Squinting at the Absolute

The Vision of John McGahern

Edward T. Wheeler May 2, 2006 - 3:12am

A few months ago, I was fortunate to hear a BBC radio abridgement of All Will Be Well: A Memoir, read by the Irish novelist John McGahern, who died of cancer at the end of March. A light tenor voice, scarcely betraying his seventy-one years, offered a rural idyll of County Leitrim, place of the writer’s birth and retirement. The lyrical evocation clashed with a somber formative story of childhood...

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Topics: 
Death and Dying
Sexuality

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About the Author

Edward T. Wheeler, a frequent contributor, is the former dean of the faculty at the Williams School in New London, Connecticut.

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