The Social Silencing of Male Prostitution in Keith Ridgway's "Angelo" and The Parts

One of the most renowned and critically acclaimed gay fiction writers of contemporary Ireland, Keith Ridgway emerged in the 1990s as a powerful and innovative literary voice concerned with the rapid changes taking place in Irish society.1 Both Ridgway’s 2001 story “Angelo,” which appeared in his collection Standard Time (awarded the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2001) and his novel The Parts (2003) foreground the injustice, alienation, and social divides of Celtic Tiger Dublin. In a 2012 interview, Ridgway remarks that in those years, Dublin “became a parody of gross commercialism and consumerism.”2 His fiction is highly critical of the neoliberal ethos of Celtic Tiger Ireland. Katherine O’Donnell notes that, even though the poor in The Parts “are occluded in the noise of the economic boom [and] repressed from the dominant social imaginery,” they nonetheless “haunt the text.”3 Despite his profound social critique, Ridgway does not succumb to a moralistic treatment of his subject matter, opting instead for a compelling use of black comedy and sarcasm. In terms of style and content, Ridgway’s fiction also becomes representative of a contemporary trend in Irish literature, with authors who typically deal with socially silenced topics and identities. “Much Irish Literature,” according to a recent article, “has moved away from dominant discourses and found an alternative strategy of representation that incorporates silence as a discursive tool in its own right.”4 Silence, as Robin Patric Clair has theorized, is embedded in