John B. Keane, who died on May 30th aged 73, was more than a gifted rural dramatist and writer. He was an international personality, a regular television and radio contributor, and an outspoken and courageous commentator on social issues.
He was witty, controversial, with a fund of stories and anecdotes, mainly relating to his beloved rural Ireland, the dark side of which he was never slow to portray in a considerable body of plays, books and newspaper articles over nearly five decades.
He admitted, too, to his own dark side, a "turbulence" within his personality as he once described it. He could be quick-tempered, abrasive, sometimes taking offence when none was intended, but he was also generous and good-natured. Among the writers he befriended was fellow Kerryman, Brendan Kennelly.
He was fearless when it came to what he considered an issue of principle, not least in his championing of the language freedom movement which aroused huge controversy in the 1960s. A fluent Irish speaker, he was passionately opposed to compulsory Irish, a stance that was highly unpopular in some quarters at the time, not least in his home county.
He was steeped in the traditions and lore of his native Kerry, and they formed the basis of much of his work. For some, his plays had an uncomfortable reality at a time in Ireland when the raw side of rural life was frequently ignored for the more acceptable version of Eamon de Valera's vision of happy maidens and cosy homesteads. Loneliness, greed and sexual repression were themes he explored with considerable skill and courage.
Powerful dramas, such as Sive (1959), Sharon's Grave (1960), The Field (1966) and Big Maggie (1969), a Broadway success in 1982, showed that, behind the humour and laughter, the rural Ireland of decades ago could be a brutal place. A bitter local row between two Kerry farmers over a piece of bog inspired The Field, which was later made into an Oscar-winning film starring Richard Harris and Brenda Fricker.
John B. Keane was into middle-age when he achieved the level of success which many felt should have been his a lot earlier. His plays were staged to packed houses in Dublin theatres, with diverse audiences ranging from those who had followed his work for years, tourists and a young urban generation who could identify with his portrayal of the old Ireland.
In 1991, when he was included in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, his public reaction was philosophical, perhaps not entirely in keeping with his private thoughts. "I never resented those critics who didn't like my plays. I don't see the point of grudges. Useless things."
He was was born in Listowel to Hannah (née Purtill) from Ballydonoghue, north Kerry, and William Keane on July 21st, 1928, the fourth of nine children. His father taught at Clounmacon National School, about three miles from Listowel. A quiet-spoken man and avid reader, he had a small library which included the works of Dickens, Thackeray and Scott, up to the fiction of the early 1950s. It provided his son with his introduction to the world of literature.
Although he said he had a happy childhood, John B. Keane's secondary education at the local St Michael's College left him with bitter memories because of a severe beating he received after reciting one of his own poems in class. He was expelled a number of times, and, on one occasion, it took representations from a senior churchman to have him reinstated.
Much of his childhood was spent in his maternal grandmother's home at Ballydonoghue, midway between Listowel and Ballybunion. Maurice Walsh, whose novels include The Quiet Man, was a neighbour. John B. Keane later recalled him as a sympathetic man, one of the finest writers he had ever met.
"He was very encouraging to young people - Maurice never lost his youth. He gave me a good piece of advice - 'to watch the drink'. I think he knew from my attitude that I was inordinately fond of it, a fondness which persists."
The people of Lyreacrompane, in the heart of the Stacks Mountains between Listowel and Castleisland, where he spent his early childhood summers, also influenced him. He found their language to be an eloquent mixture, half-English and half-Irish. "It had an extraordinary influence on my early plays and on my own speech thereafter. For all its raciness, it was still a very measured language."
It was in the Stacks Mountains that John B. Keane first encountered the legendary local matchmaker, Dan Paddy Andy O'Sullivan, whose life and times he chronicled in Man of the Triple Name (1984).
After school, he worked at a variety of jobs, including that of an apprentice chemist, before emigrating to England in January 1952, a path taken by so many of his generation. It inspired his song, Many Young Men of Twenty, also the name of his play, illustrating the heartbreak and misery surrounding enforced emigration which reached its height in the 1950s.
He later recalled the train journey from Listowel to Dublin, meeting his brother, Eamonn, who became a prominent actor, in a pub in the city. "When I boarded the train at Listowel that morning it seemed as if everyone was leaving. It was the same at every railway station along the way. Dún Laoghaire, for the first time, was a heartbreaking experience - the goodbyes to husbands going back after Christmas, chubby-faced boys and girls leaving home for the first time, bewilderment written all over them, hard-faced old stagers who never let on but who felt the worst of all because they knew only too well what lay before them."
In England, he worked in a chemist's shop and in a factory, before returning to Ireland, where he was, briefly, an assistant in a chemist's shop in Doneraile, Co Cork, before marrying Mary O'Connor and settling down in Listowel as a publican and writer.
Mary O'Connor, known locally by many as "Mary the Shop", is a strong, popular woman who played a hugely influential role in her husband's life. It was a happy union, her pragmatism and calm balancing her husband's sometimes volatile personality. They had three sons and one daughter.
In the early years, John B. Keane usually worked in the pub during the day and wrote at night. But the road to literary recognition in Dublin was to be a painful journey. It made him suspicious of what he considered to be the capital's cultural Establishment.
Decades later, it was suggested by some critics that he was too prolific, sometimes at the expense of quality, and that, for instance, his series of "Letters" books were a reason for his delayed recognition. Asked about this in the 1980s, he replied: "Ah well, I'm better off that they're out of me. I won't be doing that again. But there are two of those books that I am happy with - the Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer (1974), all that's true. It's true. And the Letters of a Matchmaker (1975), for the same reason. They lift a veil which has surrounded loneliness in that part of the world. Rural loneliness was extreme; there was nothing to do there, except dream."
His play Sive, which told the story of the abuse of a young girl by her family, was rejected by Ernest Blythe at the Abbey Theatre, disdainfully describing it as a melodrama.
However, in 1959, the Listowel Drama Group produced Sive and went on to win the All-Ireland amateur competition in Athlone. In that capacity, the group was invited to the Abbey Theatre where it played to packed houses. Nevertheless, despite that success, the Abbey returned five of his plays, including Sharon's Grave.
It was a full 25 years after this rejection by the Abbey before Joe Dowling, in one of his final acts as the national theatre's artistic director, decided it was time to stage a Keane production, Sive, at the Abbey. It was the first of many to be staged there in the mid-1980s, with John B. Keane forming a close artistic bond with the director, Ben Barnes. He was the director when the Abbey took The Field to Russia where it played at the Bolshoi.
More vindication of his considerable talent was to follow when, in 1998, the Abbey presented him with a Gradam (medal) in recognition of his "considerable contribution" to Irish theatre. The Abbey's then artistic director, Patrick Mason, described the theatre's decision to turn down Sive as "one of its more infamous rejections".
A message was read from President McAleese, who said that John B. Keane's work as a playwright, poet, short-story writer and humorist had "touched the hearts of people the length and breadth of Ireland".
Accepting the award, John B. Keane was able to see the humorous side, remarking: "If Terry Rogers had been standing in the Abbey foyer at the Old Queen's Theatre in 1959, he would have given 500 to 1 against my getting any kind of award."
He was a member of Aosdána and among his many awards, were honorary doctorates from Trinity College Dublin, Marymount College, Manhattan, and the University of Limerick, but he scoffed at the idea that that he might be referred to as Dr John B. Keane, remarking that his neighbours in Kerry would soon bring him down to earth.
There was strong bidding among academic institutions for his manuscripts and papers, and Trinity College Dublin won out for an undisclosed "modest sum", in 1990, perhaps thanks in part to the influence of his close friend and member of the academic staff, Professor Brendan Kennelly. About half-a-ton of manuscripts of his plays, short stories, poems, novels, and an incredible 25,000 to 30,000 letters, were transported from Kerry to the college for safe keeping.
He remarked at the time that he had never dreamed he would be giving his papers to a university. "Almost everything I ever did is there, all the work that goes into producing a play, a novel or a poem. They will be able to see it all, all the warts and disasters along the way."
Ever-conscious of recognition in his home county, he was delighted in the same year when he was made Kerry Person of the Year by the Kerry Association in Dublin. "This award is the most important award I have ever received. It is from the county I love and it is in the true spirit of Kerry."
There was media speculation that he might be the Fine Gael candidate in the 1990 presidential election. Dismissing the idea, he said: "I have too short a fuse. I looked at myself in the mirror this morning when I was shaving and I did not see a president."
In the 1990s, his life was overshadowed by illness. He developed prostate cancer, which required two major operations and treatment. "I believed I was going home to die," he said in 1996. "You could say I was a goner and I knew it."
Although he survived, illness continued to sap his energy and curtail his considerable work output. "I haven't my old energy or nothing like it. I get very tired, very suddenly, especially after a long walk or an outing. I feel very bad about all the invitations I receive to open things, to speak at this or that . . . It is not so easy now. In fact, it has become mostly out of the question and it has been hard for me to accept that."
Despite bouts of exhaustion, and an occasional air of sadness observed by some who knew him well, he remained upbeat, the old humour never far away when he greeted visitors in Listowel. His pride in his county - "a place with subtle variations" - remained undiminished.
He was fond of remarking: "Some Kerrymen say there are only two kingdoms, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Kerry."
He is survived by his wife Mary; sons Billy, Conor and John; daughter Joanna; brothers Michael and Denis, and sisters Peg, Sheila and Anne.
John B. Keane: born 1928; died, May 2002