AMONG my aversions, gender studies tend to loom large. I don't quite know why this is, partly because I've never quite understood what gender studies are. I do know, however, that most of the gender debate stuff I've come across in journals and books is unreadable - more than any other academic discipline, it seems to attract the kind of people who think that the use of incomprehensible jargon is an effective means of communication.
Thus, I approached Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing, a collection of essays edited by Eibhear Walshe and published by Cork University Press, with trepidation - even though the launch in the James Joyce Centre was very lively, with that enthusiastic Wildean David Rose making a witty and interesting speech when called upon to do so at the last moment. And Eibhear Walshe, who lectures in English at UCC and is currently researching a biography of Kate O'Brien, is a personable and, interesting man.
But I was not encouraged when I randomly opened the handsomely produced book and found this sentence on fiction writer Mary Dorcey: "Dorcey dislocates the homogenising perspectives of heterocentrism not by denouncing or banishing them, but by setting up an interplay between normative and eccentric visions of the world". Huh? On the next page I learned that "Dorcey exploits the fruitful ambiguities of deictic reference", and a couple of pages further on I was baffled by a remark about "the otherness associated with the nameless, gynocentric and defiantly radical space" of one of the stories. The writing in some of the other essays was just as obfuscatory, at least to my simple brain.
But I also found much that was interesting - a characteristically stimulating essay by Declan Kiberd on the "dandy's tragedy" at the heart of The Last September, a revealing account of Eva Gore Booth's poetry by Emma Donoghue, and the editor's intriguing study of London born Alfred Willmore, who reinvented himself as "the neo Celtic thespian" Micheal MacLiammoir.
The book is notable, too, for being the first extended published study of lesbian and gay writing in Ireland - though it seems odd to devote two of its twelve chapters to Elizabeth Bowen, not, I would think, a writer of discernibly lesbian inclination, either in her work or in her life. And I'm puzzled by the book's title, which is confusing and a little misleading. Why the vagueness?
AND, of course, I should also mention the week's other notable event, the Cuirt Festival of Literature in Galway, which runs from Tuesday next until Sunday week. David Malouf and Anne Haverty will also be at that, as will (deep breath) poets Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Brian Patten, Bernard O'Donoghue, Michael Donaghy, Harry Clifton and Robin Robertson, and novelists Ben Okri, Colm Toibin, Eamonn Sweeney and John Banville, whose new book, The Untouchable, is being officially published the following week. These, in fact, are just some of the writers involved in this year's Cuirt, which also includes an appearance by dub (but not Dub) poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, book launches, play readings, art exhibitions, children's events, and a tribute to Samuel Beckett featuring, Anthony Cronin, Barry McGovern and John Minihan. If you want to know more, phone (091) 565886.
WANT to know how close to the bone biography can, or should, get? Or by what process books make it to the big screen? Or indeed how to start out as a writer? Well, if you make your way to Temple Bar next Saturday, these and many other questions will be addressed, and possibly even answered.
The occasion is The World of Books extravaganza, which is being run by The Irish Times in association with publishing giant Random House and which describes itself as, "a spectacular day long event with a cast of celebrated authors
For once, that's not hyperbole. For instance, among those discussing fledgling authorship will be Seamus Deane, David Malouf and Anne Haverty; the problems of biography will be publicly gnawed over by such formidable biographers as Michael Holroyd, Tim Pat Coogan (currently working on a book about the Irish diaspora) and Stella Tillyard; while the transmuting of novels into movies should wonderfully concentrate the minds of Irvine Welsh, Neil Jordan and Roddy Doyle.
These and other discussions (Naomi Wolf on her provocative new bestseller about teenage desire, Robert Harris and Richard North Patterson on "keeping the reader hooked") will be chaired by Irish Times journalists and will take place in the Temple Bar Music Centre. You can get an all day ticket for a laughable £5, which is partly redeemable against any book purchases you make during the course of the day.
Yes, books will be sold there - writers have to make a living, too, you know. And if you're feeling peckish or thirsty, there are two related food and wine sessions in the Arthouse from 1pm onwards. Again, tickets are a trifling fiver.
If you want to know more about this notable occasion, you'll find all the details in a special Irish Times supplement next Wednesday.
I always thought that the main appeal of a book signing was that lit enabled the admirer to actually meet the author, murmur a few words of appreciation or devotion into his or her ear and then shyly proffer the purchased volume to be autographed.
Not necessarily, it seems. The irrepressible, indeed amazing, Jilly Cooper will be in the Hughes & Hughes shop in the Stephen's Green Centre at 3pm today to sign copies of the paperback edition of her bassoons and bonking opus, Appassionata, but if you can't make it into town, you can simply phone up the bookstore and a signed copy will be reserved for you. Now where's the fun in that?