On The Town: Beware the evils of television, warned Carlo Gébler at a reception in Dublin this week to announce details of the 36th Listowel Writers' Week.
Television "is affecting the novel in a sinister way", declared Gébler, who is one of this year's adjudicators, along with novelist Glenn Patterson, of the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award 2006, which will be presented to the winner during the five-day event in the Co Kerry town at the end of May.
Authors are making their fiction more like television by creating "more stereotypical, more stock, less three dimensional" characters and by writing more issue-driven narratives, he said.
"They make their stories address those supposedly important issues that television addresses." But, he added, television "will never manage to completely usurp the novel" because "it can't deliver the deep profound pleasure that the novel gives".
Among the writers, artists and poets who listened to Pauline McLynn reveal details of this year's programme of workshops, readings, tours, exhibitions, book launches, discussions, lectures, performances and screenings were writers Claire Kilroy, Mary Kenny and Dermot Bolger, whose novel, The Family on Paradise Pier, is one of the five shortlisted for the fiction award; soprano and writer Judith Mok, whose book, Gael, will be published next month; artists Robert Ballagh and Deirdre Crowley and poet Ann Egan, who will all be in Listowel this year.
"There's not a bed in north Kerry as it stands," said Joanne Keane O'Flynn, chair of the festival, when talking about the event that was co-founded by her father, John B Keane. The kick-off is at 8p.m. on Wednesday, May 31st. The organisers expect "thousands" to attend the festival.
The other novels on the shortlist for the €10,000 fiction prize are John Banville's The Sea; Nick Laird's Utterly Monkey, Jennifer Johnston's Grace and Truth and Sebastian Barry's A Long, Long Way.
Listowel 2006 Writers' Week runs from May 31 to Jun 4. Tel: 068-210 74; e-mail info@writersweek.ie; www.writersweek.ie
Footwork fireworks and a roar of energy
The Point was pulsing with vitality, as well it should. "You need a lot of energy for that," exclaimed former taoiseach Albert Reynolds, who had been watching Michael Flatley's new production, Celtic Tiger. His wife, Kathleen Reynolds, who was there with him, knew Flatley's father. "He went to the same school as I did, in Co Sligo," she said. "He left straight after national school."
Matty Ryan, a jeweller from Tipperary, has seen all Flatley's shows, and gave this one "full marks".
You're A Star judge Linda Martin was equally enthusiastic. "I just loved it, I enjoyed every moment," she raved. "The way he moves his legs, it makes me think of a prancing horse." She has her "fingers crossed" that Celebrity You're a Star and You're a Star will be back on RTÉ television later this year.
Frank and Barbara Cole from Kildare joined their daughter Joyce and her friend Pamela Jackson, who are childcare workers in Dublin, to watch the footwork fireworks. They had Joyce to thank for their evening out. "It was my idea to come - I've been to all his shows, they're very good," she said.
Dana also attended, hoping to pick up a few tips for her stint on RTÉ's Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels, "but his feet were too fast", she admitted ruefully. "We're doing Irish dancing for charity, you have to be willing to make a fool of yourself to make the money." She might feel "dispirited", but won't be discarding her dancing shoes just yet. Her son, Robert Scallon, also enjoyed the show, although it was "a first". He will be doing his Leaving Cert next year, and plays drums in a rock band called Zero Moda, but would watch dance again. "It was better than I expected," he said.
Christine Madden
Building on childhood memories
Memories of Lough Key, Co Roscommon, inspired work by Brendan Earley in his first solo show at the Temple Bar Gallery & Studios. Lough Key Forest Park, where the artist used to visit as a child, features in a number of the drawings in Towards a Large White Building, which opened in Dublin on Tuesday.
Among those at the exhibition were the newly appointed assistant Dublin City arts officer, Sheena Barrett, and artists Barbara Vasic and Ian-John Coughlan, who will both be taking part in a show next month at The Lab, Dublin City Council's new arts centre on Foley Street.
"I particularly like the drawing of the tower from Lough Key Forest Park," said Dermot O'Connor, the owner of the Printmakers Gallery in Drury Street, Dublin.
"I hope to build an awareness about the insatiable appetite we have for building and development at the moment," said Earley. "You can see a lot of things that are being destroyed around the city and you wonder about the progress that we are making."
Music composed by the artist's wife, Melissa Earley, accompanies the show, which also includes sculptures.
Dara Neligan, a project manager from Greystones, Co Wicklow, who was at school with Earley in Clongowes Wood College, recalled Edward Dewar, their inspirational art teacher there. "We spent our lives down in the art shed," said Neligan. "He was very kind to us," he recalled.
Others at the opening were artists Cecily Brennan, Cora Cummins and Paula Naughton, Robert Armstrong of the National College of Art and Design; visual arts curator at the Project Arts Centre Grant Watson, and Clodagh Kenny of the Fire Station Artists' Studios.
Towards a Large White Building by Brendan Earley is at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, until May 27
Life through a Magnum lens
Donovan Wylie is the only Irish photographer to be represented in Magnum Ireland, a photographic exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, which opened last Tuesday night. He is also the youngest person to be admitted to the acclaimed agency.
Reaching back more than 60 years into the Magnum archives, the exhibition includes 150 photographs by 34 of the world's best-known photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka.
The Belfast-born Wylie said that in the North "you see all the things that you take for granted for years and years . . . then normality arrives and suddenly things stand out". He spent 10 months photographing British army watch towers along the Border. His series of photographs of the Maze prison is also on show.
Among those who came to the opening reception were photographer Ross McDonnell; editor of the monthly lifestyle magazine Mongrel Yousef Edlin; Dermot Stokes, co-ordinator of Youthreach, the national programme for early school-leavers; and Aosdána member and photographer Amelia Stein. Desmond FitzGerald, the Knight of Glin; Michael Gorman, formerly of Bord Fáilte; art collector George McClelland; artist Fergus Martin and television director Sé Merry Doyle, whose film on Patrick Kavanagh, No Man's Fool, won the best documentary award at last year's Boston Film Festival.
The Magnum Ireland exhibition, which was opened by novelist John Banville, is curated by Val Williams, professor of photography at the London College of Communications and Brigitte Lardinois, cultural director at Magnum Photos, London.
Magnum Ireland is at Imma, Kilmainham, Dublin, until Sun, Jun 18