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Also by Mike McCormack
Getting it in the Head
Crowe’s Requiem
Forensic Songs
Solar Bones
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
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 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
