Ivor Nicholson came for tea at 5.15, and wanted six more articles for Hearsts: but only the English rights thereof. So I refused. I said I would write for 2s. a word and return to Hearsts all I received by selling the articles on my own in the U.S.A. It wasn't what he was expecting!
The Daily News rang up to say that Hardy was dead, and would I say something. I wouldn't. But I decided that I must get up early tomorrow morning, and write a Standard article on Hardy to take the place of the one on Gilbert Murray. This news has affected me. I liked Hardy and he was really the last link with a former generation of writers.
Last evening in bed I finished an interesting book titled "The History of Loneliness", by John Boyne, a writer not previously known to me. The subject is corruption in the Catholic Church in Ireland, and specifically the covering-up of child sexual abuse by priests. It takes the form of a first person narrative by one Odran Yates, himself a priest in his sixties. Giving an account of incidents in his life he exposes religious hypocricy, abuse of power, cultural inertia and much more. All culminating in admission of his own culpability as a man who did nothing. And we as readers realise, as Yates does himself, that his life has been a waste and a sham. Depressing. Boyne is excellent at dialogue, conveying a real sense of the tensions and evasions that litter discourse. I particularly enjoyed his account of a radio interview of an Irish Cardinal. He mistakenly, in my view, inserts an episode where Yates goes to Rome and works for the Pope which does nothing to take the story forward. I suppose the intention was to say that corruption in the Catholic Church is widespread and systemic. Overall this is a powerful piece of writing which should probably be required reading in theological colleges everywhere. The good news seems to be that Irish society has moved on from its subservience to the Church. I would thank God for that if I believed in Him!
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