Uneasy

[Malcolm Macarthur leaving court during his trial for murder, Dublin, July 1983. Liam Mulcahy/Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection/Getty Images]

Reference 1 is a piece in the NYRB about the book at reference 2, this last a book built around a brutal and stupid double murder, in Dublin in 1982. The perpetrator having been born to a modest amount of money and a life of arty leisure - who then turned to crime when the money ran out. The perpetrator having appeared incognito in the novel of 1993 at reference 4, an incognito appearance from which he appears to have picked up a few tips. The present book supplements the public record with a series of interviews with  Macarthur, by then freed on parole and living in Dublin - having served getting on for 20 years in prison. In which connection, I remember once reading that one is unlikely to be of sound mind after 10.

Tóibín - but possibly not O'Connell - makes a link back to a double murder in 1882 by a group called the Invincibles, one of whom - Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris - goes on to have a small but presently relevant role in James Joyce's Ulysses. O'Connell's interest in all this sort of thing has a good pedigree! He also make a link to the jumping Jim of Conrad's 'Lord Jim'. Why exactly did he do it?

Much of the book seems to be about how murderers get on when they are released. The image they have of themselves and the images that we have of them. How those images are built. How the murderers relate to the people who know who they are and what they have done.

All of which makes me rather uneasy. I do not think we should be giving platforms to criminals, punished, reformed or otherwise. They should live quiet lives and seek peace in some more private way.

There is public interest in the sense that the public, in the round, like to read about all this sort of thing in the newspapers or - more likely these days - to watch all about it on television. But I am not so sure that there is public interest in the sense that we learn something useful about how to head off such murders, how to manage, contain and corral potential murderers, to get them onto a better path. And if there was, maybe it would be better confined to the relevant professions?

There is also the consideration that all this happened less than fifty years ago. What about the feelings of the families of the victims?

I remember being similarly uneasy when, quite some years ago now, the New Statesman published the occasional article about crime & punishment by a reformed criminal, once a fairly serious criminal. Probably old fashioned robbery or safe-breaking rather than drugs - but serious crime nonetheless, involving criminals quite apt to use serious violence on each other if not on others.

I shall read reference 1 again and reflect further. Maybe even graduate to John Banville, of whom I had not previously heard, but who is a big enough deal to be the subject of O'Connell's doctoral thesis (reference 6). Maybe, having downloaded it in seconds, I will start there.

PS: a quick peek at reference 6, reveals O'Connell to be a man who still believes in Freud. Good for him! The title was, with hindsight, a clue.

References

Reference 1: Haunted by Fiction: In Mark O’Connell’s A Thread of Violence, the murderer Malcolm Macarthur lurks in the gray area between life and literature - Colm Tóibín, New York Review of Books - 2024.

Reference 2: A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder - Mark O’Connell - 2023.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banville.

Reference 4: Ghosts - John Banville - 1993.

Reference 5: The Book of Evidence - John  Banville - 1989.

Reference 6: Narcissism in the fiction of John Banville - Mark O'Connell - 2010. Thesis, Trinity College, Dublin. 281 pages or 185Mb.