OTHER things being equal, six Irish writers are due to be assumed into the exalted ranks of Aosdana this coming Monday. They are Paula Meehan, Thomas McCarthy, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Edna O'Brien and Cathal O Searchaigh.
In all, there were forty two nominations in literature, the visual arts and music, but only twelve made it through the others failing to get the required number of votes' from existing Aosdana members in their specific areas (or "disciplines", as Aosdana terms them).
Among the unsuccessful literature candidates were Marina Carr, Clare Boylan, Evelyn Conlon, Anne Enright, Rita Ann Higgins, Desmond Egan, Sean O Tuama and Eithne Strong. Why some people are excluded from Aosdana and some included might have to do with aesthetic considerations or it might have to do with ppolitics or with the phases of the moon, but we'll never know, as the votes among the different disciplines are secret.
The final voting at Monday's general assembly will be secret, too, but it's expected that most, if not all, of the nominees will pass muster.
Seamus Heaney hadn't a moment in which to draw breath in Newman House on Wednesday evening. He was the guest of honour at the official launch of The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, and everyone in the crowded room seemed to want to talk to him, but he took all the attention in his stride. Anyway, he confided, he firmly believed that every Irish person was famous in his or her own way, given the way that we all live our lives in public on this chatty and gossipy island.
An old friend of the Oxford book's editor, Robert Welch, he made a warm and witty speech, full of learned references and droll asides. The next day, he was off to France to be made Commandeur des Arts et Lettres de la Legion d'Honneur, and on Tuesday he'll be in Edinburgh giving a lecture in honour of Robert Burns's bicentenary.
IF you're a fan of either of the contemporary grandes dames of English thriller writing, you'll want to be in the upstairs cafe of Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street next Friday evening. If you're a fan of both, you'll be in seventh heaven, because the two of them will be there, chatting to each other publicly about their work and answering any questions you care to put to them.
I'm talking, of course, about P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. Ms James is busy promoting the paperback of her most recent novel, Original Sin, and Ms Rendell will be wearing her other hat to publicise the latest fruit from the Vine, The Brimstone Wedding.
These two eminent practitioners of the psychological thriller agreed to come together for the occasion, and I'm told that they'll be asking each other how they conceive plots and characters and other such matters.
Legions of admirers are expected to eavesdrop on their conversation and to join in with terrifically well informed questions. An admission fee of £2 is being charged, though this is redeemable against the price of any James or Vine book you purchase on the night. And if you're worried about not getting in, you can get tickets in advance from the shop.
I see that novelist A.N. Wilson has become unhappy with certain of his work. "I should like," he declared recently, "to unwrite every sex scene and every four letter word I ever wrote."
Mary Whitehouse would, no doubt, approve, but I hope that Wilson's new found puritanism doesn't extend to the fiction of others or, at least, to the novels entered for this year's Booker Prize, of which Mr Wilson is one of the judges. Roddy Doyle, for one, wouldn't stand a chance.
WHAT have Charles Dickens and Stephen King got in common? Not a lot, really except that for Mr King's new book, The Green Mile, Penguin are reviving the Victorian practice of serialisation.
The book, described by Penguin as a "serial thriller", will be released in six instalments and if you're a King fan, you'll want to know that Hodges Figgis are giving away 200 copies of the first instalment free of charge at 5pm next Wednesday. Thereafter the remaining five instalments will appear on a monthly basis, selling at £1.99 each.