Notes from a Coma. Mike McCormack

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Notes from a Coma - Mike  McCormack Canons

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      Also by Mike McCormack

       Getting it in the Head

       Crowe’s Requiem

       Forensic Songs

       Solar Bones

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      This Canons edition published in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd,

      14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

      First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, London, 2005

       www.canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © Mike McCormack, 2005

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 141 9

      eISBN 978 1 78689 142 6

       When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.

      —David Hume

       My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

      —Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony

      Contents

       Notes from a Coma

       Frank Lally

       Anthony O’Malley

       Frank Lally

       Gerard Fallon

       Sarah Nevin

       Kevin Barret TD

       Sarah Nevin

       Gerard Fallon

       Anthony O’Malley

       Sarah Nevin

       Kevin Barret TD

       Sarah Nevin

       Anthony O’Malley

       Sarah Nevin

       Anthony O’Malley

       Sarah Nevin

       Anthony O’Malley

       Kevin Barret TD

       Gerard Fallon

       Kevin Barret TD

       Sarah Nevin

      NOTES FROM A COMA1

      ________________

       Event Horizon

      1 . . . because he is now both stimulus and qualia. His name, blurting through the nation’s print and electronic media, is also one of those synapses at which the nation’s consciousness forms itself. Firing in debate and opinion polls, across editorial maunderings and the antiphonal call-and-response formats of radio phone-ins, his suspended mind is one of those loci at which the nation’s consciousness knows itself and knows itself knowing itself . . .

      His existence—it is not too strong a word—is now a continuous incident report. Each day, the newspaper of record carries an abstract of his EEG tracings across a six-column spread inside the front page. All over the country children above and below the age of reason chart the peaks and troughs of his delta waves across the walls of their classrooms. Cast out over the earth’s cortex also a continuous stream of his MRI and EEG tracings. They have the appearance of meteorological reports from another star—troughs and banks of high pressure, depressions and tidal movements. Electronically flayed, these images are drawn down to our bedrooms and workstations, pegged out to dry across screens and monitors. Bootlegged already by the fashion and design industry they are now protected by retroactive copyright and patent legislation; the author has asserted his moral right . . .

      He evokes a response and this is to our credit. Contrary to ongoing analysis the nation’s compassion reflex has not been habituated. There is real concern, a genuine anxiety beyond the compassion flash fires of the latest crisis de jour. He touches our soul and, in a happy congruence of myth and politics, the public interest is now of interest to the public. We are not entirely mindful of him but we do bear him in mind . . .

      FRANK LALLY

      My heart went out to Anthony that day, that’s no lie. Nearly twenty years ago now but I remember it like it was last week.

      It was about two o’clock in the afternoon when the cars and the cattle truck came up the road. I followed them up and when I got to the yard the truck had reversed into the barn door and the vet and the bailiffs were already loading up the herd. Anthony was standing at the back of the house with the collar pulled up around his ears. I went over and stood beside him and said nothing. What could I say?1

      A dirty day it was too, pissing rain

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