The Dirty Dust

It’s an ingenious set up: all of the characters in The Dirty Dust are dead and buried in a cemetery in Western Ireland, but share their gossipy thoughts from the underground. It is all very funny, and very Irish, and is short enough that the one-note form of humor is mostly sustained throughout.

Here for example are the bitter complaints of a deceased elderly woman who despises her sister Nell, still alive and married to the man she used to love:

I don’t even know if they keened me properly. Yes, I know Biddy Sarah has a nice strong voice she can go at it with if she is not too pissed drunk. I’m sure Nell was sipping and supping away there also. Nell whining and keening and not a tear to be see, the bitch! They wouldn’t have dared come near the house when I was alive …

Oh, she’s happy now. I thought I’d live for another couple of years, and I’d bury her before me, the cunt. She’s gone down a bit since her son got injured. She was going to the doctor for a good bit before that, of course. But there’s nothing wrong with her. Rheumatism. Sure, that wouldn’t kill her for years yet. She’s very precious about herself. I was never that way. And it’s now I know it. I killed myself working and slaving away…I should have watched that pain before it got stuck in me, but when it hits you in the kidneys, actually, you’re fucked…. I nearly buried her. If I had lived just a tiny little bit more.

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