THERE are now several excellent academic studies and biographies available on George Mackay Brown, but still my favourite is, Interrogation of Silence: The Writings of George Mackay Brown (2004), written by the father and daughter duo, Rowena and Brian Murray. Its style sits comfortably between accessible and intelligently academic. The Introduction (Murray & Murray : 11) begins with a citation from an article Brown had published in Scottish Field Magazine, in August 1968, which sums up his character perfectly, not just as he was as a young boy, but as a lifelong persona.
"It was a dangerous world I had come into. I would never wander far from my doorstep. I would listen to the stories and poems and eat an apple on Sunday mornings and that was all and that was all the travelling in this world I intended to do. Already I was a word-wanderer; a seeker of images."
Each chapter covers around a decade of Brown's life, beginning with biographical notes setting his experiences and outlook into context, before addressing his writings during this period. Interrogation of Silence is the first study to examine Brown's conversion from Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism. It does so only relatively briefly, however, and there are now other texts which delve deeper into Brown's new faith and how it impacted upon his writing, notably George Mackay Brown: The Wound and the Gift, by Ron Ferguson (2011), George Mackay Brown: No Separation, by Alison Gray (2016) and George Mackay Brown and the Scottish Catholic Imagination, by Linden Bicket (2017).
The authors take the reader on Brown's writing journey, from his earliest realisation he was good at writing stories to creating a comic-like magazine of sixteen pages called, The Celt that he distributed amongst his school friends, in which he wrote about football alongside stories. Following a very brief spell of working in Stromness post office, he was invited to join The Orkney Herald, to write opinion pieces. His weekly column, titled Island Diary, published under the pseudonym of 'Islandman', appeared in the Herald between 1945 and 1956. Besides his journalistic efforts Brown began experimenting with poetry, submitting some of his earliest poems to The New Shetlander magazine.
Each of Brown's major novels is treated to a brief plot summary and analysis of its main ideas and themes. Only a few short stories are discussed in any detail. There are quick run-throughs of the publications that fall outwith the criteria of poetry, short stories and poems. His collaborations with the composer, Peter Maxwell Davies (1934 – 2016), sadly receive barely a mention at all. The authors end the book by highlighting some of Brown's writings that were collated and published posthumously.
The original hardback edition of Interrogation of Silence is a beautiful book in every sense of the word. High-quality presentation, printed on good paper, its content was the most comprehensive biography on George Mackay Brown available at the time of its publication. Given that it's a quasi-academic study and the fact that Rowena and Brian Murray knew Brown personally, there is a surprising amount of conjecture, but that is a minor flaw in an otherwise largely commendable work.
Interrogation of Silence: the Writings of George Mackay Brown by
Rowena & Brian Murray
Hardcover:
320 page
Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd; (2 Aug 2004)
26/11/2024
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