is the impossible Irish novel. The great master of the short story, Frank O'Connor, writing in 1942, claimed that it was simply not possible to write a social novel in Ireland. In Russia, he said, an author such as Chehkov could "write as easily of a princess as of a peasant girl or a merchant's daughter" but in Ireland "the moment a writer raises his eyes from the slums and cabins, he finds nothing but a vicious and ignorant middle-class, and for aristocracy the remnants of an English garrison, alien in religion and education. From such material he finds it almost impossible to create a picture of life . . . a realistic literature is clearly impossible."

The writing in this book is poetic and eloquent and gives a real insight into that part of history just before the world would be plunged into the dreadful darkness of the first World War. Here is a book possessed of a rare integrity and genuine pathos by a writer born in 1920 into the testing Dublin working class world that had, a generation earlier, produced James Stephens. Considering that much of Plunkett's inspiration came from his reverence for James Larkin, as well as a life-long belief in labour politics – Plunkett possessed an honourable social consciousness, and endures as an artist through his great Dublin novel, writes

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Asked by Niall Sheridan on Writer in Profilewhat was the function of Literature, James Plunkett said it was to “reveal the reality of what surrounds us", to find and share a '' moment of recognition of a truth" - something as Sean O'Faolain also saw would cause the reader to say: "That's exactly it". James Plunkett died on May 28th 2003, aged 83.

will be in no doubt that the author's sympathies lie with the poor and with the workers' struggle for a better life.

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is, above all, a great defiance of this contempt for the poor. Its realism is not just a reflection of the way things were: it is also a statement of the way things should be, that attention must be paid to those whom history treats as the anonymous masses. We might give what he is doing the name of defiant realism. plays down militant nationalism, confining its expression largely to the old cook, Miss Gilchrist) and anti-clerical. Readers of

Plunkett himself later confirmed this “I wanted Dublin itself to be the hero, you know, in a mystical kind of way, with Larkin as a sort of ‘Deus ex machina’.” It was the city, and not just the inhabitants of its Nighttown, that lay prostrate and prostituted; defiled by corrupt intrigues between slum landlords and city councillors – indeed many of the councillors were themselves landlords. Its superficial beauty and fading grandeur hid disease and decay. Lily Maxwell, the only prostitute to feature in the novel, epitomises the city’s condition. She believes she is diseased although she, like the city, and like its most oppressed citizenry, remains proud, beautiful and capable of deliverance. Plunkett’s nostalgic love for the old city, it sights, its smells, its people, is evident throughout. James Plunkett Kelly, or James Plunkett (21 May 1920 – 28 May 2003), was an Irish writer. He was educated at Synge Street CBS. During the 1960s, Plunkett worked as a producer at Telefís Éireann. He won two Jacob's Awards, in 1965 and 1969, for his TV productions. In 1971 he wrote and presented "Inis Fail - Isle of Destiny", his very personal appreciation of Ireland. It was the final episode of the BBC series "Bird's-Eye View", shot entirely from a helicopter, and the first co-production between the BBC and RTE.

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Plunkett’s objective rather was to remind the reader how it felt; how the city’s most deprived suffered in an unequal struggle against its most privileged. His story captures the simple truth which no post-modernist abstraction should ever be allowed to obscure. Today when antiheroes dominate our fiction we may sometimes forget that there are historical events that are best judged in binary terms: good and bad, justice and injustice. Plunkett, in his old-fashioned way, was never in any doubt which side of this divide he was on. That’s what makes Strumpet City so authentic, and such a pleasure to read again. The Eagles and the Trumpets. Frank O'Connor championed the young Plunkett and both shared the vital gift of understatement. They were also realists. Plunkett, a committed socialist, never idealised the plight of the working class. James Plunkett published two further novels, Farewell Companions (1977), which partly drew on his childhood and early adult experience, and The Circus Animals (1990), which included incidents drawn from the controversy surrounding the Russia visit of 1955. There is a terrible accident at a coal yard and you feel empathy for big Mulhall and the further poverty his family will suffer in its wake. The novel's roots date from 1954, when Plunkett's radio play Big Jim was produced by Radio Éireann, with Jim Larkin the titular hero. [1] In 1958, it was expanded into a gloomier and more stylized stage play, The Risen People, staged at the Abbey Theatre. [1] Kathleen Heininge characterises it as a dry work which read as "pure propaganda for a socialist agenda". [2] When Hutchinson requested a novel about James Connolly from Plunkett, he reworked the play again; Connolly does not feature in Strumpet City, published in 1969. The Risen People was revived and revised in 1977 for the Project Arts Centre and Jim Sheridan. [3] A 2013–14 revival at the Abbey included "the Noble Call", a speech in response to the play's themes from a different public figure at each performance. [4] Panti Bliss' speech on LGBT rights in Ireland at the closing performance attracted media attention. [5] [6] Reception [ edit ]

It was one of those never-ending June evenings, with long reaches of sky from which the light seemed unable to ebb. Rashers moved slowly ... At Chandlers Court he stopped to get his breath and to look up at the sky. It was never ending, with never fading light. He thought of Death and felt it was waiting for him somewhere in the sky's deeps, cold Sergeant Death, as the song said, Death the sad smiling tyrant, the cruel remorseless old foe. The brilliant and much-loved TV series, originally screened by RTE in 1980, is fondly remembered by many but to read the book is to immerse yourself in social and historical writing akin to Chekhov and Tolstoy. Strumpet City is the great, sweeping Irish historical novel of the 20th century. Related products In 1955 James Plunkett took part in a controversial cultural visit to the Soviet Union with Antony Cronin and other writers and artists. Condemnation of the visit, led by the Catholic weekly newspaper The Standard, included criticism in the Dail, votes of censure at a number of County Councils and, most seriously, a motion to dismiss Plunkett from the union. Brendan Behan told Plunkett he deplored the witch-hunt and offered to write to the newspapers in his defense. Plunkett wrote later: “I was alarmed, knowing that public sympathy from a notorious non- conformist such as Brendan would ruin me altogether. He begged me not to worry. He intended to sign the letter (he said) Mother of Six. Then he looked down at his pint drinker’s belly which protruded for several inches between him and the counter and contemplated it for some time. "On second thoughts ' he decided at last 'maybe I should make it Mother of Seven'. “ Plunkett also recalled that whenever he was asked later what he could have learned about the Soviet Union in a four week visit, he would reply: 'Not much, but I learned a hell of a lot about Ireland'. is full of ordinary nobility – the stubborn pride of Rashers, the deep love between Mary and Fitz – and ordinary decency. Moments of unexpected kindness punctuate it. But the novel is, among others things, an anti-romantic portrait of a city mired in vicious poverty. In the period in which it unfolds, 1907 to 1914, a third of Dubliners were essentially destitute, living in single rooms in some of Europe's worst slums. These were often, in a grotesque irony, the grand former homes of the gentry. On one of the finest Georgian terraces, Henrietta Street, the 1911 census records an astonishing 835 people living in just 15 houses. One house alone, number 7, was shared by 104 people belonging to 19 families. Not surprisingly, diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery were rife: Dublin's death rate was 22 per 1,000 people; London's was 16. (From the beginning ofDavid Kelly as Rashers Tierney in RTÉ’s 1979 production of Strumpet City—‘in the personal fate of Rashers Tierney, Plunkett betrays his realisation that trade union recognition is not enough, but he remains unable to suggest any way beyond it’. (RTÉ Stills Library) Panti's rousing gay rights speech goes viral". BreakingNews.ie. 5 February 2014 . Retrieved 24 May 2015. For his career as a writer he dropped the Kelly surname, becoming simply James Plunkett, and he had a short story published in (the Dublin literary journal) The Bell in 1942. His first two efforts had been rejected, but the editor, Sean O'Faolain, encouraged him: "Why don't you write about your own experience and why don't you write on plain subjects?". He followed the advice and completed another story called The Working Class. This was published together with another story called The Mother, a title he changed from Hurler on the Ditch on O'Faolain's advice. The Bell devoted a full edition to his stories in 1954 under the title The Eagles and the Trumpets. This was later expanded and published as the short story collection The Trusting and the Maimed. It seems significant that the area Plunkett was born in, Irishtown, is bounded by both the poorer district of Ringsend and the well-to-do suburb of Sandymount – hence, perhaps, the accuracy with which Plunkett captures both ends of the social spectrum in Strumpet City is Dublin City Libraries' One City, One Book Choice for 2013". Gill Books . Retrieved 15 October 2022.