THE “JESSE James nature of all writing” was on Sebastian Barry’s mind as the Costa-winning and twice Booker-shortlisted author and playwright addressed the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
“There is an outlaw element or an inconvenient child element to writing,” he told a packed auditorium at the world’s biggest annual celebration of literature yesterday.
Barry read extracts from his latest novel, On Canaan's Side, which has as its narrator an 89-year-old woman named Lilly Bere, who flees 1920s Ireland. The character was inspired by Barry's great-aunt, Lilly Dunne, who was forced to leave Ireland for the US at that time after she was blacklisted by the IRA. Her brother, Barry's great-uncle, was later gunned down in front of her in Chicago.
His mission with the Booker-longlisted novel was “in a sense, to repatriate” the real Lilly, he said. But the power of a novelist to give fictional life to someone who once lived “in that complicated thing, real life” was “absurd and disgraceful when you think about it”, he said.
His grandfather had cursed him for an earlier book he had written because it contained family secrets that his mother, the late actor Joan O’Hara, had passed on to him, and they never spoke again.
But while the ethics of writing were “a rather scary thought”, protecting people who are alive can sometimes have a pernicious effect on the next generation, he said.
Meanwhile, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Irish productions have already attracted critical plaudits. The Fishamble company has received both a coveted Fringe First award and a Bank of Scotland Herald Angel for its production Silent, a depiction of the life of a homeless man by writer and performer Pat Kinevane, whose creation "dives into the wonderful wounds of this past through the romantic world of Rudolph Valentino". The solo show is being performed at Edinburgh's Dance Base until Saturday.
The Irish playwright Lynda Radley's play about a travelling freak show that falls on hard times, Futureproof, was also awarded a Fringe First by critics at the Scotsman. The play, which is being performed at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre until August 28th, is a co-production between the Traverse and the Dundee Rep Ensemble. The Scotsman awards three batches of Fringe Firsts each Friday during the festival in recognition of outstanding new writing.
The largest arts festival in the world has now reached its halfway point. Comedian Keith Farnan celebrated his mid-run break with news that RTÉ has commissioned his current economics-themed Edinburgh show Money Money Moneyand will broadcast it on November 1st.
“This is the first year my voice has lasted as well,” said Farnan, who gave up the law for comedy. “I think I’m the only comedian in Edinburgh with nothing to complain about.”