Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

the latter third of the 20C writing in English, by a combination of lucky accident, scheming and diabolically unfair
practices which so offend the morally spotless Saint Jeff the Inquisitor doing it for the poor deluded folk who think
Heaney might actually have a bit of talent.
By the time I reached this paragraph, I was ready to agree with anything Side said, because I was so bored:
‘It should be pointed out that defamiliarisation is dependent upon vision in order to revive our awareness of objects
that have become over-familiar through constant exposure to them. To this extent, it is an empiricist mode of writing.
Seen in this light, Heaney’s transfigurations are not as transcendental as they initially appeared to be’.
This language serves as an example of why the evidence for the prosecution is so unconvincing. Side takes the very
poetic qualities in Heaney’s word play, and attempts to hold them up to a super-rational light of linguistic inquiry
which displays none of the inventiveness and originality he seems to be arguing for.
He takes laughable liberties by inventing a self fulfilling range of traits, much as an amateur psychologist or novelist
practicing on people at bus stops would decant into their journals a whole imagined inner topography based on the
fleeting glimpse: but with the difference is that Jeff is doing it straight. No gags, where’s the wordplay that arrests the
eye from start to finish? Nowhere and nothing to detain us but academic argot and the poetic legaleeze leading
nowhere exciting or original. Insult the man, tear him down, administer a good kicking, pan the git, but show us why
and with passion, both of which are (unfortunately) not in attendance and so Side’s attempt at immortality on the
back of what the immensely more exciting live Tipperary poet Noel Sweeney terms: “a simple gentle country man”-
didn’t land a blow except to show himself as a bloke whose ambition is limited by a sense of feeling hard done by and
sublimating that into raving at the wind, his straw man here still far more interesting in both print and (one suspects)
person than his would be literary assassin.
Jeffrey Side’s Response
April 2009
Desmond, your personal attacks on me are uncalled for, and you make several assumptions about me that are wrong
(such as that I am still doing my PhD, when, in fact, I completed it some time ago). Nowhere in your response to my
Heaney article do you address the issues I raise, being more content to make sweeping statements and attempts at
wit-badly typed by the way.
You assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that my motivation for being critical of Heaney is because of a secret
admiration for him, when you say that my ‘impelling force on a human level, is the good old green eye’. But let me
assure you that this is not the case. If it were so, I would have written a criticism of Ashbery who I do admire and
who far outstrips Heaney in poetic talent and modesty. I am one of those people who when they admire someone
keep silent about it. It seems to be you who is envious of whoever it may be, as may be indicated when you say about
yourself: ‘I am a bloke in a bedsit trying to get my own laughably titled career up and running’. I am sorry you are in
this position, and I know how hard it can be getting heard, but projecting some of your insecurities onto me is hardly
called for.
Another thing you seem overly upset about is that I write in an academic register, rather than colloquially. I am sorry
for that, but it is something of a habit, and I have always considered such a register respectful to readers. I am also
sorry that you see my writing as devoid of wit or humour and that it has, as you say, ‘a notable absence of gags’
(whatever that means).
When you quote the following from my article:
Then say:
It should be pointed out that defamiliarisation is dependent upon vision in order to revive our
awareness of objects that have become over-familiar through constant exposure to them. To this extent,
it is an empiricist mode of writing. Seen in this light, Heaney’s transfigurations are not as
transcendental as they initially appeared to be.
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