Abstract
Following the book’s central thesis to its conclusion, Chap. 5 draws upon a wide selection of twentieth-century literary texts—both British and American—to illustrate the abiding significance of the ‘tracks’ we lay down during the ‘life’ of a relationship in the practices associated with its remembrance and memorialisation. The chapter is in three sections: the first, “The Public Highways of Loss” interrogates the hyper-mobility of the funeral procession in Christian religions; the second explores the “Im/mobilities of Grief” with reference to C.S. Lewis’s memoir A Grief Observed (2015 [1961]) and Janice Galloway’s novel The Trick is to Keep Breathing (2015 [1989]); while the third draws upon the of the Manchester Irish Writers’ Group mixed-genre anthologies (1999–2004) to demonstrate the elusiveness of “place memory” and the crucial role recursive mobilities play in sustaining our relationships with our lost loved ones.
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Notes
- 1.
Although the membership of the MIWG includes some professional writers such as Alrene Hughes and Seán Body, many are amateurs and their early publications (sponsored by Manchester-based literature development organisation, ‘Commonword’ and the Arts Council) may be seen to serve a social/community function as well as a literary one. Further details of the group, which continues to thrive, can be found at: https://www.iwhc.com/irish-writers. [Accessed 03/01/19]. The four anthologies dealt with here are : Body (1997); Hinchcliffe and Hughes (2001); Hinchcliffe and Hughes (2002); Hughes (2004). See also Pearce (2013) for further discussion of the work of this group.
- 2.
Definition of pilgrimage: see https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pilgrimage. [Accessed 03/01/19].
- 3.
Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind (2003)—and the two best-selling volumes that have followed it, The Wild Places (2007) and The Old Ways (2012a, b)—have spearheaded a new genre of autobiographically-inflected “nature” writing in which the author reflects upon the history, geography and culture of the landscapes through which he or she passes.
- 4.
The “Camino de Santiago” is one of the most popular pilgrimages in the world whose destination, Santiago de Compostela, in northern Spain may be arrived at via various routes. Although pilgrimages have been made to the shrine of St. James since the Middle Ages, its modern popularity dates from 1957 and the publication of Walter Starkie’s The Roads to Santiago (University of California Press).
- 5.
“Walking Artists Network”: see https://www.walkingartistsnetwork.org. [Accessed 04/01/19].
- 6.
For more details of Andrew Kötting and his work see: https://andrewkotting.com/. [Accessed 04/01/19].
- 7.
A book has been published of Finlay and Cockburn’s epic journey (The Road North, 2014) as well as an audio podcast available on iTunes.
- 8.
“Ambrosial Rituals”: it is understood that the practice of breaking the funeral down into a series of stages—at the home of the deceased, on the way to the church, at the church, from the church to the grave and at the graveside—dates from the eighth or ninth century A.D. and follows the teachings of Saint Ambrose.
- 9.
Corpse Roads: in Britain, these routes date from medieval times and were built to ease the transportation of the deceased from remote parishes to the church or burial ground. The Lake District hills feature many such roads which are now popular walking routes. See Alan Cleaver (2017).
- 10.
See Wordsworth, Lakeland Journals (1994, 41) for an account of the Wordsworths’ return visit to a favourite white foxglove.
- 11.
- 12.
Janice Galloway’s The Trick Is to Keep Breathing was published to much critical acclaim in 1989 and won the MIND/Allen award for the best novel about mental health issues. Interviews with the author have revealed that the story was, in part, based on her personal experience and some of the characters in the text are recognisable in her recent autobiographies This is Not About Me (2009) and All Made Up (2012). The book was also made into a successful stage play which premiered at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow in 1995.
- 13.
This is evidently an allusion to the “bargaining” phase of the Kubler-Ross model of grief as five stages (see Kubler-Ross 2014).
- 14.
Several of the stories in Galloway’s Blood (1992) are clearly “off-cuts” from The Trick is to Keep Breathing (1989) including “Nightdriving” which features scenarios involving both Michael and David.
- 15.
Clare Holdsworth is currently working on a Leverhulme funded project on family mobilities and temporalities (“The Social Life of Busyness in an Age of De-acceleration”) which makes use of more recent MO materials . See Holdsworth 2019 [in press].
- 16.
“Collective Memory”: this concept derives from the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs and is generally understood to refer to the way in which groups share the same bank of memories some of which have been passed down from previous generations or are known through the group’s cultural history.
- 17.
“Transcendental Reduction ”: the term commonly used to account for Husserl’s move from an insistence on ‘eidetic’ perception to a focus on the ‘essential structures’ the phenomenon reveals; this transcendental move—from the phenomenon in its ‘thingness’ to the phenomenon in its ‘essence’—breaks faith with what many phenomenologists, even today, see as the benchmark of their discipline: i.e., “an unprejudiced descriptive study of whatever presents itself to consciousness ” (Moran and Mooney 2002, 2 [my italics]).
- 18.
Further information about the literature development organisation “Commonword” can be found at: https://www.cultureword.org.uk. [Accessed 05/01/19].
- 19.
The “Moving Manchester” project is archived at: https://www.transculturalwriting.com and includes “Writers Gallery” which includes the profiles of some of the MIWG authors. [Accessed 05/01/19].
- 20.
“Troubles ”: the euphemism which refers to the conflict (c.1968–1998) which was waged between the nationalists/Republicans and Unionists (supported by the British government) concerning the constitutional future of Northern Ireland; the Nationalists—then as now—campaigned for a ‘united’ Ireland while the (Protestant) Unionists want the province to remain part of the United Kingdom. The end date—1998 (which refers to the “Good Friday” agreement) remains notional since both groups continue to campaign for their causes. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/troubles. [Accessed 05/01/19].
- 21.
Stranraer crossing: until 2011, Stranraer was the main ferry port in the UK for travel to Northern Ireland from Scotland and the North of England, with a crossing-time of 5–6 hours. Since 2011, the ferry terminal has been based at nearby Cairnyan and the new crossing time is just 2 hours.
- 22.
“Foot stepping”: a term widely used by publishers to describe the written adventures of authors who travel in the footsteps of others who preceded them. ‘Foot stepping’ became especially popular in the UK in the early nineteenth century when the Romantic poets and others began touring the Highlands of Scotland in the footsteps of Boswell and Johnson (who themselves followed earlier published travelogues dating back to the seventeenth-century).
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Pearce, L. (2019). Pilgrimage: The Mobilities of Mourning. In: Mobility, Memory and the Lifecourse in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23910-7_5
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