
Rossall School
Rossall School is a British, co-educational, independent school, between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year...
public school in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
. After World War II, the Farrells moved to Dublin, and from this point on Farrell spent much time in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
: this, perhaps combined with the popularity of Troubles
Troubles (novel)
Troubles is a 1970 novel by the English author J.G. Farrell. It won the Lost Man Booker Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Troubles concerns the dilapidation of a once grand Irish hotel , in the midst of the political upheaval during the Irish War of Independence .The novel is the first...
, leads many to treat him as an Irish writer. After leaving Rossall, he taught in Dublin and also worked for some time on Distant Early Warning Line
Distant Early Warning Line
The Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland...
in the Canadian Arctic. In 1956 he went to study at Brasenose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, originally Brazen Nose College , is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. As of 2006, it has an estimated financial endowment of £98m...
; while there he contracted polio
Poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route...
. This would leave him partially crippled and disease would be prominent in his works. In 1960 he left Oxford with Third-class honours
British undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
French and Spanish and went to live in France, where he taught at a lycée.
Early works
Farrell published his first novel, A Man From Elsewhere, in 1963. Set in France, it shows the clear influence of French existentialism. The story follows Sayer, who is a journalist for a communist paper, as he tries to find skeletons in Regan's closet. Regan is a dying novelist who is about to be awarded an important Catholic literary prize. The book mimics the fight between the two leaders of French existentialism: Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
(Sayer representing Sartre and Regan representing Camus). The two argue about existentialism: the position that murder can be vindicated as an expedient in overthrowing tyranny (Sartre) versus the stance that there are no ends that justify unjust means (Camus). Bernard Bergonzi
Bernard Bergonzi
Bernard Bergonzi is a British literary scholar, critic and poet. He is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Warwick and an expert on T. S. Eliot.He was born in London and studied at the University of Oxford...
reviewed it in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
in the September 20, 1963 issue and said, "Many first novels are excessively autobiographical, but A Man from Elsewhere suffers from the opposite fault of being a cerebral construct, dreamed up out of literature and the contemporary French cinema." Simon Raven
Simon Raven
Simon Arthur Noël Raven was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence...
wrote in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
on September 15, 1963 that "Mr. Farrell's style is spare, his plotting lucid and well timed; his expositions of moral or political problems are pungent if occasionally didactic." It entirely lacks the ironic humour and the tender appreciation of human frailty which characterise his later work. Farrell himself came to dislike the book.
Two years after this came The Lung, in which Farrell returned to his real-life trauma of less than a decade earlier: the main character Martin Sands contracts polio and has to spend a long period in hospital. It has been noted that it is somewhat modeled after Farrell, but it is modeled more after Geoffrey Firmin from Malcolm Lowry
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
1947 novel, Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano is a 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry . The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac , on the Day of the Dead.Surrounded by the helpless presences of his ex-wife, his...
. The anonymous reviewer for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
on October 31, 1965, wrote that "Mr. Farrell gives the pleasantly solid impression of really having something to write about" and one for The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
on November 11, 1965 that "Mr. Farrell's is an effective, potent brew, compounded of desperation and a certain wild hilarity."
In 1967 he published A Girl in the Head. The protagonist, the impoverished Polish count Boris Slattery, lives in the fictional English seaside town of Maidenhair Bay, in the house of the Dongeon family (which is believed to be modeled after V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
's A House for Mr Biswas
A House for Mr Biswas
A House for Mr Biswas is a 1961 novel by V. S. Naipaul, significant as Naipaul's first work to achieve acclaim worldwide. It is the story of Mr Mohun Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by...
). His marriage to Flower Dongeon is decaying. His companion is Dr. Cohen, who is a dying alcoholic. Boris also has sex with an underaged teenager, June Furlough. He also fantasizes about Ines, a Swedish summer guest, who is the "girl in the head". Boris is believed to be modeled after Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
's Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
. Like its two predecessors, the book met only middling critical and public reaction. In the July 13, 1967 issue of The Listener, Ian Hamilton
Ian Hamilton (critic)
Robert Ian Hamilton was a British literary critic, reviewer, biographer, poet, magazine editor and publisher....
wrote that he disliked the novel, and thought it was, at best, an "adroit pastiche" of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's deadbeats. Martin Levin wrote in The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
on March 23, 1969, that he praised the author's "flair for giving the ridiculous an inspired originality". In an anonymous review in The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
on July 20, 1967, the writer stated that the "verbal assurance and resourcefulness show that Mr. Farrell is not content to coast along merely imitating his previous work. Such a deliberate extension of range is perhaps a hopeful sign for a talent which, after three novels, still has not found the mode in which to fulfil its attractive promise."
Empire Trilogy
TroublesTroubles (novel)
Troubles is a 1970 novel by the English author J.G. Farrell. It won the Lost Man Booker Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Troubles concerns the dilapidation of a once grand Irish hotel , in the midst of the political upheaval during the Irish War of Independence .The novel is the first...
tells the comic yet melancholy tale of an English Major, Brendan Archer, who in 1919 goes to County Waterford
County Waterford
*Abbeyside, Affane, Aglish, Annestown, An Rinn, Ardmore*Ballinacourty, Ballinameela, Ballinamult, Ballinroad, Ballybeg, Ballybricken, Ballyduff Lower, Ballyduff Upper, Ballydurn, Ballygunner, Ballylaneen, Ballymacarbry, Ballymacart, Ballynaneashagh, Ballysaggart, Ballytruckle, Bilberry, Bunmahon,...
in Ireland to meet the woman he believes he may be engaged to marry. From the crumbling Majestic Hotel at Kilnalough, he watches Ireland's fight for independence from Britain. Farrell started writing this book while on a Harkness Fellowship
Harkness Fellowship
The Harkness Fellowships are a programme run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. They were established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several countries to spend time studying in the United States...
in the United States and finished it in a tiny flat in Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge is a road which gives its name to an exclusive district lying to the west of central London. The road runs along the south side of Hyde Park, west from Hyde Park Corner, spanning the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. He got the idea for the setting from going to Block Island
Block Island
Block Island is part of the U.S. state of Rhode Island and is located in the Atlantic Ocean approximately south of the coast of Rhode Island, east of Montauk Point on Long Island, and is separated from the Rhode Island mainland by Block Island Sound. The United States Census Bureau defines Block...
and seeing the remains of an old burned-down hotel. He won a Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...
for the novel, and with the prize money travelled to India to research his next novel.
Farrell's next book The Siege of Krishnapur
The Siege of Krishnapur
The Siege of Krishnapur is a novel by the author J. G. Farrell, published in 1973.Inspired by events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the British residents...
and his last completed work The Singapore Grip both continue his story of the collapse of British colonial power. The former deals with the Indian Rebellion of 1857
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...
. Inspired by historical events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow
Lucknow
Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....
, the novel is set in the fictional town of Krishnapur, where a besieged British garrison succeeds in holding out for four months against an army of native sepoys, in the face of enormous suffering, before being relieved.
The third of the novels, The Singapore Grip
The Singapore Grip
The Singapore Grip is a novel by the author J. G. Farrell which was published in 1978.Broadly satirical in nature, it details events during the beginning of World War Two and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Singapore. The action centers around a British family who controls one of the...
, centers upon the Japanese capture of the British colonial city of Singapore in 1942, while also exploring at some length the economics and ethics of colonialism at the time, as well as the economic relationship between developed and Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
countries at the time that Farrell was writing.
The three novels are in general linked only thematically, although Archer, a character in Troubles, reappears in The Singapore Grip
The Singapore Grip
The Singapore Grip is a novel by the author J. G. Farrell which was published in 1978.Broadly satirical in nature, it details events during the beginning of World War Two and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Singapore. The action centers around a British family who controls one of the...
. The protagonist of Farrell's unfinished novel, The Hill Station, is Dr McNab, introduced in The Siege of Krishnapur
The Siege of Krishnapur
The Siege of Krishnapur is a novel by the author J. G. Farrell, published in 1973.Inspired by events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the British residents...
; this novel and its accompanying notes make the series a quartet.
When The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973, Farrell used his acceptance speech to attack the sponsors, the Booker Group
Booker Group
Booker Group plc is the United Kingdom's largest food wholesale operator, offering branded and private-label goods to over 400,000 customers including independent convenience stores, grocers, pubs and restaurants...
, for their business involvement in the agricultural sector in the Third World. In this vein, some readers have found Farrell's critique of colonialism and capitalism in his subsequent novel The Singapore Grip to be heavy-handed, although those new to the book after the crash of 2008 might not find it so.
Charles Sturridge
Charles Sturridge
Charles B. G. Sturridge is an English screenwriter, producer, stage, television and film director.-Personal life:Sturridge was born in London, England to Alyson Bowman Vaughan and Jerome Sturridge. He was educated at Stonyhurst College...
scripted a film version of Troubles made for British television in 1988 and directed by Christopher Morahan
Christopher Morahan
Christopher Thomas Morahan CBE is an English stage and television director and producing manager.-Training and career:Morahan was born in London in 1929, and was educated at Highgate School...
.
Death
In 1979 Farrell decided to quit London to take up residence on the Sheep's HeadSheep's Head
Sheep's Head, also known as Muntervary , is the headland at the end of the peninsula between Bantry Bay and Dunmanus Bay in County Cork, Ireland....
peninsula in southwestern Ireland. A few months later he was found drowned on the coast of Bantry Bay
Bantry Bay
Bantry Bay is a bay located in County Cork, southwest Ireland. The bay runs approximately from northeast to southwest into the Atlantic Ocean. It is approximately 3-to-4 km wide at the head and wide at the entrance....
, apparently from falling in from rocks while angling. He was 44. He is buried in the cemetery of St. James's Church of Ireland church in Durrus
Durrus
Durrus is a village located in West Cork, six miles from Bantry, County Cork, Ireland. It is situated at the head of the Sheep's Head and Mizen Head Peninsulas. A number of public gardens have been established in the area, including 'Kilvarock' and 'Cois Abhann'...
.
The manuscript library at Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
holds his papers: Papers of James Gordon Farrell (1935–1979). TCD MSS 9128-60.
Legacy
Peter Morey wrote that "an interpretation of the novels of J. G. Farrell and Paul Scott as examples of post-colonial fiction [is possible], since both partake of oppositional and interrogative narrative practices which recognize and work to dismantle the staple elements of imperial narrative."Ronald Binns described Farrell's colonial novels as "probably the most ambitious literary project conceived and executed by any British novelist in the 1970s."
In the 1984 novel Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs (novel)
Foreign Affairs is a 1984 novel by Alison Lurie, which concerns itself with American academics in England. The novel won multiple awards, including the 1984 National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1985, and was made into a television movie in 1993.-Plot summary:Unmarried...
by Alison Lurie
Alison Lurie
Alison Lurie is an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she has also written numerous non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.-Personal...
, Vinnie Miner, the protagonist, reads a Farrell novel on her flight from New York to London. In the 1991 novel The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble, the writer Stephen Cox is modeled after Farrell.
Quotes
Farrell said to George Brock in an interview for The Observer MagazineThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, "the really interesting thing that's happened during my lifetime has been the decline of the British Empire."
Works
- 1963 A Man From Elsewhere
- 1965 The Lung
- 1967 A Girl in the Head
Empire Trilogy:
- 1970 TroublesTroubles (novel)Troubles is a 1970 novel by the English author J.G. Farrell. It won the Lost Man Booker Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Troubles concerns the dilapidation of a once grand Irish hotel , in the midst of the political upheaval during the Irish War of Independence .The novel is the first...
- 1973 The Siege of KrishnapurThe Siege of KrishnapurThe Siege of Krishnapur is a novel by the author J. G. Farrell, published in 1973.Inspired by events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the British residents...
- 1978 The Singapore Grip
- 1973-74 The Pussycat Who Fell in Love with a Suitcase. Atlantis. 6 (Winter 1973/4), pp. 6–10
- 1981 The Hill Station; and An Indian Diary, unfinished, edited by John Spurling. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0297779222
About Farrell
- 1979 Bernard Bergonzi, The Contemporary English Novel
- 1981 John Spurling, Margaret Drabble, Malcolm Dean: Personal Memories of J.G. Farrell; The Hill Station
- 1986 Ronald Binns, J.G. Farrell. London and New York : Methuen. ISBN 0416403204
- 1997 Michael C. Prusse, "Tomorrow is Another Day": The Fictions of James Gordon Farrell
- 1997 Derek Mahon: "The World of J.G. Farrell", (poem), October 1997
- 1999 Lavinia Greacen: J.G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer (full-length biography). London : Bloomsbury. ISBN 0747544638
- 2000 Elisabeth Delattre: "Histoire et fiction dans Troubles de J.G.Farrell", Études Irlandaises, printemps 2000, n° 25-1, pp. 65–80
- 2002 Elisabeth Delattre: "Du Monde romanesque au poème : 'The World of J.G.Farrell' de Derek Mahon ", Études Irlandaises, printemps 2002, n° 27-1, pp. 93–105
- 2003 Elisabeth Delattre: "Intégrer, exclure ou la genèse d'une œuvre : Troubles de J.G.Farrell", in Irlande : Inclusion, exclusion, publié sous la direction de Françoise Canon-Roger, Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2003, pp. 65–80.
- 2003 Michael C. Prusse "British and Irish Novelists Since 1960". Gale : Detroit. ISBN 978-0-7876-6015-4
- 2007 John McLeod, J.G. Farrell, Tavistock: Northcote House, 2007. ISBN 0-7463-0986-4
- 2009 Lavinia Greacen: JG Farrell in His Own Words Selected Letters and Diaries. Cork : Cork University Press. ISBN 9781859184288
Prizes
- 1970 Lost Man Booker PrizeLost Man Booker PrizeThe Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970, described by The New York Times as "an act of literary reparation"...
(Troubles) awarded in 2010 - 1971 Geoffrey Faber Memorial PrizeGeoffrey Faber Memorial PrizeThe Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...
(Troubles) - 1973 Booker PrizeMan Booker PrizeThe Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
(The Siege of Krishnapur)