The Pornographer

The Pornographer is the story of Michael, not a Dubliner but a resident of Dublin penning far from erotic tales to make ends meet. These tales—revolving around the “delicious, unending revel” of Colonel Grimshaw and the typist Mavis Carmichael—form a mordant counterpoint to Michael’s own, much more complicated existence.

Thirty years old, befogged by alcohol, sensitive yet indifferent to all emotional weather, Michael meets the slightly older Josephine, a clever, cautiously optimistic magazine editor who soon confesses her love, and though the feeling isn’t mutual (as Michael makes painfully clear) the affair goes on; Josephine becomes pregnant; and, this being Ireland in the seventies, the piper must be paid.

Not cruel but callous, Michael reels through his days, paying regular visits to a beloved aunt from the country who now lies dying in Dublin, and to his publisher, a citified and cynical Polonius who advises him to “be careful not to let life in.” As the days turn into months, Michael begins to wonder what letting life in might look like. What would it mean, and where would it lead, to do right by others?

First published in 1979, John McGahern’s fourth novel is a character study of rare and unsparing insight. In rhythmic, lyrical prose, McGahern gives voice to the longing and self-loathing of a soul caught between a traditional world he believes he has rejected and a brave new world of advertised freedoms, sexual and otherwise, which offers no guarantee of love.