HAVING John McGahern as an admire must be a boost for any new writer, and Ciaran Folan was certainly happy to encounter the eminent novelist and short story writer among the well wishers at the launch of his first collection of stories in the Irish Writers' Centre.
The book by this Longford born, Dublin based teacher is called Freak Nights, and though I've only just begun it already I'm struck by its uncluttered prose and its assured tone. I'm a sucker for good titles, too, and Ciaran Folan has a few that are worthy of Raymond Carver - "There's Nothing Wrong Wit Me Now", "The Lights of a Town in the Distance These Things Happen" and "Of Course You Were".
Ciaran's publishers are New Island Books, who must have been gratified at the armies of people who turned up for the launch. Mind you, at least half of these were there for New Island's other new publication, Angela Bourke's first story collection, By Salt Water, which - from my initial cursory dip into it - also seems notable for its clean, limpid prose.
Angela, who lectures in modern Irish at UCD, is one of those people who makes me wish I knew Irish better than I do, and is among those few Irish academics who can communicate their ideas - her contribution to the Louis Marcus television series, The Irish Condition, a couple of years back was striking in its passionate clarity.
Half of UCD seemed to be at the launch, whose conviviality was marred only by some pest who roamed around the throng sneering at everyone. Nobody seemed to have any idea where he came from, but I suspect he belonged to Paddy Kavanagh's standing army of ten thousand poets - the ones who stand in bars bitching about all and sundry and blathering on about George Moore's use of the semi colon.
SPEAKING of Kavanagh's standing army, I'm pleased to see ban addition to its ranks in the person of Charles J. Haughey. Invited to open the forthcoming Writers' Week in Listowel, the former Taoiseach replied as follows:
To open Listowel Writers' Week
Is an honour that many would seek.
So, without hesitation
But with some trepidation,
I will give it a lash, so to speak.
William McGonagall, thou shouldn't be living at this hour.
This year's Kerry literary bash will take place from 15th to 19th May, and among the writers taking part will be John Montague, Colm Toibin, Mary Morrissy, Michael Hanett, Ita Daly, Michael Coady, Bernard O'Farrell, Micheal O Siadhail and Joe O'Connor.
The excellent American thriller writer Lawrence Block will also be dropping in.
If this line up suggests something very serious, bear in mind that my most vivid memories of Writers' Week are of the mind bending hangovers that were only partly assuaged by the extremely hearty breakfasts in the Listowel Arms. I'm talking about quite a few years ago, but somehow I don't think the spirit of the week has changed all that much.
UNTIL recent years, Hubert Butler was among the most unjustly neglected of Irish writers. Born in Kilkenny in 1900 and educated at Charterhouse and Oxford, he travelled extensively throughout Europe before returning in 1941 to Kilkenny, where he lived until his death five years ago.
His range of interests was remarkable, taking in Hebraic prehistory. Irish archaeology, European and American politics, and the literature of Ireland, England and Russia, and he wrote on all these subjects with exhilarating fluency and great insight.
The Lilliput Press has so far published three books of his essays (a one volume selection, The Sub Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue, is available in Penguin), and now Lilliput's Antony Farrell is releasing a fourth, which is entitled In the Land of Nod and which has a foreword by Neal Ascherson and an appendix by Joseph Brodsky.
Mr Ascherson, along With Declan Kiberd and Eoghan Harris, will be among the panellists in a discussion on Hubert Butler's work in Waterstone's of Dawson Street next Tuesday at 6.30pm. I think it should make for an interesting evening, and if it encourages you to read Butler's superb essays, it will have served its primary function.
WHAT is it with English writers when they're sent on journalistic assignments to Ireland? In the Independent on Sunday last weekend, Peter Conrad contributes a profile of Roddy Doyle that s full, of the most amazing Oirishy nonsense. He has Doyle saying things like Ah now, there's nothing like a good, bag of chips, I could live on em," and wailing about his hair, "It's fallin' out!"
He also has a description of an Aer Lingus flight that I didn't believe for a second, with pilots in cardigans strolling from the cockpit to make announcements in "a lyrical brogue", while a "mellifluous voice guffawed from the controls: At least the brakes work!'"
Is inefficiency, he wonders, a credential of sainthood in Ireland? No, but paddywhackery seems to be obligatory when English writers turn their attention to this country.