Author Archives: Joe Armstrong

Some books we’ve read in Wise Owl book club

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Ali, Ayaan Hirsi:         Infidel

Amis, Martin:              Experience

Ashworth, Jenn:         A Kind of Intimacy

Barbery,Muriel:            The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Bayley, John:              Iris

Barry, Sebastian:          A Long,Long Way

Ben Jelloun, Tahar:        The Blinding Absence of Light

Browne, Dan:               The Da Vinci Code

Capote, Truman:            In Cold Blood

Carey, Peter:              Theft

Carter, Angela:            The Magic Toyshop

Cervantes:                 Don Quixote

Chandler, Raymond:         The Big Sleep

Change, Jung:              Mao: the Untold Story

Chekhov, Anton:  The Lady with the Little Dog & Other Stories

Dickens, Charles:          David Copperfield

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor:       Crime and Punishment

Doyle, Roddy:              Oh, Play That Thing

Edgeworth, Maria:          Castle Rackrent

Eugenides, Jeffrey:        Middlesex

Farrell J.G.:              The Siege of Krishnapur

Faulks, Sebastian:         Birdsong

Ferris, Joshua:            Then We Came to the End

Fitzgerald, F Scott:       The Great Gatsby

Flaubert, Gustave:         Madame Bovary

Ford, Richard:             The Granta Book of the American Short Story

Forster, E.M.:             A Passage to India

Franzen, Jonathan:         The Corrections

Franzen, Jonathan:         How To Be Alone

Gallagher, Mia:            Hellfire

Gardam, Jane:            Old Filth

Gray, Simon:               Smoking Diaries

Hamilton, Hugo:            The Speckled People

Hawthorn, Nathaniel:  The Scarlet Letter

Hemmingway:                For Whom the Bell Tolls

Holtby, Winifred:           South Riding

Homer:                     The Illiad

Homes, AM:                 This Book Will Save Your Life

Hornby, Nick:              Juliet Naked

Hosseini, Khaled:          The Kite Runner

Irving, John:              A Prayer For Own Meany

Ibsen, Henrik:             A Dolls House

Joyce, James:              Dubliners

Joyce, James:              Ulysses

Kafka, Franz:              The Trial

Karr, Mary:                The Liar’s Club

Kennedy, AL:               Day

Lee, Harper:               To Kill a Mocking-Bird

Llosa, Mario Vargas:  The Feast of the Goat

McCann, Colum:             Dancer

McGahern, John:            Memoir

Monk Kidd, Sue:            The Secret Life of Bees

Nabokov, Vladimir:         Lolita

Cruise O’Brien, Maire:     The Same Age as the State

Obama, Barrack:            Dreams of My Father

O’Connor, Joseph:          Star of the Sea

O’Connor, Joseph:          Ghost Light

Orwell, George:          1984

Plunkett, James:   Strumpet City

Proulx, Annie:             The Shipping News

Raisin, Ross:              God’s Own Country

Remarque, Erich Maria:     All Quiet on the Western Front

Rubenfeld, Jed:            The Interpretation of Murder

Roth, Philip:              The Plot Against America

Salinger, JD:              Catcher in the Rye

Sebold, Alice:             The Lovely Bones

Smith, Zadie:              On Beauty

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander:   One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander:   The Gulag Archipelgo

Stephens, James:           The Crock of Gold

Steinbeck, John:           The Grapes of Wrath

Stockett, Katherine:   The Help

Swift, Graham:             Last Orders

Tartt, Donna:  The Goldfinch

Thackeray, William M:      Vanity Fair

Toibin, Colm:              Brooklyn

Toibin, Colm:              The Master

Tolstoy, Leo:              Anna Karenina

Tomalin, Claire:      Charles Dickens: A Life

Twain, Mark:               The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

William, Trevor,:          Felicia’s Journey

William, Trevor,:          Love and Summer

Trollope, Anthony:         Barchester Toweres

Voltaire:                  Candide

Voynich Ethel:      The Gadfly

Williams, John:            Stoner

Williams, Niall:     History of the Rain

Wolff, Tobias:             Old School

Woolf, Virginia:           Mrs Dalloway

Zafon, Carlos Ruiz:        Shadow of the Wind

What does your gut say?

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Twice in my life I have been asked by a woman: ‘What does your gut say?’ The first time was when I was about to leave my nine-year path towards the priesthood. My gut said: ‘Leave!’

And I did. Not easily, of course. More recently, another woman asked me precisely the same question, using precisely the same words, regarding a professional decision: ‘What does your gut say?’ I was stunned by the precision, the duplication, the verbatim repetition of those five words.

In my late 20s, faced with what I considered was the first adult decision of my life – to leave my priestly path – it may be appreciated the difficulty of that choice. But now, in my late 40s, I am struck, and humbled, by my facility to duck and weave from my gut. Asked so recently what my gut said, I had no doubt what I should do professionally. And yet I lingered, dallying with the possibility that a solution less messy than going with my gut might work out.

Why is it that we are so willing – at least I confess I am – to trade that for which we were born for the sake of the false god of ‘security’? Why are we willing to give up on that which we believe to be our core mission in life for the sake of a few shekels and the continuity with the familiar – even when we are being beckoned, again, to be true to who we are?

Last week, for the second time in my life, I knew the answer to that question: ‘What does your gut say?’ And yet, days later, I was juggling with all sorts of other possibilities. I’m not proud of it. We have one very short shot at life. Must we be dragged screaming to do that for which we are best suited? Or run out of time – the ticking clock and waning sun ever the catalyst of authentic action. I pray that it may not be said of me at my death that I died without ever having lived.

I have lived and fulfilled much of my life’s purpose. But I have now the gift of time and opportunity and I pray, I intend, to proceed along the uncharted pathway of my gut.

Stroke

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I’m appoaching the age my dad was when he had a stroke. This juxtaposition of my dad’s medical history and the fright of his unexpected stroke and my approach to that same age caught me unawares earlier today. Like a kick in the belly, actually. There was my dad plodding along doing whatever he was doing one day, probably looking forward to his birthday and on that same birthday he had his stoke.

So I ask myself: if I were to have a stroke on my next birthday that left me incapacitated thereafter, what would I want to do between now and then? Happily, my dad’s stroke was a mild one. But still, it sharpens the mind on that old theme of the brevity of life. Life is far, far too short to spend it doing stuff you don’t enjoy. It’s far too short to spend it living in fear. It’s far too short to postpone whatever it is you want to do before you die.

So here it is guys and girls. I’ve fathered my children, I’ve planted my trees, married the love of my life, built a home I love, written some books and, as an commissioning editor, commissioned lots and lots of other people’s books. But the one thing I really, really want to do is to complete a particular book of my own that I’ve been trying to write for the last 20 years. My osteopath – there’s no better way of talking about what’s really going on in your life than when the right professional is working on your back muscles and untying those physical knots – says it’s a book I need to write before I die. And I do. And I am. I’m working on it. It’s taking shape.

That’s the one big thing I really want to do before I have any bolts from the blue. So, what would you do if you were told you’d be having a stroke on your next birthday?

Twists and turns

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Life is strange, is it not? Sometimes we vacillate between one course and another and haven’t a clue what to do. We often cling to the familiar, even when it isn’t working for us. We want to believe that it can work even though the evidence stacks up that it won’t work. We cherish our freedom and yet we also fear it. The devil you know…

And yet life often clarifies issues for us. An event occurs, unexpected perhaps, that throws the cat amongst the pigeons. We are beckoned once more to the cauldron of unknowing. Yet again we return to the cooking pot, where ingredients meld and, in time, something new will emerge.

And so we stay alive. Nature abhors a vacuum. We may be sad to move on from the familiar but often the familiar is killing us. We are bigger than the familiar. Let us dare to trust in ourselves. To step, anew, into the dark. To take the risk of some pain now in order to be true to ourselves and to be free.

Life is short. Shorter than we could imagine. We were not born to spend out lives in unsatisfying situations. The babe may fear to leave the womb but in the end if he or she does not, life cannot unfold with all its colour and the delight of what will be.

Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls

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On balance, most of us loved it. Some of us ended up thinking, if not talking, in Spanish syntax. The raw honesty of the book. The complex characterisation. The reader’s desire to know what happened at the end. The butchery of war – no matter what side you’re on. And yet how life can be lived in three days. A powerful, extraordinary book.

Hamlet

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How often in life I have found myself pulled this way and that! I studied Hamlet as a schoolboy and how appropriate for me. There can be value in deferring a decision. It is the antithesis to impulsive living. It took me nine years before I decided to leave religious life and my path to the priesthood. Yet, I do not regret the time I spent in the Marists. I taught for five years in London, when I might have left teaching earlier to become a full-time writer. Yet, had I left, I would never have met my wife or had our two lovely children. So, I’m open, ever open, to considering possibilities. Then again, once I make a decision, a considered decision, I tend to be confident that it is the right one due to the time and care I take in reaching my decisions. And it is not as if I deferred leaving religious life for nine years. On the contrary, I chose to stay in religious life for nine years. Nor did I defer leaving teaching for five years. I choose to stay for five years. Decision-making keeps us alive. So long as we engage in the process and are true to ourselves, whatever we decide, we thrive.

Silly toil

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Sometimes far too much is asked and expected of us. We are simply slaves to someone else’s agenda. We are probably being manipulated. So stand back if you are being asked to do too much. If it cannot be done without loss of the balance of your life and if you are no longer happy doing something, it is time to move on. You are nobody’s slave. You choose. You are responsible only for yourself. The world is an abundant place. You are multi-talented. Life is too short to spend it miserably. Enjoy this moment and, if you can’t, leave behind whatever it is that’s dragging you down. Life is for living to the full – today!

The Happiness Habit

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Brian Colbert has written a book called The Happiness Habit: choose the path to a better life. It is excellent. It is very well written. It provides lots of useful tools to help sharpen your thinking and to help people make decisions about issues or challenges they face. The exercises are simple to do and insightful. The book is published by Newleaf, an imprint of Gill and Macmillan. I highly recommend it. I read it and did the exercises in less than two days. It grabbed and sustained my attention. A superb book.

Cardinal Brady’s position untenable

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It was fun on the streets of Kells, county Meath, this afternoon. I never saw so many people dressed as leprechauns in my life! The weather was mild. It didn’t rain. There was a happy, relaxed atmosphere. A pleasant way to spend an hour with young families. There were tractors aplenty – this is a world away from the Dublin parade, with its cultural themes. Here in Kells were presented all life, all clubs, all activities; and, of course, some commercial advertisements too. There was the swimming club, the scouts, the tennis club, the GAA clubs, the soccer club, the brass band, the Moynalty cycling club. I think I saw a grind school. There was the Cookstown dogs’ and cats’ kennels. St Patrick (a live one!) was held aloft on the front of  – what else but a tractor. There was a leprechaun cheili group. And well drilling vehicles. Old Beatles and a Cortina. Last year there was the actual car used in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

You meet people. You have a chat. You shout a greeting as someone you know in the passing parade. You buy ice creams. And within the hour you drift home or head off somewhere to drown the shamrock.

Meanwhile, I’ve checked a press release from the Catholic Communications Office of yesterday 16 March regarding Cardinal Brady which said:

‘Fr Brady was then a full-time teacher at St Patrick’s College, Cavan.  Because he held a doctorate in Canon Law, Fr Brady was asked to conduct this canonical enquiry; however he had no decision-making powers regarding the outcome of the enquiry.  Bishop McKiernan held this responsibility.’

I find that ‘no decision-making powers’ a striking phrase. Every responsible adult human being has decision-making powers. As the Catholic Church itself teaches, we must always follow our conscience. We must always follow our honest judgment. Indeed it is Church teaching that we must follow our conscience even if the pope orders us to do something against our conscience. Or if a process denies us a decision-making role. As a human being, we always have a decision-making power and we must always act in accordance with our conscience.

The press release continues:

‘At the end of both interviews, the boys were asked to confirm by oath the truthfulness of their statements and that they would preserve the confidentiality of the interview process. The intention of this oath was to avoid potential collusion in the gathering of the inquiry’s evidence and to ensure that the process was robust enough to withstand challenge by the perpetrator, Fr Brendan Smyth.’

Could the church not be honest enough to admit that the purpose of such an oath might also be to avoid scandal? Thank God that in the secular world justice is done and is seen to be done in public. Such secrecy led to the concealment of crimes against children and to perpetrators of child abuse, including the rape of children, being able to continue with their crimes.

If an individual has no decision-making powers regarding the outcome of an inquiry, he or she retains the human decision-making power to report a crime to the police, and so help prevent further crimes against children.

In my view, the Cardinal’s position is untenable. We need a situation in the Catholic Church where there is no place to hide for child abusers and where each and every allegation of child abuse must be reported immediately to the police, who are the sole organs for the investigation of alleged crimes.