With two years on the New York Times bestseller list and over five million copies in print, Leon Uris’s Trinity is probably the biggest-selling novel ever written about Ireland and the Irish struggle. Now, almost twenty years later, Uris returns to Ireland with Redemption (Harper Collins, $25, 848p), a sequel to Trinity which continues the sagas of the Larkin and Weed-Hubble families through another generation of war and the struggle for Irish freedom.
Colin Lacey talked to the author in New York in July, 1995.
Irish America: You’ve written about some of the most significant struggles of the 20th century, including WWII, Israel, and Palestine. What prompted you to write about Ireland?
Leon Uris: I actually fell into Ireland. In the early 1970s, I was going around the world with my son, researching a book about someone who escapes from Russia to Afghanistan. My wife, who was ill and needed to be able to reach a neurosurgeon, was unable to travel any further than Turkey, and she went to Ireland while we continued on. I got a letter from her when I was in, of all places, Kabul [Pakistan], about what she had found there, and once you take the bait with Ireland, you’re hooked. The Irish struggle is identified with by so many around the world — the same way non-Jews identify with the Exodus — and I think that what happened there is symbolic of what took place in the 20th century as a whole; the beginning of the end of colonialism. Because as small as the Easter Rising was in the context of the World Wars and other events of the century, it was monumental in what man had to say about his freedom — that is, the realization that freedom is not going to be given to you, it has to be earned.
But I don’t know exactly what the attraction to Ireland is. I feel terribly comfortable writing with an Irish brogue — maybe it’s because I have similar thought processes to the Irish — and I feel more at home there than in any place outside the U.S.
IA: But why, of all your novels, did you decide to return to territory you had already examined by writing Redemption?
Uris: Well, it’s been twenty years since I wrote Trinity, so obviously I didn’t plan it! The truth is, it was a very pragmatic decision. I had a contract with a new publisher to write a book about Germany, but events there overtook what I was going to write about. I really didn’t want to go back there, so I had to come up with an idea for a book pronto. Now, originally, there had always been a discussion as to when Trinity should end — I had enough for a four-volume book, but I opted to write about what I call Ireland’s “heroic period,” from the turn of the century to the Easter Rising in 1916. I never did tie up the Rising, though; I really just glanced over it, and it’s something I wanted to look at again. But that’s not to say that Redemption is specifically about the Easter Rising — it’s really about the relationships between certain people, which is something of a career advancement for me!
IA: In Trinity, you suggest that violent struggle is not only legitimate and warranted, but that it is perhaps the only response to oppression. Has your position changed since you wrote that?
Uris: We have seen some recent examples of change without violence — the fall of the Soviet Empire, for example, came with almost no violence, but it was so corrupt it just collapsed. Normally, when a small people are governed by a larger people, they’re not granted independence unless they fight for it, and unless there’s a fierce struggle for it. It really goes with human rights, doesn’t it?
IA: That book took a rather bleak view of Ireland’s prospects for the future — the last lines of the novel were,”…the sorrows and the troubles have never left that tragic, lovely land. For, you see, in Ireland there is no future, only the past happening over and again.” Has your perspective changed?
Uris: I stole those words from Eugene O’Neill, of course, but I still don’t see any fundamental change in political attitudes. What is going on now is a lot of very, very interesting talk, and the characters are shifting a little bit to the right or left and trying different things, and what was once unreasonable to say is now reasonable. But they’re still missing the guts of the matter, and that hasn’t changed.
IA: So despite developments in Ireland over the last year, you remain pessimistic about the future?
Uris: I don’t want to get into that in depth, but I don’t see any political will — particularly in the South of Ireland — that says ‘this is worth fighting for,’ and with all the talks, I think we’re essentially still at square one, particularly with the Protestant position. In most countries, sons don’t follow their fathers, but when you go to Northern Ireland and see the young people on June 12 marching in their bowler hats and umbrellas, you realize [the Unionist position] is something that runs very, very deep. But if we are going to bring about peace in Ireland, economic equality has got to come before a political settlement. There has to be an economic injection, not only into Ulster, but into the Republic as well. I understand that things are going well in Ireland at the moment, but the Catholic population in the North has to be reassured that they are getting a fair deal. Economic security is the only thing that is going to allow a free job market and a free market in the government work place, which is something the Protestants are holding up. The flip side of this is, of course, what the hell does the Republic want with these people in the Dublin parliament anyway? — they would wreck it. It’s a pessimistic view, yes, but you’ll notice that the hero of Trinity, Liam Larkin, simply goes to his death on purpose, knowing that a united Ireland is a myth.
IA: Before we leave Trinity, wasn’t a stage version being discussed at one point?
Uris: Well, it’s taken six years, a lot of hard work, and a lot of workshops, but yes, there is a play. It’s down to three hours now, which is manageable, and God willing, we’ll have it produced in 1996 in a regional theater somewhere, and eventually on Broadway, I hope.
IA: Let’s talk about the new novel for a moment – did you approach Redemption from a different viewpoint to that of Trinity?
Uris: I didn’t approach it from a particular viewpoint, I approached it by finding out who was still alive after the last book ended! That’s the only thing I have in common with Shakespeare — we both leave a lot of dead people on the field! [laughs] Actually, what I did in the first half of Redemption was to use a lot of material directly out of Trinity, and then when I finished that section, I pulled it all out and rewrote it from a different point of view, patching it together, and I think — I hope — the ship holds together.
IA: What were you trying to achieve with a sequel?
Uris: Well, the aftermath of the 1916 Rising was the watershed in the Irish struggle against Britain and I wanted to understand myself not so much what happened on the streets then — that has been covered so thoroughly, and it really wasn’t all that exciting to me — but how this great mistake [the execution of the leaders of the Rising] aroused a sleeping, docile people. These were men with no axe to grind; they were poets and writers, and you just don’t take men and execute them like that. I think, too, that the execution of Roger Casement was very, very poignant. I made a point of using Casement in Redemption, because he was Anglo and gay, after the Oscar Wilde model, and the British way of treating these Irish queers and also Irish religion was to act like Nazis. The crude manner in which Britain responded was typical of a certain colonial arrogance. What you have to realize is that they didn’t hold the Irish in any higher regard than they did Indians or blacks, and I think that to understand that is to understand much of the response to the Rising. Redemption, in this context, refers to the redemption of the Irish people that followed.
IA: If the necessity of fighting for freedom was the theme of Trinity, what is the theme of Redemption?
Uris: You have to read it to find out, and if you don’t get it, then I’m not telling what it is! I will say that Conor Larkin, the hero of Trinity, is probably the greatest hero I’ll ever write — he’s sort of a Cuchulainn figure — and his shadow is all over Redemption. At one point, I was using a temporary title, “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” and Conor was certainly the Holy Ghost. It’s his spirit that drives Rory Larkin [the hero of Redemption]. But I mentioned earlier that Redemption is more about relationships than about history, and that was the path I wanted to follow with this book. What the world boils down to is relationships between families, and the Irish family gave me a faster entree into the dramatic relationships I wanted to write about than even the Jewish family would. These are really universal connections I’m writing about, the kind of connections I looked for in writers when I was a child — someone who could explain my own dilemma to me.
IA: Like most of your novels, Redemption is a very lengthy work, and blends the fictional with the historical. What sort of research did that involve?
Uris: Well, I’ve written a lot on Ireland, so I have quite a good library, and I also have a great reference source in a book called Trinity! Rory Larkin goes from New Zealand to North Africa and the Gallipoli campaign with the ANZACs, and a lot of the research was on that as well as on what happened after the Rising. In one sense, Redemption was a much easier book to write than Trinity was. I’ve reached a level now where words and relationships come easier to me — which is largely a question of the mileage I’ve put in. But in another sense it was also a difficult book to write. I became monastic and pressed myself very, very hard for five years to complete it.
IA: Some sections of Redemption are based on the unpublished letters of Winston Churchill. Are these actual letters you discovered during your research?
Uris: [laughs] Well, that’s something that you’ll never know! Even if they put my feet to the fire, I’ll never say they are or they aren’t. Let’s just say there’s a grand possibility either way!
IA: The main thrust of Redemption brings Rory Larkin to Dublin in 1916, but there’s a secondary plot about the personal struggle of his brother, a Catholic priest. Were you aware as you were writing Redemption of the scandals involving the Irish Catholic clergy?
Uris: Yes, but I had spoken to a lot of priests who had left the priesthood, many of whom remain devout Catholics, and it came to me that this has been an ongoing problem. Having Father Dary Larkin question his celibacy and his own role as a priest was going to be an important part of the book, but when I got to it as I was coming to the end of the writing, it turned out to be not that big a thing. I think readers will accept that he was an earlier version of what’s happened over the last few years.
IA: As an outsider, what’s your view of how these scandals have affected the Church in Ireland?
Uris: Well, it’s been weakened, of course; it has to be. But I don’t think the Church is going to go away that easily. It’s still the oldest, most powerful institution in the world, and it has a particular place in Ireland. I would think that over a period of time it’s going to change its appearance because the people are going to force that change, but it’ll happen very slowly. You see, if the Church left Ireland, there would be a vacuum there — you can’t take something and just excise it and say it doesn’t exist any more; something has to come in and fill that vacuum. If the Church is smart, which I suspect it is, it will come to the realization that it has to adapt to the needs of the people it serves. That has happened in South and Central America, where the rituals are almost pagan but you still have your Catholic priests. But because Ireland is an island, certain things are more permanently established than in a contiguous land. There is a kind of moat around Ireland that always kept its culture somewhat independent, and I suspect the Church is going to make changes because it can’t go on like it has, and it’s not going to destroy itself.
IA: That’s an interesting metaphor. Does the existence of this ‘moat’ also mean that old hostilities, old animosities will continue to thrive, even if there is a permanent peace?
Uris: I’ve just seen an eight-part television series on the American Indians, and let me tell you — it’s still there, pal; it never stops. In this country, we have a lot of paying back to do, and that’s one of the things you’ll find in Redemption, too.
IA: Trinity was obviously an enormous accomplishment. What are your hopes for Redemption?
Uris: Well, it was a very tough technical job, and I just hope it stands on its own. If it doesn’t, I haven’t succeeded in my job as a writer.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the July/August 1995 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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