WHAT is one to make of the IMPAC shortlist? A bit lacking in . . . well, impact. I'd say. Or perhaps I'm just revealing my ignorance. Perhaps you've heard of Sherman Alexie, Duong Thu Huong. Lais Gustalsson, Javier Marias, Antonio Tabucchi and A.J. Verdelle, six names (from a list of eight) that left me muttering Who?" And the two that I did hear of Rohinton Mistry and Alan Warner, I couldn't tell you a lot about.
Don get me wrong. I'm all for writers with whom one done, but to have a shortlist entirely comprised of unknowns (to the vast majority of people, anyway) strikes me as counter productive for an award craving attention as "the world's largest prize for a single work of fiction"/
Some of us think that constantly reiterated claim a bit daft, anyway. Size is obviously important to a company that describes itself as the world's largest management productivity engineering company", but is the cause of literature really being served by forking out £100,000 to one writer? If IMPAC insist on thinking big, why don't they give £40,000 for an overall winner, £20,000 for an outstanding first novel, another £20,000 for an Irish novel (if is, after all, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and yet another £20,000 for a poetry or essay collection?
If this were done, a few names might emerge to arrest the attention of the public, and thus gain some real publicity for the generous donor - which is surely a large part of the motivation for instituting any award. But as it is, this particular Shortlist makes even the most austere of Booker shortlists seem in comparison models of accessibility and reader interest.
AT the outset of the Booksellers Association of Great Britain band Ireland annual conference in Dublin, president Willie Anderson declared that he was still, recovering from the over whelming hospitality he had received on two visits here last year. God only, knows how he's feeling, today - even after last Sunday's opening I felt that I couldn't take any more of the partying, and Willie and his hundreds of colleagues still bad three more days to contend with.
Sunday began with around of golf in the K Club and continued with a reception in Guinness's. I missed both of those, but caught up with the fun lovers (not a term I'd normally use to describe booksellers) at the official welcoming in the National Gallery Sponsored by Eason's, whose chairman Kevin Brabazon made a divertingly laid back speech, this was so packed that I could hardly move, let alone converse.
However, it was nothing compared to the Random House/Irish Times celebration in Jury's that followed immediately afterwards, with food supplied by the River Cafe, that ultra chic London establishment set up by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. Here one got to rub shoulders, not just with the same horde of booksellers but also with such eminences as David Malouf, Ruddy Doyle, Michael Holroyd, Tim Pat Coogan, Maeve Binchy. Brian Keenan, Mary Kenny, Declan Kiberd, Anne Haverty, Eugene McEldowney and Naomi Wolf.
I spent a considerable amount of time in conversation with the last named and I have to say I didn't mind a bit. She in her turn declared herself thrilled with, the response she had got from Gay Byrne and the Late Late audience the previous Friday when her new book, Promiscuities, was under discussion - though her feeling that she had awakened the Irish nation, to hitherto unknown aspects of women's sexuality seemed a mite optimistic, as if this land of ours had never heard of the female orgasm until she arrived with the news. If she comes here to live (which she's keen to do she thinks Dublin and its inhabitants are the bee's knees) she'll discover the truth for herself.
In the meantime, she can frame the group photograph taken in Jury's. This was amusing to watch all these famous people arranged in tiers and being requested to smile in unison, as if lined up for the school annual. Which, in a way, they were: the Random House school, anyway.
I did, however, get to one more party. This was to celebrate the Irish launch of John Banville's The Untouchable (British publication isn't until 1 May), and it took place up in Johnnie Fox's pub in Glencullen a venue perhaps more intriguing to the fun seeking British booksellers who were ferried out there by coach than to local friends of the author.
At one point I wondered if tee latter, a lover of traditional as well as other music, was as enthralled as I was by the Fureys style band hired for the occasion as they belted out such ethnic classics as The Wild Rover, but the revelry was such that he couldn't have heard me if I'd asked.
If you want to encounter him in more sober surroundings, you can go along to the Ernest Walton Theatre in TCD's Arts Block next Wednesday at 7pm. He'll be reading from The Untouchable, which his publisher, lain Chapman, described at the Johnnie Fox shindig as a masterpiece (this columnist, though only a hundred pages into the book, is rather impressed, too). Tickets are £2 and can be got from Fred Hanna in Nassau Street or at the door.
CLEM CAIRNS, whose latest Fish short story competition I mentioned recently, writes from Durrus to say that he's been getting many enquiries about it. He also has acquired his panel of judges for it: Germaine Greer, Eamonn Sweeney and Pat Boran. And he points out that his book, Dog Days and Other Stories, to be published in October, accidentally shares the same title as Aidan Higgins's forthcoming sequel to Donkey's Years. Well, it happens.
I learn with regret that the Mitchelstown Writers Summer scheduled for next month, has had to be postponed as has the second William Trevor Short Story Award. William Fitzgibbon, secretary of the committee for both events, says that due to the huge number of entries submitted for the first Trevor award, there was not enough time to or anise both occasions this year. Instead, they'll take place at Whit next year.