Madam, - I was perturbed to read in last Saturday's edition yet another reference to Patrick Kavanagh's fall into the Grand Canal allegedly at the hands of my late father, Denis "Dinny" Dwyer, as mentioned in Antoinette Quinn's fine biography.
Though Frank McNally had the discretion not to name him, he has been mentioned in other articles in The Irish Times and it is well known at this stage that my father was the spray painter in question and the utterer of those notorious words apparently heard by Kavanagh as he was bundled over Baggot Street bridge: "Over you go you f***er."
For the record, my father's version of events was as follows: Firstly, he did not fall out with Kavanagh over the latter's article in the Farmer's Journal about the unscrupulous practices of the "paint sector".
The falling-out was over a remark Kavanagh made about my mentally handicapped brother who was two years of age at the time and causing both my parents considerable heartbreak.
Though the article did irritate my father, it also amused him and in any event did little to interfere with his business, which was thriving at the time.
My father contended that Kavanagh most likely fell into the canal while relieving himself and opportunistically blamed it on him because he had been blackballed by my parents and denied the food, drink and money he had liberally enjoyed at their expense.
My father's opinion was that Kavanagh made up the story about being thrown into the canal both to save face and as a means of alleviating the guilt he no doubt felt over the remark. Kavanagh was, according to my father, a most compassionate man and the remark had been out of character.
The insinuation, in both Quinn's book and the Irish Times articles, that my father was some kind of skulking underworld figure who would go around throwing people into canals is absurd to those who knew him.
He was a responsible, moral man and the intellectual equal of many of the "Bohemians" he so generously supported.
He chose work over self-indulgence and simply had too much respect for both himself and his family to engage in such petty behaviour.
In any event, in time Paddy and Dinny made up and were found by Tony Cronin drinking in McDaid's, causing him to remark his surprise on finding the two of them together after all that had happened.
"Yes", agreed Kavanagh, "it's very erotic, isn't it, the murderer and the murderee." - Yours, etc,
OWEN DWYER, Bramley Walk, Carpenterstown, Dublin 15.