On The Town: Anyone looking for tips on how to become a billionaire may be tempted to reach for the new book by Conor O'Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn't, a biography of Irish-American philanthropist Chuck Feeney. But what makes his life extraordinary is not so much that he amassed such wealth, but that he gave it all away, and secretly - until now.
Speaking at the launch of former Irish Timesjournalist O'Clery's latest publication, which fittingly took place in Trinity College's James Ussher library, a development partly funded by Feeney through his Atlantic Philanthropies foundation, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said: "Conor has done us all a privilege by writing about someone so few people know about." Ahern paid tribute to what he called an "extraordinary man" whom he has known personally for two decades. "This book details the life of one of the most generous philanthropists of all time," he added.
O'Clery, who was accompanied by his wife Zhanna, described how he persuaded the unassuming Feeney to agree to the book. "He knew a book about his life would be a way of promoting giving while living," said O'Clery. "I saw a book about his life as a way of making money for me."
Anecdotes about Feeney abounded at the launch: how he always chose the second cheapest white wine on any restaurant menu; how he dressed like a down-at-heel tourist; and how he shunned thanks to such a degree that beneficiaries had to go to great lengths to show their appreciation, including one Vietnamese doctor who organised for a building funded by Feeney to be painted green when he heard of his Irish heritage.
Former taoiseach Albert Reynolds said he was surprised that Feeney had finally allowed his story to be told. "I didn't think he would come out and reveal his identity," he said. "I've known him for many years, and he'd never talk about his achievements." Niall O'Dowd, another prominent Irish-American and founder of the Irish Voice in New York, was also there to applaud Feeney's achievements. "To have done what he had and seek no credit is extraordinary," he said.
US Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, Chairman of the Board of The Irish Times Limited David Went, Press Ombudsman John Hogan and Ed Walsh, former president of the University of Limerick, one of the first of many Irish third-level institutions to benefit from Feeney's generosity, were also at the launch, along with Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy and former editor Conor Brady.
O'Clery went on to speak at another literary event this week in Dubray books on Grafton Street, when Paddy Woodworth's The Basque Country: A Cultural History was launched. Woodworth explained that it was a book he had not originally intended writing. "I've never had so much fun as I had writing this book. In the end, I found that the book I didn't want to write became for a time the only book I wanted to write," he said.
A Mamet role for any actor
For some, Al Pacino will forever embody the role of Richie Roma, salesman extraordinaire from the 1992 film Glengarry Glenross. But at the Pavilion theatre in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, this week, the Keegan Theatre Company's Mark A. Rhea stamped his own mark on the famous role.
The Washington DC company is currently on its ninth tour of Ireland with its production of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
TD and former Labour leader Ruairi Quinn, who attended the show with his wife Liz, paid tribute to the production. "It's a great play but it has to be performed by Americans - it's very much about the dialogue, and the dialogue wouldn't be credible with Irish or European accents," he said.
Actor Barry McGovern was also in the audience for the first night, having crossed paths with the cast as he performed in I'll Go On in Galway, where the Keegan Theatre Company kicked off a tour that will also take them to Thurles, Kilkenny, Monaghan, Longford, Waterford and Cork. Actor Eithne McGuinness was also at the show, taking time off from preparations for her appearance in Moliere's The Miser as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival.
For Martin Murphy, director of the Pavilion, the play's central figure, Richie Roma will go down in theatrical history alongside the likes of Arthur Miller's Willy Loman or Tennessee Williams' Stanley Kowalski as one of the most enduring lead male roles for actors, which made it a privilege to see it performed.
Actors Sarah Dillon and Matthew Keegan were also at Glengarry Glenross, which ends its run at the Pavilion Theatre tonight.
Packed house receives a welcome reality check
For poet Dennis O'Driscoll, Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons was an appropriate venue to celebrate the publication of his new collection Reality Check, as it gave rise to what he referred to as the "benign collocation of poetry and surgery". As he called for a "doctor in the house" he told a packed room that in poetry "the scalpel is always mightier than the pen". The huge turnout for this latest Poetry Ireland/ Anvil Press publication, O'Driscoll's eighth collection, showed that the country's love of poetry is alive and well, despite the poet's observation that: "Poetry is not what you would call a commercial venture, and is more renowned for its reality checks than its bank cheques."
Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, who attended with his wife Maire, praised one of O'Driscoll's new works from Reality Check. "He has a wonderful new development in this book, an amazing long poem which is a wry look at contemporary Ireland and a visionary look at this whole cosmos."
Anvil Press editor Peter Jay was amazed at the massive turnout. "I don't think I've ever seen so many people for a poetry event crammed into one room!"
Joe Woods, director of Poetry Ireland, paid tribute to the poet's "absolute and enviable alertness" to language. "Dennis O'Driscoll is often described as a poet of the workplace and there are fine poems here from the workplace, but he is also a poet steeped in the environment and one with a keen environmental awareness and an eye for the detail in nature," he added.
O'Driscoll's fellow poets Peter Sirr, Micheal O'Siadhail, Peter Fallon, John F. Deane, Richard Tillinghast and Pat Boran also attended.
Monthly instalments
When two Nigerian journalists, Chinedu Onyejelem and Abel Ugba, set up Ireland's first multicultural newspaper Metro Eireann seven years ago, Roddy Doyle approached them with an offer of a short story chapter every month. Seven years on, the results of this monthly agreement have begun to pile up - high enough, in fact, for a book, which is how Doyle's first collection of short stories, The Deportees, was born.
Speaking at its launch in the Odeon bar, Dublin, this week, the Booker Prize-winning author explained its central theme.
"The whole idea for the stories was that in each one, somebody who was born in Ireland would meet somebody who's arrived here," said Roddy Doyle, who admitted that the influx of immigrants into Ireland fascinated him.
Onyejelem said that the writer's monthly contribution to Metro Eireann was "one of the greatest things that ever happened to us". "Those who know him know he is a quiet man, he has his own life, yet he has contributed immensely to multiculturalism in Ireland," he said.
Tamara Anghie, producer with Zanzibar films, said she had enjoyed one of the stories in this latest collection so much that it had inspired herself and director Steph Green to make it into a short film, New Boy. Born in Sri-Lanka, Anghie has been living in Ireland for 10 years, and said she found it easy to relate to the immigrant in the story. "The whole experience, whether you're young or old, of being in a new city, really resonates," she said.
Sean Love, director of Amnesty International in Ireland, was also at the Odeon party, his organisation having collaborated with Doyle for a collective novel for children due out next month, entitled Click. Having read The Deportees while returning from a recent Latin American trip, Love said he "laughed all the way home".
Actors Liam Carney and Phelim Drew arrived to applaud the writer, along with Fiach MacConghail, director of the Abbey, where Doyle's reworking of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World is currently in preparation. For Bisi Adigun, who co-wrote the new version with Doyle, the experience of working with the writer was one he greatly cherished. "It was the best experience of my life," he said.
Una Molloy of Turning Pirate, whose show, Pirate Sounds, plays as part of the Fringe Festival in The Spiegeltent this Thursday, was also at the launch, as were members of the North Strand Klezmer Band, who played at the launch.
As the night drew to a close, revellers made their way out with their copy of The Deportees tucked away for a last minute perusal before lights out, as recommended by the author himself. "It's ideal bedtime reading as each chapter is 800 words, so you're never far from a logical place to stop," said Doyle.