Aidan Higgins (3 March 1927 – 27 December 2015) was an Irish writer. He wrote short stories, travel pieces, radio drama and novels.
Among his published works are ''
Langrishe, Go Down'' (1966), ''
Balcony of Europe'' (1972) and the biographical ''Dog Days'' (1998). His writing is characterised by non-conventional foreign settings and a
stream of consciousness
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...
narrative mode.
Most of his early fiction is autobiographical – "like slug trails, all the fiction happened."
Life
Aidan Higgins was born in
Celbridge,
County Kildare, Ireland. He attended local schools and
Clongowes Wood College
Clongowes Wood College SJ is a voluntary boarding school for boys near Clane, County Kildare, Ireland, founded by the Jesuits in 1814, which features prominently in James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Yo ...
, a private boarding school. In the early 1950s he worked in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
as a
copywriter for the Domas Advertising Agency.
He then moved to London and worked in light industry for about two years. He married Jill Damaris Anders in London on 25 November 1955.
From 1960, Higgins sojourned in Southern Spain, South Africa,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
and
Rhodesia. In 1960 and 1961 he worked as scriptwriter for Filmlets, an advertising firm in
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...
.
[ These journeys provided material for much of his later work, including his three autobiographies, ''Donkey's Years'' (1996), ''Dog Days'' (1998) and ''The Whole Hog'' (2000).
Higgins lived in ]Kinsale
Kinsale ( ; ) is a historic port and fishing town in County Cork, Ireland. Located approximately south of Cork City on the southeast coast near the Old Head of Kinsale, it sits at the mouth of the River Bandon, and has a population of 5,281 (a ...
, County Cork, from 1986 with the writer and journalist Alannah Hopkin. They were married in Dublin in November 1997. He was a founder member of Irish artists' association Aosdána
Aosdána ( , ; from , 'people of the arts') is an Irish association of artists. It was created in 1981 on the initiative of a group of writers with support from the country's Arts Council. Membership, which is by invitation from current member ...
.
Works
His upbringing in a landed Catholic family provided material for his first novel, ''Langrishe, Go Down'' (1966). The novel is set in the 1930s in a run-down "big house" in County Kildare, inhabited by the last members of the Langrishe family, three spinster sisters, Catholics, living in not-so-genteel poverty in a once-grand setting. One sister, Imogen, has an affair with a German intellectual, Otto Beck, which transgresses the moral code of the time, bringing her a brief experience of happiness. Otto's intellectual pursuits contrast with the moribund cultural life of mid-20th century Ireland. The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...
for fiction and was later adapted as a BBC television film by British playwright Harold Pinter, in association with RTÉ. Langrishe also received the Irish Academy of Letters Award.Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The t ...
, where it is set. The novel is carefully crafted, and rich in embedded literary references, using Spanish and Irish settings and various languages, including Spanish and some German, in its account of the daily life in the beaches and bars of Nerja of a largely expatriate community. The protagonist, an artist called Dan Ruttle, is obsessed with his friend's young American wife, Charlotte, and by the contrast between his life among a cosmopolitan artistic community in the Mediterranean, and his Irish origins. The book was re-edited in collaboration with Neil Murphy and published by Dalkey Archive Press
Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...
in 2010, with the Irish material cut, and the affair between Dan Ruttle and Charlotte, foregrounded.
/ref> including his three-volume autobiography, ''A Bestiary'', and a collection of fiction, ''Flotsam and Jetsam'', both of which demonstrate his wide erudition and his experience of life and travel in South Africa, Germany and London which gives his writing a largely cosmopolitan feel, utilising a range of European languages in turns of phrase.
Awards
*''Felo de Se'' – Somin Trust Award, 1963
*''Langrishe, Go Down'' – James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 1967
* DAAD scholarship of Berlin, 1969
* American Irish Foundation grant, 1977
*D.D.L., National University of Ireland, 2001
Bibliography
''A Bestiary''
Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004.
*''As I was Riding Down Duval Boulevard'' with Pete La Salle. Dublin: Anam Press, 2003.
*''Balcony of Europe''. London: Calder & Boyars, 1972; New York: Delacorte, 1972; Illinois, Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
''Bornholm Night-Ferry''
London: Allison & Busby; Ireland: Brandon Books, 1983; London: Abacus, 1985; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2006.
*''Darkling Plains: Texts for the Air''. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
*''Dog Days: A Sequel to Donkey’s Years''. London: Secker & Warburg, 1998.
*''Donkey’s Years: Memories of a Life as Story Told''. London: Secker & Warburg, 1995.
*''Felo de Se''. London: Calder & Boyars, 1960; as ''Killachter Meadow'', New York: Grove Press, 1960; as *''Asylum and Other Stories'', London: Calder & Boyars, 1978; New York: Riverrun Press, 1979.
''Flotsam & Jetsam''
London: Minerva, 1997; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2002.
*''Helsingor Station & Other Departures: Fictions and Autobiographies 1956–1989''. London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
*''Images of Africa: Diary (1956–60)''. London: Calder & Boyars, 1971.
*'' Langrishe, Go Down''. London: Calder & Boyars, 1966; New York: Grove Press, 1966; London: Paladin, 1987; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004; Dublin: New Island, 2007.
*''Lions of the Grunewald''. London: Secker & Warburg, 1993. Also as Weaver's Women. London: Secker & Warburg, 1993.
*''March Hares''. Dalkey Archive Press, 2017.
*''Ronda Gorge & Other Precipices: Travel Writings 1959–1989''. London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
''Scenes from a Receding Past''
London: Calder, 1977; Dallas: Riverrun Press, 1977; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.
*''The Whole Hog: A Sequel to Donkey’s Years and Dog Days''. London: Secker & Warburg, 2000.
*''Windy Arbours''. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.
Selected criticism
Book
*Neil Murphy (ed.) ''Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form'' (Essays and Commentary). Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
Essays and Reviews
*Beja, Morris. "Felons of Our Selves: The Fiction of Aidan Higgins". ''Irish University Review 3'', 2 (Autumn 1973): 163–78.
*Buckeye, Robert. "Form as the Extension of Content: 'their existence in my eyes'.” ''Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.1'' (1983): 192–195.
*Wall, Eamonn. "Aidan Higgins’s Balcony of Europe: Stephen Dedalus Hits the Road". ''Colby Quarterly'' Winter 1995: 81–87.
*Golden, Sean. "Parsing Love’s Complainte: Aidan Higgins on the Need to Name". ''Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.1'' (1983): 210–220.
*Healy, Dermot. "Donkey’s Years: A Review", ''Asylum Arts Review'' Vol. 1, Issue 1, (Autumn 1995): 45–6.
*Healy, Dermot. "Towards Bornholm Night-Ferry and Texts For the Air: A Rereading of Aidan Higgins". ''Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.1'' (1983): 181–192.
*Imhof, Rüdiger. "Bornholm Night-Ferry and Journal to Stella: Aidan Higgins’s Indebtedness to Jonathan Swift". ''The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies'', X, 2 (December 1984), 5–13.
*Imhof, Rüdiger, and Jürgen Kamm. "Coming to Grips with Aidan Higgins’s Killachter Meadow: An Analysis". ''Études Irlandaises'' (Lillie 1984): 145–60.
*Imhof, Rüdiger. "German Influences on John Banville and Aidan Higgins", in: W. Zach & H. Kosok (eds), ''Literary Interrelations''. Ireland, England and the World, vol. II: Comparison and Impact. Tübingen: Narr, 1987: 335–47.
*Kreilkamp, Vera. "Reinventing a Form: The Big House in Aidan Higgins’s Langrishe Go Down". ''The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 11'', 2 (1985): 27–38.
**Reprinted in, Kreilkamp, Vera. ''The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House''. New York: Syracuse University Press, October 1998: 234–60.
*Lubbers, Klaus. "Balcony of Europe: The Trend towards Internationalisation in Recent Irish Fiction", in Zach & Kosok (eds), ''Literary Interrelations''. Ireland, England and the World, vol. II: Comparison and Impact. Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1987: 235–47.
*Mahon, Derek. "An anatomy of melancholy": Review of ''Dog Days''. ''The Irish Times'', 7 March 1998: 67.
*Murphy, Neil. "Aidan Higgins". ''The Review of Contemporary Fiction XXIII'' No. 3 (2003): 49–83.
*Murphy, Neil. "Aidan Higgins' Fabulous Fictions: Revisiting Felo De Se", in Writing from the Margins: The Aesthetics of Disruption in the Irish Short Story. Ed. Catriona Ryan. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015: 67–77.
*Murphy, Neil. "Dreams, Departures, Destinations: A Reassessment of the Work of Aidan Higgins". ''Graph: A Journal of Literature & Ideas 1'' (1995): 64–71.
*Murphy, Neil. "Aidan Higgins – The Fragility of Form" in ''Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt: An Analysis of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Irish Fiction''. NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004: 37–101.
*Murphy, Neil. "Review of Lions of the Grunewald". ''Irish University Review'' 25.1 Spring/Summer 1995: 188–190.
*O’Brien, George. "Goodbye to All That", ''The Irish Review'' 7 (Autumn 1989): 89–92.
*O’Brien, George. "Consumed by Memories": Review of Donkey's Years. ''The Irish Times'' 10 June 1995: W9.
*O’Brien, George. "On the Pig’s Back": ''Review of The Whole Hog'' (2000), in The Irish Times 7 October 2000: 67.
*O’Brien, John. "Scenes From A Receding Past". ''Review of Contemporary Fiction'' 1983 (Spring): 164–166.
*O’Neill, Patrick. "Aidan Higgins" in Rüdiger Imhof, ed., ''Contemporary Irish Novelists'' Studies in English and Comparative Literature, ed. Michael Kenneally & Wolfgang Zach Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag 1990: 93–107.
*Proulx, Annie. "Drift and Mastery": Review of Flotsam & Jetsam. The Washington Post, 16 June 2002 Sunday: T07.
*Rachbauer, Otto. "Aidan Higgins, 'Killachter Meadow' und Langrishe, Go Down sowie Harold Pinters Fernsenfilm Langrishe, Go Down: Variationen eines Motivs", in Siegfried Korninger, ed., ''A Yearbook of Studies in English and Language and Literature'' Vol. 3 (Vienna 1986): 135–46.
*Skelton, Robin. "Aidan Higgins and the Total Book", in ''Mosaic'' 19 (1976): pp. 27–37;
**Reprinted as Chap. 13 of Skelton, Robin. Celtic Contraries. NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990: pp. 211–23.
References
External links
Aidan Higgins fonds
at University of Victoria, Special Collections
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Higgins, Aidan
1927 births
2015 deaths
Aosdána members
Irish male novelists
20th-century Irish novelists
Irish male short story writers
20th-century travel writers
Irish travel writers
James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients
People educated at Clongowes Wood College
People from Celbridge
People from Kinsale
20th-century Irish male writers
20th-century Irish short story writers
21st-century Irish male writers
21st-century Irish short story writers