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John McGahern
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The Pornographer Paperback – January 31, 2006

by John McGahern (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 67 ratings
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One of the preeminent writers of our time, John McGahern has captivated readers with such poignant and heart-wrenching novels as Amongst Women and The Dark.

In The Pornographer, Michael creates an ideal world of sex as a writer of pornographic fiction, while he bungles every phase of his entanglement with an older woman who has the misfortune to fall in love with him. But his insensitivity to this love is in direct contrast to the tenderness with which he attempts to make his aunt's slow death in a hospital tolerable. Everywhere in this rich novel is the drama of opposites, but above all, sex and death are never far from each other.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  4. Publication date
    January 31, 2006
  5. Reading age
    18 years and up
  6. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.47 x 7.72 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    014027796X
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0140277968
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A marvelous novel, deep, moving, rich and resonant, about love, lust, life and death." —Sunday Express

"An admirable book, one of the finest I have read for a long time...I cannot recommend Mr. McGahern too strongly." —The Sunday Telegraph

About the Author

John McGahern was born in Dublin and brought up in the west of Ireland. He is the author of three collections of short stories and six novels, including Amongst Women, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (January 31, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014027796X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140277968
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.47 x 7.72 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 67 ratings

About the author

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John McGahern

John McGahern

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
67 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

A Rochester
5.0 out of 5 stars McGahern is an exceptional writer.
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2015
I like books like this --no high adventure just an everyday situation that
the writer explores in-depth. McGahern is an exceptional writer. He is much respected
and honored in his home country of Ireland. It is skill to be able to hold a readers
attention for 200+ pages with no real adventure. We are treated to interesting characters,
and a complete understanding of what goes on in their heads. There are numerous people
in this story. The young writer who supports himself successfully writing
about sex is the narrator. In addition there is his a sick aunt, his two uncles, his editor and
his one night stands. The plot thickens when one of his partners becomes pregnant and also
falls in love with him. Its a sad situation because he does not even like her. It is a reading
treat to see adoration and complete indifference.
One person found this helpful
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Dorothea
4.0 out of 5 stars The good and courageous take the real beating
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2019
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The quality of the writing, so very Irish but never too much. The dying Aunt, so spunky,gritty,self-aware and yet never
too hard on feckless husband , the pornographer himself a craven man who hates responsabilities and writes lurid
and very boring porn to pay his bills, behaves awfully to a beautiful,loving girl and gets roughed up for his shiftiness.
The only objection to this otherwise admirable novel is the amount of porn we have to absorb. The ballrooms, the drink, the smoke and the atmosphere is so convincing you can almost dive in it. The porn impresario is an elegant,
morally sane gentleman of great charm. He gives the pornographer a piece of his mind, and,do we agree.
Recommended to adults an, elegant morality tale. Of human bondage.Indeed.
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K.N.R.
3.0 out of 5 stars Rural Ireland
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2016
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John McGahern has a very good eye for characters. Whether they be sickly aunts or porn-writing nephews, he creates them and thoroughly goes into them. This novel is about lust and love; love for an aunt, lust for a middle-aged woman. And although the plot may seem banal, McGahern uses these clichés to make his point all the more poignant: people will be people. The very fact that the pornographer cannot love but only lust, is a bit trite, yet this is precisely used to point out that he has turned away from love because of his past. Only faint glimpses of who his "true" love was appear, nothing concrete or intruding. There is also a play on two woman, the aunt and the lover. However these two parts of his, the pornographer's, life are somewhat weakly tided together. The fact that he might or might not (at the end) marry his lover is based on the very fact of the aunt's pending demise. The two lives are meant to mirror or parallel one another, and they do...mostly. But McGahern, as always, delivers a very quite, intense novel with delicate diction and beautiful thoughts and images. Unlike The Dark, this novel does not delve into a fast-pace plot; it is more in the vein of That They May Face The Rising Sun in which characters are front-and-center.
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Jason Emerson
5.0 out of 5 stars A vivid and textured novel
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2006
The Pornographer is a complex novel, wonderfully vivid and textured in its mining of the human condition. It is a disturbing and yet calming warm bath of words, swirling with components of love, lust, loss, disenchantment, duty, and denial. Above all, however, I'd say this is a novel about growth.

Michael is a young man who writes pornography for a living, although he doesn't particularly enjoy the writing. His life experiences and trysts, however, mirror his stories in their shallow sex-based origins. He meets 37 year-old virgin Josephine, and their affair, in which she craves and he obliges sex every time they meet, mirrors Michael's stories. But Michael's feelings for Josephine do not run beyond the physical, and when she gets pregnant, his apathy and life choices are put to the test.

The great irony and juxtaposition of the work is that in the midst if Michael's indifference to Josephine and the child she carries is his devotion to his dying aunt, whom he visits every week. Michael's visits and emotional pain are suffused with a felicity that opposes his personal life. While he deals with his aunt's dying, he also faces the growth of a new life with his love child, and the possibility of a new life as a married father. Despite his apathy, love slowly burgeons in Michael's life from an unexpected source, showing him that loss can lead to discovery and growth. Michael learns he must resurrect the corpse of his tattered heart, shattered by lost love, and allow it to love again.

McGahern's writing is as resonant and stirring as always, proving again his mastery of English prose. He deals with the realities of life, its disappointments and hardships, in a way that a great novel should: without pulling any punches or emotions, but leading you deftly by the hand into a world rich in meaning, emotion and irony. Despite the wonderful content, the great allure of McGahern's writing is its poeticality. It lulls you into another reality, enmeshing you in its fictional world in so smooth and comforting a way that you must shake your head and remind yourself where you are every time you close the pages.
19 people found this helpful
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A Reader
2.0 out of 5 stars Too dark, too unsympathetic, and all women are victims
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2016
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I've been on a John McGahern bent recently, having just finished "Amongst Women" and the even more effective "The Dark." McGahern was a tremendous writer, and I believe most modern Irish authors are heavily influenced by him. But "The Pornographer" is not a successful book, to me. It's even darker than "The Dark," with a terribly unsympathetic, irredeemable narrator, whose icy inability to love, or even genuinely care for other people makes reading this something of a torture. As usual, the worst of McGahern is better than the best of a lot of writers, but I found myself put off by the endless cruelty in this book (the ending, in which the narrator decides he might give marriage a go, does not redeem him, for me.) Also, the female characters all suffer, and they're all victims, which grows tiresome. I don't care about graphic sex in a book, but if you do you might want to skip this. (The title might scare those readers away anyway though, obviously. :)
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Top reviews from other countries

margaret
5.0 out of 5 stars John McGahern
Reviewed in Canada on November 4, 2015
Verified Purchase
John McGahern never disappoints in any of his works, both as a young writer and through his career until his death. Excellent stories.
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