LooseLeaves: News that Bloomsday events at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin were being cancelled because of Charlie Haughey's State funeral was compensated for by the great literary day that took place in the city on Tuesday, when Colm Tóibín became the first Irish winner of the €100,000 International Impac Dublin Literary Award for his novel about Henry James, The Master.
Sleuths looking for clues as to the winner might have put two and two together when they saw two of Tóibín's closest friends, publicist Cormac Kinsella and London literary agent Peter Strauss, on the steps of Dublin City Hall talking madly into mobile phones as they queued for the formal announcement inside on Tuesday morning. Impac is great for pomp and ceremony and once the announcement was made, Tóibín swept from the wings to walk down the marble floor to the podium.
It reminded him, he told the throng, of the day of the Man Booker prize final in 2004 when he was shortlisted alongside Alan Hollinghurst - who went on to win. The two went shopping in London earlier in the day, Hollinghurst buying a serious shirt for the occasion, and Tóibín asked him what he thought Henry James would have made of this business of prizes. Hollinghurst said he'd have deplored it - but would have been longing to win all the same. And that was how Tóibín said he felt on Tuesday.
One reason he was proud to win was that since the inception of the prize 11 years ago, people whose work was important to him had won it: people such as David Malouf, Michel Houellebecq and Alistair MacLeod.
"Words matter here in Dublin," said Dublin city librarian Deirdre Ellis-King, painting a picture of the ripples of Ulysses cascading way beyond Joyce's native city and reaching millions of people, and praising the way the Impac prize reaches readers everywhere through its network of nominations from public libraries.
In their citation, the judges said that in The Master the author had captured the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzi of Europe, who was astonishingly alive and vibrant in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It was "an outstanding narrative".
Still with much of the journalist in him, the excitement didn't stop Tóibín agreeing to spend the afternoon writing a 1,000-word piece on Haughey for Wednesday's Irish Times and then it was back for the black-tie prize presentation - again at City Hall - where he paid tribute to his lifelong friend Catriona Crowe of the National Archives. Writers could get lazy - so lazy they washed socks instead of writing, sometimes - but he was lucky in her to have a great first reader. When he started working on this novel the spur was: "If I get this bit done I can show it to Catriona," he said. "I owe her a great deal."
It was a night of accolades: for Tóibín's editor at Picador, American Andrew Kidd and for fellow writer Anthony Cronin who'd told Tóibín he was putting money on him winning the Impac. And mindful of how even in times of economic growth one had to remain watchful because culture can be under threat, Tóibín mentioned the RTÉ radio programme Rattlebag: 180,000 people listened to it yet it's being axed.
Things were capped by the arrival at midnight of another old friend, historian Roy Foster. Coincidentally, he was over from London to give a lecture on Yeats and death at the National Library to mark the poet's birthdate in 1865 and was accompanied by his wife, author Aisling Foster. "Someone should write a short story about today," said Crowe. Throw in a galaxy of writers in Dublin for the Writers' Festival which opened on Wednesday, and Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago's arrival in town for a number of engagements, and it was a veritable Bloomsweek.
Ó Ceallaigh wins Rooney
The winner of this year's Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, now in its 31st year, is Philip Ó Ceallaigh, whose debut collection of short stories, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse was published this year by Penguin Ireland. He'll be presented with the award in Dublin on Wednesday. From Co Waterford, Ó Ceallaigh now lives in Bucharest.
New residencies in Paris
Four writers from Ireland will be heading to Paris over the coming year to take up residencies at the Irish College. Jo Slade, Catherine Foley, John F Deane and Kerry Hardie, whose novel The Bird Woman will be published in early August by Harper Collins. Incidentally, in a recent review of the book, published prematurely on these pages, criticism was made of a glossary of terms accompanying the text.
The publisher has since alerted us that the glossary was based on the US edition - and won't accompany the Irish and UK editions. See www.centreculturelirlandais.com