Research Talk - February 1st, 2023

This research talk took place on the 1st of February and was titled "Being Present: how ideas of physical space, place & non-place were used to build the worlds of The Earlie King… and All Along The Echo".The talk was conducted by Danny Denton who is an author and a lecturer on writing at UCC.

Denton has two novels, the first is titled The Earlie King & The Kid In Yellow (2018) and the second is

titled All Along The Echo (2022). The books were the subject of the talk. The talk addressed topics such as writing and reading are and how they relate to how Denton wants to write and hopes to be read. The concepts of non-place and hauntology were also brought up as these ideas are important to Denton and his books.

Denton remarked that he's often noted as being an "experimental" writer but he prefers the term "innovative" because all writing is experimental. All authors are sitting down and conducting an experiment and seeing if something will work. An experiment is "a process you undergo to make a discovery", according to Denton. So, of course, authors are doing just that. This is exactly what writing is to Danny Denton, a process of discovery. A story blossomed from an idea about a person or a place and what would happen by putting this person in this place and what would transpire there after. Denton admits that he does as little research as possible. He says that if you're going to write about it but you only need to know enough about it to write, giving an example of his research into clowns/clowning.

The idea of "non-place" was coined by the French anthropologist Marc Augé. The idea refers to "generic places such as bus depots, train stations, and airports which, however elaborate and grandiose, do not confer a feeling of place" (Non-Place - Oxford Reference). Another example given is dual-carriageways, a place where people spend an awful lot of time in this day and age. Denton states that Augé concept refers to spaces that have a relation with the humans who are there, that have some sense of history and places that often forge an identity. Denton's interpretation of the concept stemmed from his viewing of an oil painting that made him think that every square foot of land you step upon has its own history and story. History is layered in things such as architecture or even graffiti and this is something Denton wanted to incorporate into his writing.

Denton found that he was watching places receding and non-places arising. People will forgo frequenting their local village grocer in favour of an Aldi that has it all. A drive that once took hours and toured various villages and towns now takes half the time and skips all the localities you would have previously seen. Denton gives another example of the World Cup in Qatar. The stadiums that were built solely to host the world cup matches. There is no history attached to the stadiums that stand vacant in the desert now and whose sole purpose was to host the world cup. People create places, if throngs of people frequent a non-place regularly, then they establish connections and history there.

From the work of Nicola Barker, Denton got a feeling of the "past pressing in constantly on the present" and that this has a link to place/non-place. In his book The Earlie King he says there's a feeling of trying to drown this while in All Along the Echo important moments are situated in non-places such as on dual-carriageways. An important thing for Denton and his view on places receding was the notion of voices. While living in Spain, he found himself starved of English conversation and while tuning into radio talk shows, gorging on accents and stories, he realised that these accents indicate where people are from. Places are in our voices and voices/accents might be the last indicator of places that are disappearing. His intention was not to critique non-places completely because they have positives, for example, Denton enjoys the anonymity and atmosphere of airports. This is referenced by a character in his book who describes Mahon Point Shopping Centre as the "peak of gods work on earth".

Denton remarks that a lot writing is about lost futures. In All Along the Echo, there's a feeling of nostalgia and memory as impressing upon the present all the time because there's not really anything beyond it.

We were beginning to run close to overtime at this point but there was still time for some questions from attendees. The concept of "non-place" was something I had come across before but once it's been brought to your attention you can't help but notice it all around you. Overall, it was an incredibly interesting and enlightening talk.

Bibliography

“Non-Place.” Oxford Reference, Oxford Reference, https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100237780;jsessionid=5AAF8EBFC183C30557C77B329C148AE1.