SOURCE: "The Specked Hill, The Plover's Shore," in Encounter, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December, 1973, pp. 70-76.

In the following excerpt, Dunn identifies the consequences of violence as the principal theme of Gradual Wars, noting the effect of the collection's artificial tone on its themes.

Seamus Deane avoids superficial negations [in Gradual Wars], either in favour of the kind of specifics Simmons finds "boring"—

      The unemployment in our bones
      Erupting on our hands in stones

or, more rewardingly, in favour of complex ironies and ambiguities. He frequently toys with lush and sophisticated styles, as if pointing out their uselessness at the same time as implying he would prefer to write more like Wallace Stevens than himself, faced as he is with the subject of Derry, where he comes from. Literacy and intelligence are embarrassments in killing times, and in "The Thirtieth Lie" he out shovels the slogans and intellectual props...