![]() Not just making the invisible visible, but a recognition of the grace that comes with proper deep down empathy. ![]() It sounds odd, but it’s the fable of a duck called Fup - it doesn’t take long to figure it’s Fup Duck. But if I was to plump for another book, there’s a gorgeous little fable called Fup that was written by Jim Dodge. Kiely is on my mind I suppose but his little gem Proxopera is maybe the greatest book written about what we call “The Troubles”. After reading that there was nowhere to go but everywhere. He wrote a collection that included the story “A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly”, a tale of not-quite requited love that involved a priest, a literary scholar who could “puke you with poetry”, and a half-Japanese prostitute named Butterfly. I met the Irish writer Benedict Kiely when I was 16 years old. ![]() ![]() ![]() The book that had the greatest influence on my writing It is only late in the book that the title explains itself when a train goes through the small town of Slaughter, Louisiana, but before that we come through all sorts of beauty and slaughter. I adore Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter, about the jazz musician Buddy Bolden. ![]()
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