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The Many-Coloured Land: A Return to Ireland
When Christopher Koch sets out on a journey through Ireland with his friend the folksinger Brian Mooney, each is seeking an aspect of the past. Mooney is returning to a country where he spent much of his adult life, while two of Koch's great-great-grandmothers came from Ireland to Van Diemen's Land: one of them as a convict. Koch is looking for traces of the mid-nineteenth century: the time of the Famine, which flung the ancestors of so many Irish-Australians across the globe. What he finds, between meetings in pubs with folk musicians and IRA supporters, is modern Ireland. Greatly changed from the impoverished country he visited in the 1950s, it's enjoying the boom of the early twenty-first century, despite the unresolved struggle in the North. For Koch, though, the true soul of this land is to be found in the countryside, where doorways can still be seen to the different levels of the Faery Otherworld: the Many-Coloured Land. 'It is difficult to praise this book too highly. When a master like Koch writes, you expect masterly writing. In this book that is what you get.' the Canberra times 'this is one of the most accurately observed books about Ireland, written by a foreigner, that I have read ... [Koch] came well equipped to assess us, and he makes none of the blunders of the tourist-writer. He is well read in our history and literature ... He is in every way a perceptive but courteous visitor.' Irish Independent
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Christopher J. Koch
15 books52 followersChristopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. For a good deal of his life he was a broadcasting producer, working for the ABC in Sydney. He has lived and worked in London and elsewhere overseas. He has been a fulltime writer since 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his novels, many of which are translated in a number of European countries. One of his novels, The YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, was made into a film by Peter Weir and was nominated for an Academy Award. He has twice won the Miles Franklin award for fiction: for THE DOUBLEMAN and HIGHWAYS TO A WAR. In 1995 Koch was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 7, 2016
Culture and its erosion, along with poetic sensibility, are examined through descriptions of Ireland, the author's family history and his experience of the Irish heritage in Australia.
The opening chapters cover Koch's background and early life in Tasmania. One of his maternal great-great-grandmothers was an Irish Protestant of patrician Ascendancy stock (he will ultimately find her old family mansion in ruins, its name having been given to a new housing estate). Another was a convict: he recounts her passage to the new country, and her and spirited life there, and speculates on the unknown details. In the next section, he describes how the harsh legacy of Irish Catholicism flavoured his schooling with the Christian Brothers. But he was also in touch with his Protestant heritage, and later, at university, he discovers the stories of gentlemanly Irish rebels exiled to Tasmania after 1848.
He visited Ireland in his youth, but the book is mainly about his subsequent trip, in mature years, with a musician friend in the year 2000.
By this stage we have already encountered his aversion to manufactured mass culture - the "torment of piped music on buses" for example. It is most clearly epitomised in the pathetic scene with obese children during a stop-over in Dubai. "The enclosed suburban shopping malls of the West have evolved and flowered on the equator into whole hermetic citadels", a "machine-chilled hive" that "resounds with American pop music, piped through loud-speakers: here as everywhere on earth... the inescapable accompaniment to life in a public space".
Dublin on his first trip in the 1950s had been a place of "strange echoing lanes that ran into the dark nineteenth century... urchins in braces and waistcoats and quiet, mysterious little bars" - filled with the spirt of James Joyce, though this books were frowned on and hard to obtain. In today's city, he discovers that James Joyce features everywhere - in cardboard cutouts, displays with Ulysses maps of Dublin: a "tourist logo" in a city which his spirit no longer inhabits.
Traditional Ireland, especially in the west, is a besieged bastion against such cultural impoverishment. People in traditional west Ireland pubs "simply sing when the spirit moves them, and are listened to respectfully. This is how it must have been once in England and Australia, until somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century. Then it was lost, as the oral culture was lost." Such singing in an Australian bar lounge "would cause laughter or embarrassment or both."
Ireland also borders, at many points, on Faery. Sometimes even in Dublin itself. "The tide is out; black flats of mud extend below the wall, and the seagulls wheel and squabble there... birds that always seem the same birds, birds that exist outside Time."
"High, very high, Atlantic gulls wheel in the air above the ridge, and their cold, hungry cries come down to me... here are the territories of the Sidhe. Looking ahead up the road I recognise them immediately." Certain landscapes seen in Tasmania were "its heralds: its distant, imperfect variations... Now, here is the true rise, and its grass grows with an uncanny tinge of gold... Ireland has a legendary frontier. There, where the real world ends, the four other worlds begin: the world of the Sidhe, the Many-Coloured Land, the Land of Wonder, and the Land of Promise. Here at Howth, I have come to the no-man's-land between. I know better, though, than to try and cross it."
But TV, radio and technology seal this frontier, offering instead "the knowledge and pseudo-knowledge and vices and despair of Dublin, London and New York. And the Danaan voices fade."
"This post-Christian era in the West, despite its desertion of rationalism and its automatic reverence for alien religions, is not one that's open to Faery, as Yeats and his circle were; as Keats was, and Coleridge, and Shakespeare. The idea of Faery has become absurd: an infantile whimsy, of little interest even to the juveniles of the computer age, who are preoccupied instead by pseudo-legendary warriors fighting and maiming in those screen-bound computer games... Legend, exploited and reinvented in the animation studios Hollywood and Tokyo, is supremely fashionable, and makes money. But not Faery; not those spirits in trees and streams and hills that the Greeks knew, and the Elizabethans, and even the Victorians." Faery is linked to Beauty, which "as a grail to be pursued is a notion that's absent from the West's postmodern salons, and even from poetry, since Beauty and studied irony make poor companions".
Sidhe is Gaelic for both 'faery' and 'wind'. He quotes Yeats:
The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
"I'd always imagined that the Irish bogs would be dreary," he writes. "The reverse is true. They're very beautiful; or rather, they're beautiful if your spirit is of a kind to be drawn by open, lonely moorland or by waste places that retreat into inscrutable distance. Such places resonate with a high, single note of mystery: a singing that's only just audible, like wind in a wire. Their melancholy quiet is filled with waiting; with the nearby presence of something remarkable, just beyond the reach of the eye and the mind. Here on the edge of the boglands, I understand why a knowledge of the Otherworld was always so strong among the Irish." But it is "now in danger of being lost - withered and stunted by the rays of our video machines, and the babble of the global culture."
The opening chapters cover Koch's background and early life in Tasmania. One of his maternal great-great-grandmothers was an Irish Protestant of patrician Ascendancy stock (he will ultimately find her old family mansion in ruins, its name having been given to a new housing estate). Another was a convict: he recounts her passage to the new country, and her and spirited life there, and speculates on the unknown details. In the next section, he describes how the harsh legacy of Irish Catholicism flavoured his schooling with the Christian Brothers. But he was also in touch with his Protestant heritage, and later, at university, he discovers the stories of gentlemanly Irish rebels exiled to Tasmania after 1848.
He visited Ireland in his youth, but the book is mainly about his subsequent trip, in mature years, with a musician friend in the year 2000.
By this stage we have already encountered his aversion to manufactured mass culture - the "torment of piped music on buses" for example. It is most clearly epitomised in the pathetic scene with obese children during a stop-over in Dubai. "The enclosed suburban shopping malls of the West have evolved and flowered on the equator into whole hermetic citadels", a "machine-chilled hive" that "resounds with American pop music, piped through loud-speakers: here as everywhere on earth... the inescapable accompaniment to life in a public space".
Dublin on his first trip in the 1950s had been a place of "strange echoing lanes that ran into the dark nineteenth century... urchins in braces and waistcoats and quiet, mysterious little bars" - filled with the spirt of James Joyce, though this books were frowned on and hard to obtain. In today's city, he discovers that James Joyce features everywhere - in cardboard cutouts, displays with Ulysses maps of Dublin: a "tourist logo" in a city which his spirit no longer inhabits.
Traditional Ireland, especially in the west, is a besieged bastion against such cultural impoverishment. People in traditional west Ireland pubs "simply sing when the spirit moves them, and are listened to respectfully. This is how it must have been once in England and Australia, until somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century. Then it was lost, as the oral culture was lost." Such singing in an Australian bar lounge "would cause laughter or embarrassment or both."
Ireland also borders, at many points, on Faery. Sometimes even in Dublin itself. "The tide is out; black flats of mud extend below the wall, and the seagulls wheel and squabble there... birds that always seem the same birds, birds that exist outside Time."
"High, very high, Atlantic gulls wheel in the air above the ridge, and their cold, hungry cries come down to me... here are the territories of the Sidhe. Looking ahead up the road I recognise them immediately." Certain landscapes seen in Tasmania were "its heralds: its distant, imperfect variations... Now, here is the true rise, and its grass grows with an uncanny tinge of gold... Ireland has a legendary frontier. There, where the real world ends, the four other worlds begin: the world of the Sidhe, the Many-Coloured Land, the Land of Wonder, and the Land of Promise. Here at Howth, I have come to the no-man's-land between. I know better, though, than to try and cross it."
But TV, radio and technology seal this frontier, offering instead "the knowledge and pseudo-knowledge and vices and despair of Dublin, London and New York. And the Danaan voices fade."
"This post-Christian era in the West, despite its desertion of rationalism and its automatic reverence for alien religions, is not one that's open to Faery, as Yeats and his circle were; as Keats was, and Coleridge, and Shakespeare. The idea of Faery has become absurd: an infantile whimsy, of little interest even to the juveniles of the computer age, who are preoccupied instead by pseudo-legendary warriors fighting and maiming in those screen-bound computer games... Legend, exploited and reinvented in the animation studios Hollywood and Tokyo, is supremely fashionable, and makes money. But not Faery; not those spirits in trees and streams and hills that the Greeks knew, and the Elizabethans, and even the Victorians." Faery is linked to Beauty, which "as a grail to be pursued is a notion that's absent from the West's postmodern salons, and even from poetry, since Beauty and studied irony make poor companions".
Sidhe is Gaelic for both 'faery' and 'wind'. He quotes Yeats:
The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
"I'd always imagined that the Irish bogs would be dreary," he writes. "The reverse is true. They're very beautiful; or rather, they're beautiful if your spirit is of a kind to be drawn by open, lonely moorland or by waste places that retreat into inscrutable distance. Such places resonate with a high, single note of mystery: a singing that's only just audible, like wind in a wire. Their melancholy quiet is filled with waiting; with the nearby presence of something remarkable, just beyond the reach of the eye and the mind. Here on the edge of the boglands, I understand why a knowledge of the Otherworld was always so strong among the Irish." But it is "now in danger of being lost - withered and stunted by the rays of our video machines, and the babble of the global culture."
July 12, 2016
An Australian with two great-great maternal grandparents who landed up in Tasmania, Australia, is not unusual; what is unusual about this book is that is was written by Christopher Koch, considered by many to be the finest Australian writer of his generation. Koch had initially visited Ireland as a young man in 1956; when the country was by all accounts, a depressed and pretty bleak place. He returned forty-four years later when the Celtic Tiger was well and truly on the loose. This book encompasses his family genealogy, travel, memoir and Irish history. A book for those of us whose Irish ancestors were caught up in immigration; forced or otherwise. A lovely read by a brilliant writer.
June 30, 2020
During these covid times, one of our small local book store/cafes put out a call on instagram saying free delivery with orders of books (and you can add in bottles of wine) - and by the way, please support us in these difficult times. So, I trawled through their short website and picked a book about cooking (wasn't everyone cooking during lockdown?) and a book about travel (wasn't everyone feeling trapped?).
I read the short blurb, thought maybe the author was familiar to me (?), reflected that I'd like to go back to Ireland one day, but beyond that had no expectations. I haven't read the cooking book but I did start this almost as soon as it arrived.
I enjoyed this book and was impressed with Christopher Koch's prose. I might try some of his novels - although I haven't read The Year of Living Dangerously, I did see the film when it came out. In this, his family and travel memoir, his writing is clever and thoughtful, without being pompous. In the early part of the memoir, when he is reflecting on the research he did to uncover his Irish ancestors in Australia, his intelligence and investigative skills and capacity to read or imagine human behaviour from the historical records was impressive to me. He describes what he knew before he started the research, then what he found in the records, and what he read of convict history and early colonial history of Tasmania and from that he puts together a quite fascinating and sensitive portrayal of his Irish convict ancestor. He deals with the whole question of convicts in the family - were they just innocent oppressed poor people or were they criminals? And not so much from an emotional "I'll be ashamed" point of view, but from a genuine desire to understand the past, the political and social past as well as the human behaviour - like the truth matters.
His Irish background is unusual in that he has ancestors from the elite of Irish society - the Anglo-Irish landowning ruling class, and the ill educated, convict, Irish Catholic peasant class. After sketching these two aspects of his background, he describes his memories growing up with his Irish Catholic grandmother, and his education in Hobart in the 1940s and early 50s. As part of his Tasmanian background, he also references the group of Anglo-Irish "convicts" who are sent to Van Dieman's land as a result of the failed uprising of 1848 - the year of revolutions. These men were part of the Young Ireland movement and when their rebellion is crushed, they are expelled from Ireland to the colonies as political prisoners. When they arrive, they are told that if they sign a bond, saying that they will not try and escape, they may serve out their term in the community without being put in Port Arthur's notorious prison.
Then the book shifts gears as the travelogue begins. Christopher Koch and his folk singing friend Brian Mooney have crafted a journey around Ireland in the year 2000 that is sentimental and exploratory for them - it must start in the pubs of Dublin, of course, and then moves to the West Country - Galway and the very small Folk Bars of this area, then onto County Clare where they search for the crumbling remains of the mansion that once belonged to Christopher Koch's ancestors, more folk singing reunions from Brian Mooney, and finally they visit the location of the failed 1848 Young Ireland uprising. I wish I could have been with them in those bars and pubs and ancient green fields. I know I was because I read the book, but I really wish my feet had touched the sticky floors of the Guinness filled bars. I wish I'd sat in the small rooms, smoky from fires and cigarettes. I wish I'd been there when seeming strangers pulled out instruments and just started playing and singing. His writing is not in any way sentimental or saccharine. It is biting and perceptive and observant. He constantly reflects the political and social history of conflict, struggle, poverty and oppression that shaped and was still shaping the Ireland of the 2000s. It was an appreciative, atmospheric and insightful consideration of a people, its landscapes and its history.
He also told some interesting stories of his writing course at Stanford. Worth a read if you are interested in the West Coast/Ken Kesey period of creative writing.
This was a rich and thoughtful book. Highly recommend.
I read the short blurb, thought maybe the author was familiar to me (?), reflected that I'd like to go back to Ireland one day, but beyond that had no expectations. I haven't read the cooking book but I did start this almost as soon as it arrived.
I enjoyed this book and was impressed with Christopher Koch's prose. I might try some of his novels - although I haven't read The Year of Living Dangerously, I did see the film when it came out. In this, his family and travel memoir, his writing is clever and thoughtful, without being pompous. In the early part of the memoir, when he is reflecting on the research he did to uncover his Irish ancestors in Australia, his intelligence and investigative skills and capacity to read or imagine human behaviour from the historical records was impressive to me. He describes what he knew before he started the research, then what he found in the records, and what he read of convict history and early colonial history of Tasmania and from that he puts together a quite fascinating and sensitive portrayal of his Irish convict ancestor. He deals with the whole question of convicts in the family - were they just innocent oppressed poor people or were they criminals? And not so much from an emotional "I'll be ashamed" point of view, but from a genuine desire to understand the past, the political and social past as well as the human behaviour - like the truth matters.
His Irish background is unusual in that he has ancestors from the elite of Irish society - the Anglo-Irish landowning ruling class, and the ill educated, convict, Irish Catholic peasant class. After sketching these two aspects of his background, he describes his memories growing up with his Irish Catholic grandmother, and his education in Hobart in the 1940s and early 50s. As part of his Tasmanian background, he also references the group of Anglo-Irish "convicts" who are sent to Van Dieman's land as a result of the failed uprising of 1848 - the year of revolutions. These men were part of the Young Ireland movement and when their rebellion is crushed, they are expelled from Ireland to the colonies as political prisoners. When they arrive, they are told that if they sign a bond, saying that they will not try and escape, they may serve out their term in the community without being put in Port Arthur's notorious prison.
Then the book shifts gears as the travelogue begins. Christopher Koch and his folk singing friend Brian Mooney have crafted a journey around Ireland in the year 2000 that is sentimental and exploratory for them - it must start in the pubs of Dublin, of course, and then moves to the West Country - Galway and the very small Folk Bars of this area, then onto County Clare where they search for the crumbling remains of the mansion that once belonged to Christopher Koch's ancestors, more folk singing reunions from Brian Mooney, and finally they visit the location of the failed 1848 Young Ireland uprising. I wish I could have been with them in those bars and pubs and ancient green fields. I know I was because I read the book, but I really wish my feet had touched the sticky floors of the Guinness filled bars. I wish I'd sat in the small rooms, smoky from fires and cigarettes. I wish I'd been there when seeming strangers pulled out instruments and just started playing and singing. His writing is not in any way sentimental or saccharine. It is biting and perceptive and observant. He constantly reflects the political and social history of conflict, struggle, poverty and oppression that shaped and was still shaping the Ireland of the 2000s. It was an appreciative, atmospheric and insightful consideration of a people, its landscapes and its history.
He also told some interesting stories of his writing course at Stanford. Worth a read if you are interested in the West Coast/Ken Kesey period of creative writing.
This was a rich and thoughtful book. Highly recommend.
June 29, 2018
I may never get back to Ireland (only had a short five-day visit years ago) but thanks to Christopher Koch I've had the journey of a lifetime.
February 14, 2022
An enjoyable little ramble through the author‘s Irish ancestry and through the Irish countryside. I think I do need to work on my Irish geography! I didn’t really know where the places mentioned were, which impeded my understanding of the travels somewhat. Good all the same, and especially to hear what the experience was like from someone of a wholly different generation.
August 12, 2017
Book Discussion group title - probably needs to be read after Out of Ireland.
November 11, 2017
The historical first part of the book was interesting but when the author travelled to Ireland it lost momentum and became more like a diary filled with street names and places. If you know Dublin well you might enjoy it but it was so slow I couldn’t finish the book.
July 25, 2022
Excellent. Very well written. Plenty of beautiful descriptions of Irish scenery, as well as plenty of history. The first part is mainly about the author's Irish convict ancestors.
December 14, 2023
Beautifully written. Captures the longing so many of us in the diaspora feel about the land of our ancestors.
March 24, 2016
Written at the time of the boom in the Irish economy and when the political and terrorist threats where still present, this book provides Koch's journey to trace his family links between the foundation of Tasmania to the Irish potato famine. His writing is clear, witty and insightful. The book contains both historical interest into the convict era and Ireland politics as well as intriguing stories on the people who he meets. His travelling companion fills the journey in Ireland with humour and life.
A good read for those with interest in Irish and Tasmanian history.
A good read for those with interest in Irish and Tasmanian history.
July 21, 2008
So far - I'm going back to Ireland at some point and will need to re-read this book before I do.
July 14, 2011
An Australian from Van Diemen's Land travels to Ireland in search of his Irish convict roots.
January 19, 2013
Love The Clancy Brothers' music! I was interested to read about them in this book.
December 5, 2016
The best part of this book for me was the history in Tasmania. Travelling around Ireland was pretty interesting but not riveting.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews