Sometime back in the Seventies, there was a brief fad for what might be called composite novels, whereby somebody thought up a basic fictional situation and then asked a number of writers to develop the story and characters as they saw fit.
It was a variation on an old parlour game and, to be honest, I never quite saw the point of it, though two such books sold fairly well at the time - Naked Came the Stranger in America and an English effort edited by Hunter Davies called, I think, I Remember Daisy Smutten. The fact that both were spoofs of porn novels might have helped the sales, but as the reader was never told who the various authors were and as the writing was anyway so dreary, you wondered why anyone had bothered.
Now Dermot Bolger has revived the idea (minus the porn element) and the result should be a little more intriguing, given that the seven contributors to this novel of mystery and humour are Dermot Bolger himself, Roddy Doyle, Joseph O'Connor, Colm Toibin, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnston and Anne Enright and that one of the tasks facing the reader will be to guess which of them wrote which section.
Entitled Finbar's Hotel and due from New Island Books next month, the novel will be launched at a reading featuring all seven writers. That should give some clues about who wrote what - or perhaps not, if they all decide to read someone else's contribution.
A couple of weeks back I mentioned the 1,775 Emily Dickinson poems in the magnificent Thomas H. Johnson edition of her Complete Poems. Now Niall MacMonagle writes to suggest that I might have to amend the figure to 1,776, given that the public library in Amherst, where the poet lived, has just bought the manuscript of a previously unknown Dickinson poem.
Aided by funds from the Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst's Jones Library, which already has about 8,000 items in its Dickinson collection, paid £24,150 for the fifteen-line poem at a Sotheby's auction.
The authenticity of the untitled poem doesn't seem to be in question, and while it hardly registers as classic Dickinson, it has the sprightly chill that runs through so much of this great poet's work, and admirers might like to read it in full:
That God cannotBe Understood Everyone agrees. We do not know His motives nor Comprehend his Deeds. Then why should I Seek solace in What I cannot Know? Better to play In winter's sun Than to fear the Snow.
Staying with poetry, I've been perusing the first edition of InCognito, a new Dublin-based magazine of poetry and prose edited by Christopher O'Rourke and selling at £4.99.
Subtitled, rather solemnly, "A Journal of Irish Literary Culture", it features some interesting work by writers unfamiliar to me (Noelle Vial stands out) as well as by such established figures as John F. Deane and Aodhan Madden. There's also a lively interview with Dermot Bolger.
But in future issues the editor should pay a little more attention to proof-reading and thus eradicate the grammatical solecisms and typographical errors that disfigure some of the pieces here. That accomplished, he might have an invigorating magazine in the making.
In the meantime, if you want to submit any poetry, prose or illustrations to InCognito, the address is 23 St. James's, Hollybrook Park, Clontarf, Dublin 3. Payment for accepted material is £10 or a year's free subscription to the magazine.
Still on verse, Poetry Ireland are presenting readings in three different locations next Thursday - Siobhan Campbell and Jean O'Brien in the Firkin Crane Arts Centre, Shandon, Co Cork, at 8.30pm; Kerry Hardie and Mark Roper in Bewley's, Market Cross, Kilkenny at 10.30pm; and John F. Deane and Aine Ni Ghlinn in the Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, at 8pm.
And no, nothing links the readings beyond the fact that all the poets involved have had a new collection published in the last year or so.
Whatever became of Tom Wolfe? Ten years ago The Bonfire of the Vanities was a commercial and media sensation, but since then the dandyish author has seemed to perform a vanishing act, with ne'er a sighting of him anywhere, not even at Manhattan social X-ray parties.
That should change soon, though. Following on from openheart surgery last winter, the 66-year-old writer is currently sequestered in his Long Island home finishing his long-awaited second novel (as yet untitled), which casts a beady eye on murky financial and property deals. Such things, of course, don't happen on this saintly island of ours, but I'm sure the book will have some Irish readers all the same.