Runyon-Hemingway-Hogan
"If he declared it Ryder cup policy that everyone hand over their wallets now, chances are the sky would be raining leather." Huh? What does that sentence mean? While you're thinking, here's another: "Tom Lehman's boys were benign sheepdogs." Yes, malign sheepdogs do exist. The rogues roam the countryside, harrying flocks of leather wallets.
The man who can write that "the sky would be raining leatherl" can also write the likes of this: "The Spaniards are natural conquistadors, of course, Garcia birdied three out of five…" That's Vincent Hogan and his unique reportage is to be found in the Irish Independent. Some twenty years ago, when Hogan appeared upon the Dublin journalism scene, it seemed as if his arabesques were part of an elaborate prank that would be revealed as a gag by a gang of burned out Irish Press hacks, but it was not to be. Hogan, heroic, is still at it:
"If you overslept, you missed the American attack. It bled to nothing under the mucky fleece of a morning sky." This was his modest, introductory sentence on Monday, 25 September, after the European golf team had defeated the US in the Ryder Cup competition at the K Club. Four paragraphs later, he advised readers: "Break it all down and it makes little sense." Which is as accurate an analysis of his style as we'll probably ever get. Later, assessing the US team, he wrote: "They seemed endlessly compelled to articulate their unity, oblivious to the fact that unity is self-expressive." Unity is constancy of purpose, but self-expressive?
More? What the hell. "They were vengeful but polite, like plaintiffs in a court-room." Or: "For much of the day, you couldn't escape the murmur of destiny." And now, a classic twosome: "Playing celestial golf on a stretch of land with more casual water than you'd find on a Venice street. Rolling putts so fast and so nervously, they were trying to do GBH to the holes."
All this reminds one of those imitation Hemingway competitions that ran for a while in the 80s and 90s. This was the kind of thing they were looking for:
It was morning. So this is how it is, this is how it always happens in the morning. With my last £10 I purchased some honest whiskey; I took a pull from the bottle. It was good. It burned my mouth and felt good and warm going down my esophagus and into my stomach. From there it went to my kidneys and my bladder, and was good. I remembered then when I last saw Kavanagh who was still a damn fine writer. It was in Ireland and we looked out the windows at the benign sheepdogs and drank whiskey in the morning. It was morning and had been morning for some time.
But let's leave the final word to Vincent Hogan: "They say that control is the essence of golf but, sometimes, emotion takes a hand and presents you with a puzzle that no yardage book can solve." Can't argue with that, eh?
