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The Good & The Dead
Provocations concerning wonderful books.
Brian Friel: "... A Saucer of Larks is an almost forgotten gem from more than forty years ago. Faith Healer and Translations alone make him Ireland's greatest living playwright." (read more)
Samuel Beckett: " ... 'the sun rose, having no alternative, upon the nothing new.' (Murphy) ... the comic and stoic spirit, the ruthless honesty, the pitiless vision of the pitiful, and the lifelong struggle with language ... Beckett has no master. Many will imitate but none will follow ..." (read more)
Derek Mahon: " ... five star poet and playwright of the first water, many of his poems are by now canonical ... The Forger, The Hunt by Night, A Disused Shed, Borinage ... a measured music alleviates the striving voices ..." (read more)
Flann O'Brien: "Joyce said he had the true comic spirit and, as always, Joyce was right. Hard- drinking, hard-working, fierce penman and fierce scholar, The Third Policeman knocks the stuffing out of literary categories ..." (read more)
John Banville: "Among living Irish writers, Banville is outstanding and fearless. At a time when it was neither popular nor profitable, he wrote Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter ... no fear of ideas or of metaphysics ..." (read more)
Borges: " ... the author of Labyrinths inhabits the labyrinth of European literature like one of his own immortals, like a blind god, ever elusive, omnipresent. Of this latter-day Homer one asks - did he ever really exist? And are not those fabulations, those paradoxical fictions, those self-negating literary trapeze acts - are they not denials of the very possibility of Borges?" (read more)
Calvino: "Invisible Cities remains his most remarkable work, terrifying in its conceits, precise and economic in its means ... it is not a novel at all but the delicious work of a true fictionist." (read more)
Bruno Schulz: "... a true baroque master of the marvellous, his fictions haunt the ghostly border between dream and memory ... an imagination of such power that can be compared with only the very greatest of writers ... Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium are fabulous works of literary magic ..." (read more)
Emile Cioran: "... for his relentless refusal of the comforts of illusion and self delusion, Cioran cannot be surpassed. A Short History of Decay is a delicious purgative for the overweight soul ..." (read more)
Mircea Eliade: "... the great scholar of religion and myth, his explorations of archaic 'realities' ... The Myth of the Eternal Return and Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy regenerate the heart sickened by history ..." (read more)
Danilo Kis: "... among the dead and the good, Kis's Garden Ashes is a minor masterpiece à la Schulz, of mad fathers and madder undertakings which defy sense and logic but which are introverted and parabolic metaphors of the intricate mechanism of consciousness and yes, of that other trick - existence." (read more)
"...spectacularly original..."
"...a work of genius..."
"...a hilarious masterpiece..."
"...authentically poetic..."
"...powerful and resonant..."
"...a brilliant tour-de-force..."
"...in the top category..."
"...a major literary talent..."
"...a word magician..."
"...exceptional literary talent..."
"...genuine artistic quality..."
Emile Cioran.
Paul R. Hyde at The Joyce Museum, Zurich
Paul R. Hyde comes from a musical family from County Donegal and for many years he played the uillean pipes. After studies in literature and philosophy at Edinburgh University, he began to publish fiction in outlets such as The Irish Press, The Scotsman, Encounter, The Literary Review, Wascana Review, Cencrastus, and in Penguin Firebird and Collins Stories anthologies. His writing has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. In the early 80s he won the prestigious Hennessey Literary Award in Dublin. His first book appeared in 1984 and was winner of a Book of the Year Arts Council Award. This was followed by two Writers' Bursaries.
In 1986 the author moved to Italy to take up a teaching post at Verona University. In the mid 90s he published two non-fiction commercial books under a pseudonym. At present he is working on another novel.
Paul R. Hyde's books are published by Rathina Press and are available worldwide from Amazon, Booksurge and other online booksellers.
Comment on Starkey
"I was swept away by the cornucopia of the writer's imagination, his intoxicating use of words, the imperceptibility of the gap between ideas and their expression. Almost every page teems with passages worthy of quotation ... The rich extravagance of the narrative, the ease with which every perception of the characters' senses is transformed into words rather than translated by them place this book in the top category. Both subject and style are riveting and show the author to be a major literary talent."
Rayne Arnaud - author & reviewer
"I did read Starkey with pleasure."
Alasdair Gray
"...very well written..."
John McGahern
"Starkey ... is carried forward on a torrent of language ... casting a permanent spell over the proceedings ... memorable passages abound on every page. ... this exceptional literary talent ... Paul Hyde is a word magician whose repertoire includes a range of styles from the intellectual to the poetic ... [he] seems able to employ his talents upon several planes simultaneously... Starkey deserves to be read for the author's command of language ... a quite exceptional piece of writing."
Elton O'Keeffe - author & reviewer
"... an intelligent and highly imaginative novel ... I was intrigued by the extraordinary cast of characters ..."
Carole Welch - Sceptre
"... certainly left an impression on me ... The world of The Village and the Immortals is fantastically well realised ... some time since I have entered into a fictional world that so confidently and dismissively transcends realistic conventions ... I did enjoy it ..."
Lee Brackstone - Faber & Faber
"... an attractive richness and wealth of canvas here ... plenty of imaginative range ... a highly readable novel."
Georgina Hawtrey-Woore - HarperCollins
"I enjoyed reading this unusual novel... a fresh and confident voice which really lifts the words from the page ..."
Maria Rejt - Picador
"I liked much about the novel and the wild world it creates."
Alison Samuel - Chatto & Windus
"... has considerable merit ... the style is very appealing ..."
Tricia Jackson - Pan Macmillan
" ... full of energy and invention ..."
Janice Brent - Review:Headline
"A brilliant tour-de-force. The book is of such a uniform excellence that to single out individual passages would be unnecessary. Works such as 'Starkey' are important because they expand the boundaries of what is possible in literature - and therefore in thought itself. That all this was accomplished in a light and whimsical manner is a great achievement. A highly original work ... an excellent book."
Peter Preston - author & reviewer
"... as though you are reading poetry at every line... I like that kind of experience ... the surreal nature, multidimensionality and sheer strangeness of your book is not like anyone at all. The ingeniousness of many of the ideas is absorbing."
Susan Morris - reader
"I enjoyed it very much ..."
Michael Mitchell - Dedalus Books
"... just completed a third reading of Starkey and must say that I consider it a work of
genius; it has only to be better known for this to be recognized. What I saw in the first
place was the beauty of the prose; your prose has a hypnotic quality in common with
Mr Joyce ... there are many passages one wants to return to because one doesn't want them
to stop ... Starkey has given me great pleasure and I shall recommend it to my friends."
Robert Nye
"... a tour de force with many passages of splendid virtuoso writing ... questions the nature of reality
with immense originality and verve. Starkey never failed to absorb me and set me thinking."
John Herdman
Paul R. Hyde thanks The Estate of René Magritte, Paris, for permission to reproduce René Magritte's Time Transfigured on the front cover of Starkey.
Comment on The Second Death of Hamlet
"It's a delight, full of spirited invention and great style ... splendidly imaginative."
David Marcus - former Literary Editor of The Irish Press
"The quirky references ... had me laughing out loud ... as with the stories of Joyce and Borges, originality is central ... these stories are actually wittier than either ... The plotting, the humour ... and 'transcendence' of the writing does indeed place the collection among important and original work elsewhere."
Peter Preston - author & reviewer
"... this most unusual book. Constantly inventive and elusive, it defies definition by genre or type and seems to inhabit an imagined landscape of its own making. It's a powerful and resonant piece of work."
Lee Brackstone - Faber & Faber
"It is the unique combination of thought and feeling which is outstanding. The author is a master of language ... the combination of dream and reality, life and literature, madness and sanity mark out this collection as a work of genuine artistic quality."
Elton O'Keeffe - author & reviewer
"Your stories are authentically poetic ... you write about things that have obsessed true poets
since the game began - love and death and dreams and waking. I finished The Second Death of Hamlet,
slowing myself towards the end so that the spell might last longer and then revisiting the
earlier ones to see how the music started. Shakespeare's Hands is very witty and memorable ... The Second Death of Hamlet is just as good and, of course, uproarious ... and curiously moving in a way that is all your own ... "
Robert Nye
"The Second Death of Hamlet is a veritable cornucopia - the sort of literary experience which one has
become used to thinking a thing of the past but is still possible if luck places it in one's path.
The title story is a hilarious masterpiece. 'Dead Hours' I found particularly moving: the
writing of the final pages is as beautiful and poignant as that of 'The Dead'.
Equally poignant and daringly inventive is 'The Other'. All the pieces have wonderful things in
them and the whole, diverse and rich as it is, is held together by the sense of dream leading us
into another take on reality."
John Herdman
Paul R. Hyde thanks Pierre Le Brocquy (Dublin) for permission to reproduce Louis Le Brocquy's Image of Shakespeare (1980) on the front cover of The Second Death of Hamlet.
Comment on The Dark Room
"The characters and plot are entirely original ... every person's life and emotions are unique ... a moving and convincing account of doomed love ..."
Peter Preston - author & reviewer
Paul R. Hyde thanks Robert Gurbo, Curator of The André Kertesz Foundation, New York for permission to reproduce André Kertesz's Gypsy Children, Esztergom 1917 on the front cover of The Dark Room.
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