Resumo de The Three Armageddons Of Enniscorthy Sweeney

Write your abstract

here.

Enniscorthy Sweeney creates unusual fictions: they
replace

events in the real world and prevent them happening. Or
do

they?

DEPRESSION: A HORROR COMEDY has a ten year run on
Broadway,

from 1929 to 1939. Apparently in a period of widening
and

heightening prosperity, people like to escape into a

vividly realized world of clawing, desperate poverty.

PROHIBITION: A FARCE on the other hand is a failure.
Its

first week's run is a sellout, but the backers panic
and

close the show: everyone who attends leaves before the

first act to have the first of several drinks in the

theatre bar. Sweeney maintains the closure of the play
is

based on a misunderstanding: it would have continued to

sell out, audiences would have continued to stampede
for

the bar and a double fortune could have been made out
of

tickets and liquor sales.

But his masterworks (the third still in preparation as
the

novel commences) are the Armageddon Operas. The first

describes a war of unprecedented horror that didn't
happen

between 1914 and 1918; the next a war three times as

horrific that didn't happen between 1939 and 1945; the

third a war (with trimmings) nine times as horrific as
the

first, that hasn't not happened yet.

But if the wars never happened, why do so many people

(including Sweeney intermittently) have such vivid
memories

of them? well the healthiest societies have their
pockets

of insanity; even the healthiest individuals. Why are
so

many soldiers of these wars enrolled on the disability

pension list? well if you can think of a way to make
the

social security system more efficient, let us know. Why
do

rival societies, the World Peace League and the Friends
of

the Catastrophes (with demon and shapeshifter as well
as

human members)contend so fiercely about the meaning of

these imaginary conflicts? It seems a clear consensus
has

yet to be established (the span from 1964 to 1972 is so

confused in this respect that it has come to be known
as

the Empty Years or Years for Rent).

There's this to consider as well: the horrors of
Armageddon

3 are such that to depict them may be no different from

enacting them. Is this the end of the world then?
nobody's

acting as if it is; they arent acting as if it isn't
either.

They're acting as if they don't care one way or
another.

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