A true son of the country

IN ‘Of One Mind’, one of the short stories in Mike McCormack’s new collection, Forensic Songs, the protagonist describes a ‘weightlessness’ that he has come to experience in his everyday life, a sense of being “at a remove, standing at arm’s length from myself.”

This feeling of being strangely outside oneself is one common to McCormack’s characters and such weightlessness seems to guide McCormack as a writer, 1too. The Mayo native hovers in fascination above the gaps in our understanding of ourselves and our world. What distinguishes his style is the ease with which he can apply this weird state of mind to multiple genres. His absorbing tales – so frequently set in the West Mayo countryside he grew up in – might resemble a John McGahern snapshot of rural life one minute, a techno-parable by JG Ballard the next.

“For better or for worse I think of myself as a writer of ideas,” says McCormack. “In the book there are all sorts of ruminations on life, the universe, and the whole damned thing. But that’s just one pole. There are also stories that are down-home realism. There are pieces that are genre-driven but also steeped in popular culture. The book is full of references to video games, TV programmes and country-and-western songs. I think that’s just the way the brain of my generation works. We’re steeped in popular culture. So I look at television and I read Martin Heidegger. My imagination is strung between those two poles.”