A literary roundup
Praising McGahern
No better person could have launched John McGahern's posthumously published non-fiction collection Love of the Worldthan short-story writer Claire Keegan.
Given how Joyce features in this anthology of essays, reviews and speeches, there was also something perfect about the setting at the launch on Tuesday night – the Old Physics Theatre in Newman House on St Stephen’s Green where Joyce once studied.
Given that Keegan is so often referred to as McGahern's successor in the history of the Irish short story, it's a surprise to discover that she hardly knew him. "I didn't know John. I once sat next to him at a pleasant dinner, and later ran into him in Paris, where he wished me well with my stories. He was deeply humorous and very much present. I wrote to him after That They May Face the Rising Suncame out, and he very kindly wrote back and thanked me. That was all.''
Talking about the comparison made between them she says: “It’s silly to compare writers or to say one of us inherits another’s place. If you have any gift, it will be very much your own and in your own style. The comparison is deeply flattering but the fact is that nobody writes like John McGahern. On the other hand, to receive support and acknowledgement matters deeply. People want to publish what I write, and some want to read it. It’s a fine thing to be able to make a living out of writing short stories.’’
Dwelling on how the new book opens with five drafts of a paragraph and shows the thought process in the making and development of the paragraph, Keegan said that anyone interested in writing fiction is (or should be) interested in the structure of paragraphs. “I thought it a fine way of opening the book.’’
McGahern was extraordinary in the way he handled his gift, and his life and work, she said. "He was not a writer with a career even though that was all there, had he turned his head and shown any interest. His focus was his work. In the documentary, A Private World, he says, 'A writer needs a good, boring life, no excitements.' That always makes me laugh." And what did she feel she had learned from him as a writer? "That a writer needs a good, boring life, no excitements," says Keegan whose work is included in the book Davy Byrnes Stories, which was launched this week too. It includes the six prize-winning stories from the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award as selected by Richard Ford in which Keegan's story Fosterwon the overall award.
Fritzl horror inspires book
Days after the Fritzl family members were found in a dungeon in Austria, Irish novelist Emma Donoghue got the idea for a novel, called Room, that Picador has bought for a six-figure sum. “I was driving along when Room came to me in a flash. If such a story of being born into captivity were told from the child’s point of view, I thought, it would not be a horror or sob story, but a journey from one world to another,” says Donoghue of her novel about a young woman and her five-year-old son who live in a locked room.
Shielded by his mother from the truth of their captivity, the boy thinks of the room as the world, and is shocked to discover there is another world outside. It will be published next summer.
Poetry award winner
The winner of this year’s €8,000 Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in poetry is Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons. It’s given annually under the terms of the will of Patrick Kavanagh’s wife Katherine.
An Irish poet, born in Boston, Fitzpatrick Simmons is a former assistant director of The Frost Place, in Robert Frost’s old house in the US, and she co-founded The Poets’ House in Falcarragh, Co Donegal, with her late husband, the poet James Simmons.
