Transit

by Bernard Share

Two men meet in an airport men's room ("Excuse me. But you're pissing on my foot.") sometime in the early 1990s in the Arabian Gulf. From this meeting, they proceed to get a bit drunk on bad liquor, discover a magical hidden room, get transported back to the Ireland of the late 1940s and '50s, rummage through memories of their days at Trinity College (though they apparently never knew each other), and fumble about like Laurel and Hardy trying to make a degree of sense of what's happening (or did happen) to them. As oblique and deliciously Irish as Joyce and Beckett, and drawing upon the time warps of Flann O'Brien, Bernard Share has composed an hallucinatory and comic romp through Ireland past and present.

Genres: Ireland, Fiction, Novels

135 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2009

About the author

A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Bernard Share has taught English Literature in Australia and edited Books Ireland and CARA, the inflight magazine of Aer Lingus. He has written extensively on language and Irish social history and the third edition of his dictionary of slang and colloquial English in Ireland, Slanguage, was published recently. He lives in Co. Kildare.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 1 out of 5]

Transit is a dire absurd farce from the genius behind Inish. Unlike that book (written in 1966), this one (written in 2009 at the insistence of Dalkey Archive editors, methinks) lacks the same alchemical linguistic brilliance, the rhythmic repetitions and Martian hilarity of his first book.

The same tone of utter chaos reigns, but the humour is random and parochial, the time-leap techniques boring and monotonous. It’s like a cross between Vonnegut’s Timequake and those scenes in Being John Malkovich where Malk is chasing John Cusack through his subconscious. "Little Johnny Malk-a-pee!" The allusions to Flann O’Brien adds pain to a book that groans with misfiring puns and blink-eyed humour that sits gurning on the page like a dead sausage.

Read Inish instead. ‘Tis really rather wonderful.

[Nathanimal · Rating 4 out of 5]

"'Hello,' said a pale, decadent-looking young man, rather drunk, 'isn't this a repulsive party?' And passed on."

See, here's where the stars thing gets me into trouble. Was this book as good as Inish? No. Inish was a complex pleasure, a more determinedly experimental work. Nouveau O'Roman if you will. (Don't forget you read that here!) Who knows, maybe when I read Inish again it'll sprout another star, but four stars felt appropriate for Inish after my initial read — a great book, but ultimately an homage, and at times a bit needlessly esoteric, however much I like homages and esoterica.

So, while admitting that Transit wasn't as "good" as Inish, did I, according to goodreads' oppressive star system, "really like" it? Yes. Mightily. Transit is just good fun. Comparing the two novels is like comparing wine and soda pop. But I really like soda pop sometimes.

What I adore about Bernard Share, whether we're talking young Bernard Share from the 60s or the Bernard Share of today, are his gleeful, clangorous, nimble, intoxicated sentences. You'll want a dictionary at your side, like a six-shooter at the OK Corral. Not because you have to, but because you'll want to; you'll want to see how Bernard plays with the multiple meanings and etymology of words. You'll learn little gems like "troilism," as in Helen of Troilism. I'm flat out addicted to Share's drunken mixture of high diction and low slang, the kind of mock heroicism of Ulysses and Don Quixote. He's like Dr. Seuss for adults. Slow down and wrap your tongue around this guy.

"It came towards them in a gentle glide as they stood waiting to cross the road by Tom Moore, a number 15 tram of the open-ended balcony type, its bell clanging, trolley hissing gently on the wire." (p. 54)

"An inbound number 8 swayed towards them, enclosed luxury car, passed with a gentle susurration of the trolley and a lightly oiled eddy of wind." (p. 93)

Notice the beautiful language dedicated to trolleys in this novel, while time travel is relegated to the "jacks" (the men's bathroom). Time travel is silent, therefore trivial, a joke. The old Dublin trolleys, however, are loud, rattling things, full of music. That pining for old Dublin music — speech — seems to be the secret heart of Transit.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it was funny, it was very funny, with sharp banter and a brisk pace - a bit At Swim Two Birds meets Waiting For Godot meets The Gingerman. Some of the exchanges between the two protagonists became funnier with each line, as they took on double- and triple-meanings. And there are scenes that had me laughing out loud and thinking at once, which is when I like comedy best. But so much of the novel felt dependent on specific, insider knowledge not just of Dublin but Dublin of a specific time and background that there were pages at a time that went right over my head, so it was hard to get as fully engrossed in the book as I wanted to.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming...

[Justinia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't really have enough knowledge of the Irish collegiate experience to understand the context of the story, but it was an interesting, if brief, read.