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For I Have Sinned
Colm Herron could be described as different. He gave up writing at the early age of 21 and came out of retirement over thirty years later to produce For I Have Sinned , a Joycean journey of the mind that he says wouldn’t let go of him till the last word was written. His first story-telling career began when he was seven. At that time he wrote stories on discarded exercise book sheets and sewed them together on his big sister’s sewing machine before selling them to classmates at a penny apiece. Three years later he was telling cliffhangers every Saturday to the denizens of the local gambling and snooker hall. Colm’s abiding memory is that these big wasters seemed to enjoy this weekly break from misspending their lives. When he was 14 he had a play on BBC Children’s Hour and at 21 he was bringing his short stories to Brian Friel, a near neighbour and emerging playwright. Friel told him, "This stuff’s better than what I was doing at your age. Keep it up". But Colm came away from these meetings unimpressed and remembers thinking, "This guy’s going nowhere. I don’t know why I came to him at all". Colm gave up writing and decided to live instead. Meanwhile Brian Friel took off and while his plays were showing worldwide for the next thirty years and more, a story was kicking and turning in Colm’s head. Now it’s been told. Now it can be read. Dakota
288 pages, Paperback
Published November 20, 2003
9 people want to read
About the author
Colm Herron
9 books28 followersColm Herron is the author of five novels, including For I Have Sinned and Further Adventures of James Joyce. All received high acclaim. Further Adventures of James Joyce for example was described by Morris Beja in James Joyce Quarterly as “a totally comic novel.” Mr Beja, who is professor Emeritus of literature at Ohio State University, went on to compare Colm’s writing to that of both James Joyce and Irish comic genius Flann O’Brien.
On 2 February 2011 Joyce scholar Doctor Jonathan McCreedy delivered a paper at the Joyce birthday conference in Roma Tre University. His paper was entitled Further Adventures of James Joyce: the crossroads of two reading publics [the two publics being the Joyce aficionado and what Flann O’Brien might have called the plain person out for a good read].
On 16 June 2010 as part of a weeklong Bloomsday festival Colm shared the platform with actor Barry McGovern where for six hours under a midsummer sun they did readings alternately, he from Ulysses and Colm from his own novel.
In April 2011 Colm received an invitation from Professor Anne Fogarty of UCD to attend the National Library, Dublin, on the occasion of the annual Joyce Colloquium. Here he discovered that he had two thrilling admirers, namely Fritz Senn, father figure of Joyce scholars worldwide, and Jean-Michel Rabaté the renowned, perhaps unequalled, authority on Joyce, Beckett and a host of other writers and subjects.
Colm’s novel “The Wake” is a comic/serious novel which recalls Samuel Beckett at his most seminal. It opens with an unbroken sequence lasting 22 000 words which uses the setting of a traditional Irish wake to explore the destitution of man and transform it into something like his ennoblement.
The title of Colm's latest novel "A Maiden So Bewitching" is taken from the words of an old Irish song - Courting in the Kitchen - and it tells the story of a boy called Alexis who is brought up as a girl by a deranged mother and makes his way to to manhood in a state of sexual confusion. The same kind of upbringing had befallen the great writer Ernest Hemingway who reacted by living a macho lifestyle and taking out his hatred of his mother by ill-treating most of the women in his life. Alexis reacts in very different ways, sometimes comic, sometimes sad, always appealing - and these ways often land him in serious difficulties.
From the time he sat down to write his first novel Colm has lived by the motto ‘Non-fiction tries to use fact to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.’ He later found that he was putting into practice what Nobel prize-winning South African author Nadine Gordimer called “witness literature”. In a Pen lecture given by Gordimer for International Writers' Day in 2002 Gordimer talked of the felling of the twin towers on 11 September 2001."Terror pounced from the sky and the world made witness to it," she said. She then went on to consider the media coverage of that terrible day and examined the difference between the reporter's job, the pundit's job and that of the writer. "Meaning is what cannot be reached by the immediacy of the image, the description of the sequence of events, the methodologies of expert analysis,” she said. “Kafka says the writer sees among the ruins different (and more) things than others … it [witness literature] is seeing what is really taking place."
On 2 February 2011 Joyce scholar Doctor Jonathan McCreedy delivered a paper at the Joyce birthday conference in Roma Tre University. His paper was entitled Further Adventures of James Joyce: the crossroads of two reading publics [the two publics being the Joyce aficionado and what Flann O’Brien might have called the plain person out for a good read].
On 16 June 2010 as part of a weeklong Bloomsday festival Colm shared the platform with actor Barry McGovern where for six hours under a midsummer sun they did readings alternately, he from Ulysses and Colm from his own novel.
In April 2011 Colm received an invitation from Professor Anne Fogarty of UCD to attend the National Library, Dublin, on the occasion of the annual Joyce Colloquium. Here he discovered that he had two thrilling admirers, namely Fritz Senn, father figure of Joyce scholars worldwide, and Jean-Michel Rabaté the renowned, perhaps unequalled, authority on Joyce, Beckett and a host of other writers and subjects.
Colm’s novel “The Wake” is a comic/serious novel which recalls Samuel Beckett at his most seminal. It opens with an unbroken sequence lasting 22 000 words which uses the setting of a traditional Irish wake to explore the destitution of man and transform it into something like his ennoblement.
The title of Colm's latest novel "A Maiden So Bewitching" is taken from the words of an old Irish song - Courting in the Kitchen - and it tells the story of a boy called Alexis who is brought up as a girl by a deranged mother and makes his way to to manhood in a state of sexual confusion. The same kind of upbringing had befallen the great writer Ernest Hemingway who reacted by living a macho lifestyle and taking out his hatred of his mother by ill-treating most of the women in his life. Alexis reacts in very different ways, sometimes comic, sometimes sad, always appealing - and these ways often land him in serious difficulties.
From the time he sat down to write his first novel Colm has lived by the motto ‘Non-fiction tries to use fact to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.’ He later found that he was putting into practice what Nobel prize-winning South African author Nadine Gordimer called “witness literature”. In a Pen lecture given by Gordimer for International Writers' Day in 2002 Gordimer talked of the felling of the twin towers on 11 September 2001."Terror pounced from the sky and the world made witness to it," she said. She then went on to consider the media coverage of that terrible day and examined the difference between the reporter's job, the pundit's job and that of the writer. "Meaning is what cannot be reached by the immediacy of the image, the description of the sequence of events, the methodologies of expert analysis,” she said. “Kafka says the writer sees among the ruins different (and more) things than others … it [witness literature] is seeing what is really taking place."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 30, 2015
Colm Herron, is one of Ireland's greatest living writers. The vision, comedy and poetic richness of his prose comes to life on the page and is a joy to read. His characters and themes have the intellectual depth of both James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, but Herron has his own fresh voice and way of saying it as it is, that resonates with the reader and draws you into the story until you feel that you are living it as it is happening. For I Have Sinned is a great novel from a national treasure. Highly recommended.
June 27, 2024
An Irish book that follows a very catholic Derry lad and while you could say not much happens plot wise the writing is so captivating that you can’t stop reading.
I really enjoyed the theme of human animal nature vs self control- I’ve been thinking about this in my own life lately and this book came at the perfect time. The duality of human nature and how everything is your choice and yet it is easy to feel like your choice is taken away from you by society and the expectations.
Also the standards set by religion/society are mostly unattainable for most people as we cannot restrain our animal side- should we have to ?
Thought provoking but I felt the ending was incomplete- i really thought there would be more but I like the idea that Colm couldn’t get the proper balance of animal nature vs self control and these two warring factors and it ended up tearing him apart.
I really enjoyed the theme of human animal nature vs self control- I’ve been thinking about this in my own life lately and this book came at the perfect time. The duality of human nature and how everything is your choice and yet it is easy to feel like your choice is taken away from you by society and the expectations.
Also the standards set by religion/society are mostly unattainable for most people as we cannot restrain our animal side- should we have to ?
Thought provoking but I felt the ending was incomplete- i really thought there would be more but I like the idea that Colm couldn’t get the proper balance of animal nature vs self control and these two warring factors and it ended up tearing him apart.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews