tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223884672024-03-18T01:03:51.067-05:00Empire State ViewChatter. Commentary. Critique. There's no reason they can't all get along.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-21813948143480717962007-09-24T13:42:00.000-05:002007-09-24T22:00:33.046-05:00Ahmadinejad at Columbia<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsxVqeiCHETd1X6Rz431pdlkAnv_8NatiV0YCjPAU7NCoOG4M6kUUICYSEn6lsHZk-Jt7bZIt8x_AaIa3jZbmCUjApUYvKZqcsF5N4aUY5VSkaRN7ML2gJiSy126u26iTrs_EclA/s1600-h/DSC_2730.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsxVqeiCHETd1X6Rz431pdlkAnv_8NatiV0YCjPAU7NCoOG4M6kUUICYSEn6lsHZk-Jt7bZIt8x_AaIa3jZbmCUjApUYvKZqcsF5N4aUY5VSkaRN7ML2gJiSy126u26iTrs_EclA/s320/DSC_2730.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5113970809881919474" /></a><br /><br />"Why should an academic face insults?" he moans. "Is this what you call freedom?" <br /><br />Professor Ahmadinejad, as he dubbed himself as soon as he started to speak twenty minutes ago, is speaking outside my window. Literally. I can see the big screen and the (suprisingly quiet and attentive) crowd from where I sit. And I have ten papers to mark in the next hour. So you won't be getting anything in the way of reportage here. But I thought I'd post to say that you can get it <a href="http://www.columbiaspectator.com/ahmadinejad/">here;</a> it's a live blog, updated every couple of minutes at the moment.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com178tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-23065960287893116262007-08-16T18:44:00.000-05:002007-08-16T18:49:08.486-05:00Still laughing......at the comments on this Gawker item on the <a href="http://wonkette.com/politics/dept%27-of-knocked-up-loaded/how-pregnant-is-jenna-bush-290373.php">Jenna Bush pregnancy rumours</a>...<br /><br /><blockquote>DICKTHESNAKE: Well, has she been drinking in the last few months? Best way to check may be tracking the value of liquor stocks.<br /><br />24-7: I bet the baby will be seven months premature. It will be a miracle, but that's because God loves Republicans.<br /><br />HARBLS: Too bad that some sort of device doesn't exist that can prevent unwanted pregnancies -- some latex device that prevents semen from reaching the ovary, say, or perhaps a medicine that prevents ovulation -- that can protect privileged single young women with a good health plan from bringing up an unwanted child in a cold, cruel world. I've searched all the government-issued literature and simply cannot find a thing that could've prevented this</blockquote>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-36758260419069833732007-08-13T03:51:00.001-05:002007-08-13T04:00:17.138-05:00Rove is Resigning<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118698747711695773.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news">August 31</a>.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-81048552553180355522007-08-10T09:36:00.000-05:002007-08-10T09:42:10.158-05:00Sort It Out, Aer LingusA fiver says <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0810/airplane.hthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifml">this</a> and the plane from Monday evening are the same one. At least it's to be hoped they are, because if not, then there are two dodgy planes on the transatlantic route. <br /><br />Are they sure they can even <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> up to Belfast to <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0810/aerlingus.html">run their Heathrow service</a> from there? Where are they going to find a plane capable of flying that distance?hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-66440849871760715642007-08-08T18:02:00.000-05:002007-08-08T18:23:29.565-05:00James Wood Rocks<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBW41bdgZ_oZjBYZ9HbINRvzKv6kjxpPB_arJ3PjtvQyqLiYvYomB4AKRkIfUhe-t7X9iCLQzU7GpspSlGVKm41UFq5LRxtd3xhozktyksQ9KF8ksBaDCYgsA-CYnc9p77RyUO8Q/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBW41bdgZ_oZjBYZ9HbINRvzKv6kjxpPB_arJ3PjtvQyqLiYvYomB4AKRkIfUhe-t7X9iCLQzU7GpspSlGVKm41UFq5LRxtd3xhozktyksQ9KF8ksBaDCYgsA-CYnc9p77RyUO8Q/s320/images.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5096472951049491970" /></a><br />He's the most intelligent critic working today. His collection of essays and reviews, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Broken Estate</span>, completely changed my way of reading, and thinking about - and also writing - fiction. Unlike many critics, he doesn't see narrative realism as a dirty word, but as a complex, mysterious accomplishment - as a kind of magic, almost. He writes brilliantly on Austen, Gogol, Flaubert and Sebald in particular in that collection, and the introductory essay, "The Limits of Not Quite" is one of the most memorable and jolting pieces about literature I've ever read. And this week it has been announced that Wood is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/books/09wood.html?ref=books">leaving the New Republic to become a staff writer at the New Yorker</a>, which means (hopefully) he'll be writing much longer essays on literature, more frequently. This is good news.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-37898424630026134392007-08-08T10:56:00.001-05:002007-08-08T11:01:34.105-05:00Huh?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3uZzAdWMm8nyNELyA6HAfdsxcVrvQuX9BeCis96jgP9jEHOsv40zDstBnIvPJxgzWgWyUsRV-UwBtYhuu9zMg8aAChmS59rsKZKSjzJOXBAzOX-tY8XYF0KS7Kz4sta7l2kVeFg/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3uZzAdWMm8nyNELyA6HAfdsxcVrvQuX9BeCis96jgP9jEHOsv40zDstBnIvPJxgzWgWyUsRV-UwBtYhuu9zMg8aAChmS59rsKZKSjzJOXBAzOX-tY8XYF0KS7Kz4sta7l2kVeFg/s320/images.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5096360470150977010" /></a><br />Wow, I really am jetlagged. Apparently there was a frickin' <a href="http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_21296491.shtml"><span style="font-style:italic;">tornado</span></a> here in Brooklyn this morning. I heard the thunder, but pretty much slept through the whole thing. Thankfully I don't have to leave the house today, because <a href="http://gridskipper.com/travel/new-york/nyc-mass-transit-broken-by-storm-287261.php">all the trains are down</a>, by the look of things. <br /><br />No wonder the cat seems slightly subdued today.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-62753673467300971652007-08-08T08:12:00.000-05:002007-08-08T08:35:54.412-05:00"You Can't Be Too Thin. Or Too Powerful"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTQE1DRMS4kiP3BR26Ud26HrCO8fBw8l4Yc_sfbR62UNW6rz3bIBtjKTWHT3QzthiK35AJQHSb9AL92QwnXpfZ-VNspwNB2F-L-tIZByH4bncBq2VwR4wLpIpETWIUGr5CRP4RRg/s1600-h/angelina_jolie_too_skinny_anorexi_2.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTQE1DRMS4kiP3BR26Ud26HrCO8fBw8l4Yc_sfbR62UNW6rz3bIBtjKTWHT3QzthiK35AJQHSb9AL92QwnXpfZ-VNspwNB2F-L-tIZByH4bncBq2VwR4wLpIpETWIUGr5CRP4RRg/s320/angelina_jolie_too_skinny_anorexi_2.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5096322893482104290" /></a><br />So trumpets the e-mail announcing the new iMac, which comes out today and which is sort of ugly, as it happens. Presumably you switch it on by sticking your fingers down your throat...<br /><br />I was going to say "Only in New York", but presumably this circular went to Apple customers all over America, meaning to dozens of states where having a protruding collarbone isn't the norm. Or do those states get an email concentrating on the enormity of the monitor, and of its creamy curves? <br /><br />Also, Apple don't mention the downside of being too thin, which seems to be hitting my own relatively scrawny iBook with a vengeance these days: it means you're too weak to do anything efficiently for very long without collapsing in an exhausted heap. I'm guessing that Angelina Jolie, at the moment, is taking an impossibly long time to run anything over 2000 photos and freezing up every other application into the bargain. Rumour has it Brad Pitt has been looking longingly at a Dell.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-68536835827651347642007-08-06T13:30:00.000-05:002007-08-06T13:31:19.476-05:00To the Batmobile!I've become a little obsessed with my statcounter over the past couple of days. It may be something to do with having been holed up with my family for so long - I need to know there are other people out there, people who are not knee-deep in the same gene pool, people who are not going to follow me out of the kitchen and into the front room and down to the bedroom again because that's what families do to each other, we torment each other with constant refrains of "what are you doing?" or "where's [insert name of other family member]?" or "do you want a cup of tea?"...and so on.<br /><br />Anyway, word to the three people who actually read this blog: I'm stalking you. Or at least I'm stalking your IP address. And I have an urgent message for one of you, IP address 3243498504385034 (ok, I just made that up) in Brooklyn, New York. The message being, please feed my cat. I'm stuck in damn Dublin airport, rain teeming down outside and the Aer Lingus plane I was meant to fly on standing disconsolate in a shed somewhere while mechanics fix (hopefully) its sinister-sounding "operational fault". What qualifies as an operational fault,anyway? Does it mean that one of the wings is hanging off, or just that one of the three hundred and twenty dials in the cockpit isn't whirring and flickering quite as it should? I don't know. All I know is that this plane can no longer take off, and that some other plane, run by a company I'm not sure I've ever heard of, is coming in here at two in the morning (only nine hours late, folks, don't get stroppy) to take us to New York instead. And, yes, that means that over a hundred people are tired and hungry and inconvenienced, but screw them, because so is my cat. So, please, Mr/Ms IP address 34543058038503485, break into my apartment and feed him.<br /><br />PS I am now officially a sad woman who blogs about her cat.<br />PPS Don't all panic at once, some kind Brooklyn residents are actually going to feed the cat.<br />PPPS I'm off back to my pile of tacky magazines and my meal vouchers. It's kind of fun.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-45581246234811659452007-08-03T12:55:00.000-05:002007-08-03T13:00:39.523-05:00Why, Dan, is your nose growing?Yeah, I'm overdoing the posting today. But part of my blogging block over the last couple of months involved ignoring not just my statcounter, but the email account attached to this blog, which I've also opened up for the first time in ages today. It's mainly full of offers to "shoot 13ft across the room", which I must admit I've always wanted to do, but I'm kind of broke at the moment and can't afford the $10.99 plus postage, even taking into account the free gift of a herbal supplement which will drive my woman crazy like never before.<br /><br />I did like the email from Justin of Justinspace, however, which alerted me - vis-a-vis of a post I'd written about Dash Snow and his set a few months back - to a post of his questioning the originality of one of Colen's pieces. It's a damn good read. <a href="http://justinspace.com/blog/2007/07/03/dan-colen-appropriates-animation-art-opens-my-old-art-school-wounds/">Have a look. </a>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-69499285762300865902007-08-03T09:18:00.001-05:002010-01-30T20:54:03.977-05:00Lonely Hearts ClubI had a look at my stats for the first time in months today (suffice to say, after nearly five months' absence, I deserve to be so thoroughly abandoned) and the keyword analysis looked something like this:<br /><br />2 Aug 20:38:16 www.google.ie <em>ryan tubridy reason for divorce </em><br /><br />2 Aug 17:51:08 www.google.co.uk <em>conor mcpherson girlfriend alcohol</em><br /><br />2 Aug 11:41:41 www.google.co.uk <em>damien rice and grinning </em><br /><br />2 Aug 07:32:54 www.google.ie <em>peter crawley irish times </em><br /><br />1 Aug 21:51:45 search.yahoo.com <em>bonos new york city house </em><br /><br />You're all a bunch of stalkers!! Anyway, everyone knows the real reason for Ryan Tubridy's divorce was that his missus ran off with Damien Rice, having been dazzled by his grin as he read a scathing Peter Crawley review of a Conor McPherson play, and that the two are now holed up in Bono's apartment overlooking Central Park.<br /><br />But back to my eg0-bruising stats. Of all the keyword searches, my personal favourite is the googler who just can't forget his experience of North Leitrim statutory rape...<br /><br />1 Aug 17:29:42 www.google.ca <em>irish girl in ballinamore was<br /> a great school teacher and lover</em><br /><br />Answers on a postcard please: who <em>is </em>that Ballinamore maths teacher who shows her students the truth about square roots?hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-10765521058662388532007-04-01T14:35:00.000-05:002007-04-01T14:42:49.426-05:00Happy April Fools' Day<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAEE97u34mN5Q6yDjYcJhs6uvk-kMu3I9t2f_6rTgfFlbNGKh_XWUqFNVHRvJNaGasoXRPMngwPzK6_-x66oOHS3TjsGd_HL25mz1cSGlK_A-NlP9eUfHhfSRMfODwejKlYX_0mQ/s1600-h/step2_af.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAEE97u34mN5Q6yDjYcJhs6uvk-kMu3I9t2f_6rTgfFlbNGKh_XWUqFNVHRvJNaGasoXRPMngwPzK6_-x66oOHS3TjsGd_HL25mz1cSGlK_A-NlP9eUfHhfSRMfODwejKlYX_0mQ/s320/step2_af.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048546910286484754" /></a>...from <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html">gmail</a>.<br /><br />It goes like this: gmail now offers a service whereby you can order paper copies (gasp!) of all your emails, and they'll deliver them to you for free. Check out the FAQs: <br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Are attachments included?</span><br /><br />All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Is there a limit?</span><br /><br />You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />But what about the environment?</span><br /><br />Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.</blockquote><br /><br />Post-consumer organic soybean sputum. <span style="font-style:italic;">Yum.</span>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-72872515168676966482007-03-30T10:58:00.000-05:002007-08-03T08:56:28.048-05:00The Tuning ForkI asked Ronan Gallagher to send on the letter he wrote to RTE Radio after John McGahern died last year, and he did, and I'm delighted to be able to post it here on John's first anniversary. The talk last night went well enough, and afterwards people were buying McGahern books like there was no tomorrow, a good sign, many of them readers new to him. I couldn't believe the size of the crowd; I had thought that maybe there was not a lot of interest in McGahern here, given that so few people had heard of him when I mentioned him last year. But there was standing room only in the venue, both upstairs where the talk was and downstairs where they'd put some television screens. All evening I meant to read the passage in Amongst Women which McGahern described as his "tuning fork" - the passage which made him realise, once he'd written it, that he had a novel, and the passage against which he measured all the rest of that novel's sentences and passages to come. I never got around to it, so I'm going to post it here as a marker of today. It's significant in that it is a piece of his own prose with which McGahern was satisfied, or half-satisfied in any case; a very rare thing for him, as he was an acute perfectionist. And the idea of writing until that sure passage or sentence comes, and of having it there as the tuning fork, as the measure, for the writer, of everything before and after it, is probably the best writing advice I've ever come upon. That, and just getting the words right. Sounds easy, doesn't it? <br /><br /><blockquote>Moran went out to the road and closed the iron gates under the yew after returning with the car from the station. He listened for the noise of the diesel train crossing the Plains behind the house but it had already passed. The light was beginning to fail but he did not want to go into the house. In a methodical way he set out to walk his land, field by blind field. He had not grown up on these fields but they felt to him as if he had. He had bought them with the money he had been given on leaving the army. The small pension wasn't enough to live on but with working the fields he had turned it into a living. He'd be his own man here, he had thought, and for the first time in his life he'd be away from people. Now he went from field to filed, no longer kept as well as they once were, the hedges ragged, stones fallen from the walls, but he hardly needed the fields any more. It did not take much to keep Rose and himself. <br /><br />It was like grasping water to think how quickly the years had passed here. They were nearly gone. It was in the nature of things and yet it brought a sense of betrayal and anger, of never having understood anything much. Instead of using the fields, he sometimes felt as if the fields had used him. Soon they would be using someone else in his place. It was unlikely to be either of his sons. He tried to imagine someone running the place after he was gone and could not. He continued walking the fields like a man trying to see. <br /></blockquote><br /><br />That line about grasping water hits me like a physical blow every time I read it. <br /><br />Ronan's letter is below. <br /><br /><span id="fullpost"><br />Dear Pat,<br /> <br />John McGahern is dead. The RTE man announced it with a slight hesitation, as if he didn't believe his own news. It stopped me in my tracks as I am sure it did many in this county and beyond in a much wider world. I have to confess that my introduction to McGahern's writings at the tender age of fifteen, had more to do with teenage hormones than literary knowledge. It all started when a very large padded envelope addressed to my father, 'Pat (the Vet) Gallagher' Mohill, arrived, carried with great reverence into our house by our postman as it was too large to fit in the letterbox. Printed on the envelope was the very prominent and glamorous mastiff of 'The New Yorker Magazine' which clearly impressed the Postman. 'Be God Pat, that's a very important looking package' he quipped as he passed the envelope to my father with the care and precision of a man handling a priceless Faberge egg. 'And a heavy one too' retorted my father as he placed the package on a shelf and thanking the postman, continued his work, crushing all my hopes and the Postman's, that its contents might be revealed. Disappointed, I soon forgot about the package until, a few days later I came across it, opened, and unattended on my fathers office desk. Having thought about it for all of a nano-second, I opened the envelope to discover inside, a hardback book by a man called John McGahern with the delicious title 'The Pornographer'. A hand written note attached on headed New Yorker note paper read something like 'I thought a brown envelope might attract too much attention.Ha Ha! Hope you enjoy. Say hello to all back home. John.'<br /> <br />Having a good idea that this might not be on my fathers approved list of literary classics for fifteen year olds, and drooling at the promise of the title, I immediately dived into page one. Well I was bitterly disappointed to find that as Trainspotting has no trains neither did 'The Pornographer' have much pornography. However I was absolutely thrilled to discover that it did have the wonderful writing that this mans pen could yield up. Here was a book about people and places that I recognised and could relate to. John McGahern drew a huge amount of his inspiration from his native Leitrim where he lived among the people. He was one of them, and could be seen out and about, often more concerned about having enough fodder for the cattle than winning the next literary award or reading the latest accolade. I cannot claim to have known Mr McGahern save to meet him the odd time at my fathers house or in Luke Early's bar cum Undertakers in Mohill where McGahern the 'Antennae' would sit in a corner listening to stories and banter from my father and his friends Tom Reynolds and Tom Murphy among others. McGahern would soak up the atmosphere, but always with the ability to be a part of it. He was of the people. He saw our history and our past through eyes that did not lie and refused to embellish, a history that many of a certain generation could relate to, but never speak of. Though his work contained beautiful romance, he never romanticised, and he recognised that as there is great beauty in everyday life there is also cruelty and harshness. His were the eyes of truth, a truth we refused to face for many years, that repression and dogma are no substitutes for freedom of expression and creative thinking.<br /> <br />Nearly twenty five years after the padded envelope arrived to our house, it's author John McGahern, was the first person to walk forward and shake my hand as I stepped out of Luke Early's hearse to bury my father. I'll never forget his words to me then, 'There will never be another Pat Gallagher. May God bless him' and they are the words which come to me now on hearing the sad news of his departure from us.<br /> <br />'There will never be another John McGahern. May God bless him.'<br /> <br />Yours in sadness,<br /> <br />Ronan Gallagher<br />Lough Rinn<br />Mohill<br />Co Leitrim<br /></span>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-2962568348366678612007-03-29T07:07:00.000-05:002007-08-03T08:58:37.245-05:00McGahern on Film, online<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv_4Gj10tsCJnbhfHlewKdA1OPLS36uRzd9CYAYH6l48Rk4goYhmd6bgZqEsq3sAAz3itVbXUbhGaVCSau0nhuTca9xHHceLcmziOr0zsVam1Q7nQPVhfJNcfROVwCAWGSvdU7zA/s1600-h/-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv_4Gj10tsCJnbhfHlewKdA1OPLS36uRzd9CYAYH6l48Rk4goYhmd6bgZqEsq3sAAz3itVbXUbhGaVCSau0nhuTca9xHHceLcmziOr0zsVam1Q7nQPVhfJNcfROVwCAWGSvdU7zA/s320/-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047323351413265666" /></a> It's all McGahern today, all day; surrounded by notes and trying to put some order on them, to do justice to the man, to get the words right, as he'd say. I've been trying to think about realism and parochialism, the difference between them, about the difference, too, between goodwill and genuine engagement. About the ways in which McGahern will be remembered, about the ways in which he is read, and how they square up to the way he wrote, his intense craft and rigor, the brilliance and clarity of his work which was in no way accidental or quaint. <br /><br />I got an email this morning from Ronan Gallagher, the Mohill-based filmmaker and writer. I recognised Gallagher's name because he wrote the most beautiful and vivid letter to RTE Radio after McGahern's death last year. I can almost remember the words of it even a year on. <br /><br />Gallagher has made a short film about the opening of the John McGahern library at the Lough Rynn Hotel in Leitrim last November(the photo of McGahern above, by John Keaney from Carrick-on-Shannon, hangs in the library). The film is called Amongst Friends and you can watch it by going to the Lough Rynn website <a href="http://www.loughrynn.ie">here</a>. Lough Rynn is a gorgeous place, very peaceful, and they've worked a really understated and lovely restoration and conversion of the old castle, which I used to visit when I was a child. <br />Have a look at the film. It does start out a bit like a promo for the hotel, and the presence of Bertie Ahern and his cronies becomes quickly cloying (he's barely able to pronounce McGahern's surname, and his comment about the "smashing houses" in the locality rings grimly for anyone who's seen how the blight of new houses is ruining that county, as commented on <a href="http://www.cutehall.blogspot.com">here</a>). But it gives an interesting glimpse of how deeply-felt the connection to McGahern was in the county where he lived. Which is a more complicated relationship than all of the good will and genuine affection can suggest, I think; again, it feeds into the question of how McGahern will go down in local memory; for his artistry or in terms of his personality and the pride his name came, in later years, to inspire locally. The things are certainly not mutually exclusive. But if the former is brushed over or merely paid lipservice to, in favour of the latter, I think it runs the risk of being a less lasting memory. I'm not saying this of this short clip; it's something I've been thinking about more generally since McGahern's passing. <br /><br />And the film is worth seeing for the moving moment when Madeline, John's widow, speaks about how, when first she saw the room, she could see John's "wry smile" and his pleasure at the idea and the remembrance. <br /><br /><br />I also meant to update yesterday with a full list of the films and dramas made about McGahern's work, or inspired by it, or scripts written by him. The IFI event is screening four, but there are others, and radio dramas and of course his stage play as well. A couple of years back, the mobile cinema in Drumshanbo had a festival of most of the works on film, more extensive than the IFI event even, gathering short films and student films from all around. <br /><br />There's a list, a full one I think, after the jump.<br /><span id="fullpost"><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">By McGahern</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Sinclair</span>, radio adaptation of his own short story "Why We're Here", broadcast on BBC Radio 3, 16 November 1971; published in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Listener</span>, 18 November 1971, 690-2.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Barracks</span>, radio adaptation of his own novel, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 24 January 1972. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Power of Darkness</span>, after Tolstoy, submitted to the Abbey and rejected in 1972, produced as a radio adaptation on BBC Radio 3 in the same year (15 October), produced at the Abbey in 1991, directed by Garry Hynes. Published by Faber. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Sisters</span>, television adaptation of the short story by Joyce. Broadcast as part of <span style="font-style:italic;">Full House</span> on BBC 2, 17 February 1973. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Swallows</span>, television adaptation of his own short story. Broadcast as part of the Second City Firsts series on BBC 2, 27 March 1975. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Rockingham Shoot</span>, original television drama. Broadcast as part of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Screenplay: Next</span> series on BBC 2, 10 September 1987. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Pornographer</span>, film script adaptation of his own novel, remains unproduced and unpublished. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />By Others</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Barracks</span>, stage adaptation, adapted by Hugh Leonard, first performed 6 October 1969 at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin. Directed by Tomas MacAnna<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Wheels</span>, film adaptation of the short story. Adapted and directed by Cathal Black, 1976. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Lost Hour</span>, television adaptation of The Leavetaking, adapted by Carlo Gebler, directed by Tony Barry. RTE, 1983. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Key</span>, television adaptation of a work of McGahern (possibly "Bomb Box", but unverified), adapted by Carlo Gebler, directed by Tony Barry, RTE 1985. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Korea</span>, film adaptation of teh short story, screenplay by Joe O'Byrne, directed by Cathal Black. 1995. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Amongst Women</span>, audiobook, read by Stephen Rea, Faber 1997. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />My Love, My Umbrella</span>, an opera version of that story, "Sierra Leone" and "Gold Watch". Adapted into a libretto by James Conway, score by Kevin O'Connell, first performed 9 October 1997 at the Stamford Arts Centre, England. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Amongst Women</span> [2], television adaptation, screenplay by Adrian Hodges, directed by Tom Cairns. First Broadcast on RTE 1, 17 May - 7 June 1998. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Swallows</span>, film adaptation of the short story, adapted and directed by Michael O'Connell. 2000. <br /><br />Details from Stanley van der Ziel's annotated bibliography in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Irish University Review</span> special on McGahern, 2005.<br /></span>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-77143581455627695352007-03-27T19:35:00.001-05:002007-03-29T06:23:58.126-05:00John McGahern, A Year On<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnAqmU_5AABMYwZep7lZPirQw2hWfTiwqmYs62iVofX5zM51dXIynuZnM4OFl1LXnA17YZGX6Da3LNABMh1By6kYSpX7DP4mhYb6TnSKzEfII6JPv_niO3bHW34HtKJoEx-QyiPA/s1600-h/pic_doc_1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnAqmU_5AABMYwZep7lZPirQw2hWfTiwqmYs62iVofX5zM51dXIynuZnM4OFl1LXnA17YZGX6Da3LNABMh1By6kYSpX7DP4mhYb6TnSKzEfII6JPv_niO3bHW34HtKJoEx-QyiPA/s320/pic_doc_1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047305651853038834" /></a><br />Americans are not hugely familiar with the work of John McGahern, as I discovered when he died last year. Even in a school of fiction, only one person I spoke to had heard of him, and some people thought I was talking about Frank McCourt...<br /><br />Anyway, March 30th is the first anniversary of McGahern's death, and there's an <a href="http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/object/acelebrationofjohnmcgahern.html">event</a> to mark the occasion at Ireland House, the property donated to NYU by the Glucksmans and dedicated to Irish studies. With writers like Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain living in Manhattan, I'm surprised it's not a different, more writer-centric kind of panel, but hopefully there will be lots of contributions from the audience. The event will be followed by a screening of the terrific, moving documentary made about McGahern in 2004 (from which the still above comes). <br /><br />Still, it's the <a href="http://www.irishfilm.ie/index_117.asp">McGahern event in the IFI in Dublin </a>on Sunday which I'd <span style="font-style:italic;">really</span> love to attend. It's a programme called "McGahern on Film" and will screen three screen adaptations of McGahern's work, as well as a TV drama written by McGahern in 1987. I've never seen any of these films; they're extremely hard to track down. Hopefully the IFI event will spur the release of a McGahern on Film DVD. The IFI event is hosted by Colm Toibin, who will be superb talking about McGahern's fiction, his aesthetic and his inimitable mischief.<br /><br />Well done to both Ireland House and the IFI for getting the McGahern tributes together. I think there's one happening in his native Leitrim a little later in the year, which sounds great also. If you're in New York, come. If you're in Dublin, go, and report back...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">update: </span> Speaking of Frank McCourt, here's something I just found, in an interview with McGahern from 2000. He's responding to a question which was partly about Frank McCourt, partly about Brian Moore. <blockquote>"<span style="font-style:italic;">Angela's Ashes</span> interested me more [than Brian Moore].I found it a very strange book, a mixture of farce and clearly honed American evocative writing and literary pretension. The pretension was its weakest part. A work it reminded me of was Synge's <span style="font-style:italic;">Playboy of the Western World</span>, also a farce. It was farce as a great kick at misery and passive suffering. If it's not a farce, then the concluding chapter is in serious bad taste and the whole book a sort of porridge."</blockquote>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com340tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-81534906751004992612007-03-16T13:59:00.000-05:002007-03-16T14:15:02.328-05:00The Fish AwardHere's an example of the kind of rapid-fire literary posting I was talking about in the n+1/TEV post: for the first time in its history, the prestigious <a href="http://www.fishpublishing.com/short-stories-news.php">Fish Short Story Prize</a> has been awarded to an Irish writer, Kathleen Murray from Dublin. The 2007 Anthology will take its title from her story, <span style="font-style:italic;">A Paper Heart is Beating, A Paper Boat sets Sail</span>. She began writing when she took a course with the poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill in 2004; this was probably the one at the <a href="http://www.writerscentre.ie/">Irish Writers Centre</a>, from which the anthology <span style="font-style:italic;">The Incredible Hides in Every House</span> was produced. I like what Murray says about how she began writing - "I think good writing gave me the inclination to attempt to write" - and also about how she feels, having won the Fish award: <br /><br /><blockquote>I feel that it is the story itself that has won though, not me, and I am pleased most of all for the story itself.</blockquote>hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-83882346106665226402007-03-16T13:19:00.000-05:002007-03-17T11:42:01.027-05:00The Inelegant VariationWe're subscribers to the literary journal <a href="http://www.nplusonemag.com/">n+1</a> in this house, and daily readers of Mark Sarvas's literary blog <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/">The Elegant Variation</a>, too (why am I using the first person plural all of a sudden? I blame Josh Ferris). Both are excellent. But the spat between the two camps which has <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2007/03/the_n1_letters__1.html#comments">exploded</a> on TEV and also on the litblog <a href="http://www.themillionsblog.com/">The Millions</a> (also a great blog, by the way) is just embarrassing. Confusing, also, and more than a little hysterical, and petty, a lot, but mainly just embarrassing. A couple of months back, I added the n+1 editorial in question to my course syllabus (I teach uni writing to freshman students), in a section which also included essays by William Cronon and Caroline Bassett. I added it, along with excerpts from Sven Birkerts' book The Gutenberg Elegies, and some recent media analysis of blogging, myspace, second life, etc, because I thought it was an interesting counterpart to those texts. Most of the students didn't like it, the n+1 editorial, for different reasons. They didn't think it convincing, or they thought it preachy, or they thought it too disjointed, or they thought it was "just showing off" (they tend to think a lot of writing is "just showing off", I should add). Or they didn't see the irony which I think was at work in much of the editorial. But they articulated their problems with it in a manner a damn sight more coherent and more reasonable than can be said for the leaders of the current litblog bitchslap.<br /><br />For my part, I hugely enjoyed the editorial (which is currently excerpted on the n+1 homepage); I read it partly as satire, partly as polemic, and I found a lot of truth in what it had to say about blogging, about the e-mail bind, about mobile phones. It was, I think, too hastily dismissive of literary blogging - there do exist litbloggers who write considered criticism on their blogs, who do more than blow "wet kisses" or flick fillips of contempt, although they're in the minority. It's hard work to write a serious literary blog, and it's long work; when I started this blog, I hoped it would be a place for me to write about books I'd read and plays I'd seen. My friend <a href="http://www.miglior-acque.blogspot.com">Miglior</a> does this kind of blogging about his particular area of interest very well, and very diligently. But I'm not that diligent, I guess. I read for work, and I read for school (apologies to non-American readers; I've caved in and started saying "school" instead of "college", like they do here), and I write for work, and I write for school, and I just plain <span style="font-style:italic;">write</span>, and when it comes to blogging, I've found that it's the very immediacy of it - the very "reflex" criticized by the n+1 editors - the gossipy, news-sharing, info-sending aspect of it that most appeals to me. I'm a reflex blogger, and when I blog about books, it's rarely in a very considered way, or in a way, come to think of it, of which I'm particularly proud. I mentioned earlier this week, for example, that I was enjoying Liam Callanan's <span style="font-style:italic;">All Saints - </span> well, that changed soon afterwards, and I began to be slightly horrified by it, and I kept going with it only to abandon it, unable to muster the enthusiasm to go on, roughly 20 pages from the end. Now that, there, what I've just written; that's not a review. It's a blog post. And there's no reason the two things shouldn't go together, and, on other blogs, they do, which is something the n+1 editorial ought to acknowledge, I think. But it's true, too, that there are many, many more examples of the kind of blog to which they do refer. And here's one of them.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-12737994483378248042007-03-14T13:05:00.000-05:002007-03-17T11:48:49.461-05:00That Person We All Know<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYcYEHaZshRN5PzpW4E00ZYrS5LmSz3VD0WGEoOsR4MJ9_42-9oR2xaaxulCYQqmNDRAG0Fi1-MpyUgUAP9efct5YUBch_z7Api5SymIWpYa_ng90aux-CVAD7nW2bn5W-nih7OQ/s1600-h/bottledrinkpic.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYcYEHaZshRN5PzpW4E00ZYrS5LmSz3VD0WGEoOsR4MJ9_42-9oR2xaaxulCYQqmNDRAG0Fi1-MpyUgUAP9efct5YUBch_z7Api5SymIWpYa_ng90aux-CVAD7nW2bn5W-nih7OQ/s320/bottledrinkpic.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5041845790934166274" /></a><br /><a href="http://gawker.com/news/gawker-underminer/gawker-underminer-the-poe+biz-244113.php">Today's Gawker Underminer</a> (a column written in the voice of the friend whose brilliance always makes you feel like topping yourself) hones in on the literary overachiever. Specifically, the poetry overachiever, but it works for every genre. Read it and guffaw. Then go back to staring at your inbox and reminding yourself you're not 23 anymore and vowing to read David bloody Foster Wallace and generally asking soul-destroying questions of yourself. <br /><br />Enjoy!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">PS</span> I couldn't find an image of a New Yorker rejection slip to go with this post, but look what I did find, via cartoonist Royston Robertson's <a href="http://roystonrobertson.blogspot.com/search?q=oink">blog</a>:<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWkj5cKW18CEkLMpElwpb0KXKgN0qxB9m0EHIpyJWA7V_6QBfxscX5nZQlBbJie-jZBhI8Fp3yqsT0aWpm2nmFQCIME1HHu8Y4ocJlNA2-nrkIItw2bXaO8-Inw33ua7JTv1LWw/s1600-h/oinkrejection.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWkj5cKW18CEkLMpElwpb0KXKgN0qxB9m0EHIpyJWA7V_6QBfxscX5nZQlBbJie-jZBhI8Fp3yqsT0aWpm2nmFQCIME1HHu8Y4ocJlNA2-nrkIItw2bXaO8-Inw33ua7JTv1LWw/s320/oinkrejection.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5041847388662000402" /></a> Who remembers the brilliantly vile comic <span style="font-style:italic;">Oink</span> (see <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A835373">here</a> for a history and <a href="http://www.notbbc.34sp.com/index.php?issue=12&page=1">here</a> for some online issues)? My mother used to buy it for me every Friday, along with the <span style="font-style:italic;">Beano</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Bunty</span>. This was when I was seven or eight. One day, after I'd read every issue for about a year, she actually looked through an issue and never bought it for me again. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">update:</span> turns out they just stopped publishing it in 1988. That was why the issues stopped coming. Sorry, mum...hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-49955391105244168942007-03-12T23:42:00.000-05:002007-03-13T10:57:13.433-05:00And Then We Came To The KGB<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTyKG6iIvCGwFXpiUDvKMkTyW3BaBHCNoOybGTpEqE9mM6Eyyod3AQQScPGWUFz8Gm9fw_gMZXlPHQSmXFRMAQ-UbFykoKqdNX5s1lT9dFoSSMsFalDqadwZWshOIBBK1-S2U31A/s1600-h/1376081_4eef806bc6.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTyKG6iIvCGwFXpiUDvKMkTyW3BaBHCNoOybGTpEqE9mM6Eyyod3AQQScPGWUFz8Gm9fw_gMZXlPHQSmXFRMAQ-UbFykoKqdNX5s1lT9dFoSSMsFalDqadwZWshOIBBK1-S2U31A/s320/1376081_4eef806bc6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5041271988500134738" /></a> After the Irish reading, we legged it up to the KGB for another reading, because I'd read a lot about Joshua Ferris's new novel, <span style="font-style:italic;">And Then We Came To The End </span>(check out the fancy website <a href="www.thenwecametotheend.com">here</a>), and I wanted to hear him read from it. Ferris was an engaging guest blogger on <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/">The Elegant Variation </a>last week, which I chatted to him about when he found himself inescapably stuck beside me in the tiny, overcrowded venue. He seems like a nice guy - talked about how time-consuming blogging was, and how he only ever did it at night, and how he couldn't imagine trying to do it all the time, while working on his fiction too - and he hung my coat up, so I'll definitely be buying his book. Oh, and it also sounded very good (if a little cinematic) - it's about office dwellers, and narrated in that horrible, cloying "we" voice, the first-person plural, beloved of HR departments everywhere - a nice touch, which knifes straight into the deadening, depersonalising heart of corporate culture. Anyway, they weren't selling the book in the KGB, so I'll have to hunt down a copy, and I'll report back when I have read it. I'm sure it will be a lot better than the novel I read last week, Andre Aciman's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Call-Me-Your-Name-Novel/dp/0374299218"><span style="font-style:italic;">Call Me By Your Name</span></a>; I don't know how Colm Toibin and Nicole Krauss could blurb it with straight faces. He wrote it in four months -clearly after having gorged on <span style="font-style:italic;">To The Lighthouse</span> - and it shows. I like his non-fiction a lot, but this...no. <br /><br />Getting back to the KGB reading - which will eventually be available to hear, along with interviews, <a href="http://www.kgbbar.com/lit/live">here</a> - Ferris was preceded by two other very enjoyable writers, <a href="http://www.liamcallanan.com/">Liam Callanan</a>, whose new novel <span style="font-style:italic;">All Saints</span> I'm reading at the moment (it <span style="font-style:italic;">was</span> on sale on the night) and really enjoying, and Elise Blackwell, who read from her novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-History-Cypress-Parish/dp/1932961313/sr=1-1/qid=1170128200/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6242744-4163955?ie=UTF8&s=books"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish</span></a>, which is about the floods which struck Louisiana in 1927. The book was all but finished when Katrina hit last year, and Blackwell felt it had to be completely rewritten, and relocated, in the light of what had happened. So her narrator now tells the story of one flood on the eve of another.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-9080246099406449972007-03-12T23:11:00.000-05:002007-03-12T23:38:10.399-05:00Some New Haunts<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_Io8-SqRqVBE/RfYqVuqteyI/AAAAAAAAACw/QXY-_XHABAQ/s1600-h/DSC_0543.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_Io8-SqRqVBE/RfYqVuqteyI/AAAAAAAAACw/QXY-_XHABAQ/s320/DSC_0543.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5041263385680640802" /></a><br />New blogs I've stumbled across, or been meaning to post about, of late: <br /><br /><a href="http://www.theconvexmirror.blogspot.com"><br />The Convex Mirror</a>: a blog about art in New York, which may or may not be written by someone living in this very apartment (not me, and not the cat, above, pictured hogging the reading material behind the blog's title).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sexagenarian07.wordpress.com">Sexagenarian And The City</a>: my friend "Mimi's" blog about being a (nearly) sixtysomething on the dating scene in New York...hilarious and utterly true, every word of it...<br /><a href="http://poetrysnark.blogspot.com/"><br />The Poetry Snark</a>: does what it says on the tin. Merciless interrogation of the many sacred cows of the American poetry scene. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.edrants.com/">Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant</a>: a literary blog which makes me feel dizzier than do the <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/">Elegant Variation</a>, the unread pile of New Yorkers in my sitting-room and the Strand Bookstore <span style="font-style:italic;">combined</span>. <br /><br />Ed Park's Blog: Aptly entitled <a href="http://thedizzies.blogspot.com/2007/03/connections-wg-sibbald.html">The Dizzies</a>, this is another literary blog, by a co-founder of the excellent <a href="http://www.believermag.com/">Believer</a> magazine. Ed Park's first novel is due out later this year. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.britinbrooklyn.blogspot.com/">Brit in Brooklyn</a>: Great photography, commentary on how developers are gobbling up this and other boroughs, and depressing hurricane-related news (if it hits, Brooklynites are goners. Oh well)hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-28818865373089760012007-03-12T21:23:00.000-05:002007-03-13T10:58:21.568-05:00Ugh, Look What He's Done With His Copy of The Irish Book Review*...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgItHOjF1I6AHg-07CWP8pTCaueRSeMPDVEJKWxAa47ZDLJH7b01OcdpCIStxXaDJQTeohLI7a5nO0SdCuikQXWXaTpa_4u6mM1gCPofyXn7NdtEhBSuno36r-g7G2Eh1uOwDCE4Q/s1600-h/dash070115_4_198.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgItHOjF1I6AHg-07CWP8pTCaueRSeMPDVEJKWxAa47ZDLJH7b01OcdpCIStxXaDJQTeohLI7a5nO0SdCuikQXWXaTpa_4u6mM1gCPofyXn7NdtEhBSuno36r-g7G2Eh1uOwDCE4Q/s320/dash070115_4_198.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5041254507983239954" /></a><br />"You'll never guess who's here," A. said the other evening, as we waited for a reading by some lesser known Irish fiction writers to begin in a Chinatown restaurant. The reading was part of the series <a href="http://upcoming.org/event/155903/">Good Words at the Good World </a> at the Good World Bar & Grill on Orchard Street; each month it has a different theme, and this month, to coincide with Paddy's Day possibly, the theme was Ireland - or "Out of Ireland", to be exact. Mary Burke, who teaches Irish literature at the University of Connecticut and was published in the Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories 2004-5, and Martin Roper, who wrote a novel called Gone and teaches nonfiction at NYU, both read from new novels in progress. The place was packed, standing room only, and for some reason there were replicas of the same couple - the distinguished-looking, grey-bearded man, and the long-haired, long-skirted, outdoorsy-looking middle-aged woman - in every corner. They all looked vaguely familiar - probably because they all looked so much like one another, so when A came back from his cigarette break with a glint in his eye and news of a celebrity sighting, I prepared my best fake-excited face, expecting to hear tell of some obscure modernist poet. Or worse. <br />"Please don't say Frank McCourt," I said. <br /><br />But no! It was the semen-daubing sensation of the Downtown art scene, Dash Snow, described by a controversial <a href="http://nymag.com/arts/art/profiles/26288/index.html">New York Magazine profile</a> in January as looking like "the son of Jim Morrison and Jesus Christ"; Dash Snow, who comes from the De Menil family, one of the richest art families in the world, but who ran away at 13 to be a thief, a graffiti artist and, pretty soon, a scuzzy, elusive scene legend. He makes art out of newspaper clippings and his own semen, out of skulls, out of phlegm. He had a piece - a series of polaroid pictures, one of a dog scavenging in trash - in the Whitney Biennial last year, and he also had a piece - a semen/newspaper collage - in the Saatchi Show. He and his set - Ryan McGinley and Dan Colen, McGinley arguably being the genuine talent among them - have been dubbed Warhol's Children, existing in their own mythology of weirdness, privilege and self-absorption. They're known for their Hamster's Nests, which they create by shredding up to fifty phone books, winding all the blankets and curtains in the room around themselves, turning on the taps and taking a lorryload of drugs "until they feel like hamsters". <br /><br />And here was their leader, quietly sitting at the back of an Irish writers event. And not a hamster in sight. <br /><br />Except, of course, Snow hadn't come for the Irish writers. He was at the Good World for his breakfast bloody mary, more than likely, it being the downtown breakfast hour of 5 p.m. And chances are (we couldn't see), he legged it out of there very soon after the first soft rumblings of an Irish accent came over the loudspeaker. He certainly didn't stick it out to the end. But I hope he was there for at least some of the first reading, so that his well-trumpeted paranoia might have been piqued by Mary Burke's descriptions of an early 20th century European bohemia (her novel is based on the story of Lucia Joyce) which, at times seemed both to mirror and to parody Snow's downtown scene, right down to the bodily-fluid-soaked artworks. There were a few strangled noises from the back in response to that bit, come to think of it...<br /><br />* (on that business with the Irish Book Review)...well, who could blame him?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">update: </span> A. has helpfully pointed me towards <a href="http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n5/htdocs/hamster.php">this account</a> of the making of a Snow/Colen Hamster Nest. Now I really wish Snow <span style="font-style:italic;">had</span> stuck around. Cause that's the kind of Irish book party I'd like to see. Which Irish scribes are up to it, though? I see Des Hogan and Colm Toibin, holding forth over a mountain of coke and Cutty One Rock and surrounded by shredded 01 directories and Dublin pigeons named McDowell, while Tony Cronin and Tom Murphy roar encouragement from the sidelines.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-70242747204428254532007-03-07T08:50:00.000-05:002007-03-07T09:08:47.670-05:00Conde Nasty<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_f5n9SbTTLEGofxtXQRWFh8_tXt9t5NgSxEyGLq8Gzu9W-EqeNWH2gEEqyY3ioqiEVP3C_t1A-ozrIpOn56NJX5VWP-qw7cpDS0gwLmitg0vZ_kKTcCiiDamct68elaWgHaVOxQ/s1600-h/44fourtimessquare.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_f5n9SbTTLEGofxtXQRWFh8_tXt9t5NgSxEyGLq8Gzu9W-EqeNWH2gEEqyY3ioqiEVP3C_t1A-ozrIpOn56NJX5VWP-qw7cpDS0gwLmitg0vZ_kKTcCiiDamct68elaWgHaVOxQ/s320/44fourtimessquare.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5039182671555591458" /></a><br />In half an hour, I have to be at 4 Times Square, otherwise known as the Conde Nast building, otherwise known as The Scariest Place in New York, to do an interview with the poetry editor of the New Yorker. She, Alice Quinn, is not part of the scary bit - she was one of my teachers last year, and is a very sweet and approachable person. The scary bit, obviously, is the prospect of the Conde Nast girls, the skinny, pouty, cheekboney, Prada-clad swarm of <span style="font-style:italic;">Vogue-</span>associated women, who will be stomping their $700 snowboots into the lobby just about the time that I arrive in my cat-hair-covered coat, slightly holey tights (please stay above the knee, ladder, please stay, nice ladder), odd vintage-meets-Belgian-weirdo-designer outfit, and hair which has not been combed because I this morning, of all mornings, I cannot find the comb. And of course, since it's pelting down snow and something like minus ten outside, I will also be red-nosed, sniffly and trailing hats and scarves in a Wurzel Gummidge manner. <br /><br />Yes, I <span style="font-style:italic;">know</span> I'm going there to talk about poetry. And I have been there before, and I survived. But seriously, I think I'm allowed this wobbly. Anna Wintour <span style="font-style:italic;">shouted</span> at one of my classmates in the elevator there last week. <br /><br />At least I haven't eaten any breakfast. That might help me to fit in.<br /><br />Oh yes: forgot to add, because it is so flippin' cold, I will also be wearing red furry earmuffs which my mother bought me for Christmas, probably from Lidl. Got a clear enough picture?hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-34506604770898680352007-02-20T23:47:00.000-05:002007-02-21T00:21:04.749-05:00Neighbourhood Snark<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJw4ssZnNjCAC3mhKQi2w_JAHi7Zn11TLZWA8cv_X4_0se2M6jTR2ywzSF1KusZsjWEMqqe1C7UF4O5z15JGFMdV6VqwNvhrhgreAMfLgJKhS6_KFDOY55G5IB3rv0yGMWC3oPg/s1600-h/cover1.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJw4ssZnNjCAC3mhKQi2w_JAHi7Zn11TLZWA8cv_X4_0se2M6jTR2ywzSF1KusZsjWEMqqe1C7UF4O5z15JGFMdV6VqwNvhrhgreAMfLgJKhS6_KFDOY55G5IB3rv0yGMWC3oPg/s320/cover1.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5033852236829824882" /></a> <span style="font-style:italic;">Speaking</span> of blogging and the L train...<br /><br />Over the weekend, while writerprocrastinating, I discovered <a href="http://www.nycbloggers.com">nycbloggers.com</a>, a New York City blogging map, which lists blogs by subway line and subway stop. Think of it as a sort of Gawker Stalker for bloggers. My subway stop, the <a href="http://www.nycbloggers.com/station.asp?stop_id=359">Grand Street</a> L stop, has 18 blogs listed. I haven't yet joined up because of their "New Yorkers Only" criteria, which made me stop and think about whether I could qualify as a New Yorker...and the next line on their form is "if you have to ask whether you qualify as a New Yorker, you're probably not." Huh. They also say ex-pats are welcome, but I don't think they mean Irish ex-pats, exactly...<br /><br />Anyway. Forget all of that. My initial pleasure at finding a blogging map to poke around at was quickly curtailed and transformed into sheer terror. What kind of sheer terror, you ask? Well, the kind of sheer terror that only a writerprocrastinator - that is, only a trying-to-write-a-novelist - acquainted with the catty directness of <a href="http://misssnark.blogspot.com/">Miss Snark, Literary Agent</a> can understand. Miss Snark tells it like it is. She's an agent, who writes an anonymous blog in which she answsers questions from idiot (and not so idiot) writers about querying, agent-hunting, agent-pestering and publishing, and she doesn't mince her words. Witness her crapometers for synopses, query letters and first pages. Yeah, those sarky red notations she inserts into submissions as she tears them to shreds are funny. Catty. Hilarious. Until you find it's time to write a synopsis or a query letter yourself (NOT for Miss Snark...who would seriously put themselves through that ordeal?), and then you start to see her red notations in your dreams. She scares the bejaysus out of me.<br /><br />So, you'll be wondering about the reason for my nycblogger.com-induced sheer terror. Turns out Miss Snark lives one subway stop away, at <a href="http://www.nycbloggers.com/station.asp?stop_id=360">Montrose Avenue.</a> That's less than <span style="font-style:italic;">ten blocks away</span>. I probably see her on the subway every morning. Oh my god, what if she has seen me reading over print-outs of my bloody novel? Standing behind me during the morning rush and snarking silently over my shoulder? Aiming virtual red-pen squiggles at my every page? <br /><br />Thanks a bunch, nycbloggers. Making me feel like a tourist in NY was bad enough. But this is just too much.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-65316367827967287652007-02-20T23:22:00.000-05:002007-02-20T23:47:05.710-05:00Caesar And Cassius With A Satellite Modem<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihctgyqLVWsLwbjxt8a7FhpJqKixjIgwN0AhQa0zVPBCdqrj2sqYX7LfELs5vNTVX-UcOfV36eCLcGD29n5OuTfSTA80eoK6IrKMT3xPwpKhiPY1QvhXwWJYY6IQAOhs-42DaJlw/s1600-h/BillInPlane.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihctgyqLVWsLwbjxt8a7FhpJqKixjIgwN0AhQa0zVPBCdqrj2sqYX7LfELs5vNTVX-UcOfV36eCLcGD29n5OuTfSTA80eoK6IrKMT3xPwpKhiPY1QvhXwWJYY6IQAOhs-42DaJlw/s320/BillInPlane.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5033844080686929762" /></a> I don't usually talk to people on the subway. Not even if I know them. Not even if I got on the subway <span style="font-style:italic;">with</span> them. But this morning, on the L to Manhattan, I overheard a conversation which combined (in the space of two minutes): Shakespeare's <span style="font-style:italic;">Julius Ceasar</span>, a daily videoblog and podcast, and a round-the-world-on-a-trawler trip starting tomorrow. I did the unthinkable and stuck my nose in. And here's what I got: a link to Bill Bowles's <a href="http://www.mynameisbill.com">website,</a> which kicked off in earnest yesterday and will kick off in a different form tomorrow, when he starts his world voyage (not in the cardboard vessel pictured here, I should clarify). He calls himself an "Interactive World Traveller" and has a background in film and theatre. Equipped with a satellite modem, he's planning to blog every day from tomorrow from wherever it is he ends up. Today, he podcasted from Brooklyn - somewhere in Bushwick, I think - where he and his actress sister gave Shakespeare his turn on the waterfront. <br /><br />I know that videoblogging (vlogging) and video podcasting are well up and running by now in the blogosphere, but at the risk of sounding like a fogey (well, I am over 25...ancient in blogging terms), I don't know much about this type of blogging, and I don't have any video blogs on my blogroll. So, while it might be old hat by now, I was still really interested by what Bowles had to say about his project and about the ramifications of vlogging for traditional forms of journalism: <br /><br /><blockquote>It dawned on me a few months ago, that if you had all the right gear, (camera, laptop, sat. phone, solar panels) a person could be a new sort of independent journalist; uploading video stories from anywhere in the world, while maintaining one’s creative freedom. I figure that within a few years, most travelers and bloggers will have this sort of gear, and we’ll have thousands of un-affiliated reporters roaming the globe, sending out news as part of a diverse open-source media network. I don’t really consider myself a journalist, but I’m interested in trying out the concept to see what happens.</blockquote><br /><br />I think it was the incredibly casual way his sister dropped into the conversation that he was about to sail around the world with his video camera that really piqued my interest. Even when I'm taking the subway to Manhattan, it feels like a major operation. Maybe that's the difference between the vlogger and the blogger. Or maybe it's just that they don't have wireless signals on the subway. Yet. <br /><br />Any vlogs or video podcast recommendations out there?hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-16796258664252459122007-02-16T13:07:00.000-05:002007-02-16T13:08:28.991-05:00Tubridy The Theatre Pundit, Updated<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQi0CI9Pdl5TBra_MUs-TWzaN68J2xOPep0Kdhlr4FTRoAZMgSmrngiBkWSjN1suS5-UvcLZDe5iDxSpLrDToJJAa85zBUBtt_L_4Ok5P6GNkgmZziUezVPHm7h5O7ELtt7h5pxA/s1600-h/episode_03.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQi0CI9Pdl5TBra_MUs-TWzaN68J2xOPep0Kdhlr4FTRoAZMgSmrngiBkWSjN1suS5-UvcLZDe5iDxSpLrDToJJAa85zBUBtt_L_4Ok5P6GNkgmZziUezVPHm7h5O7ELtt7h5pxA/s320/episode_03.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5032195426325928226" /></a>Following Tuesday's post about Ryan Tubridy's thunderingly ignorant approach to theatre criticism (in summary: don't bother seeing the play, assume that writing about a subject is the same as endorsing it, imply that a dramatic exploration of a disturbing relationship is irresponsible because it will just encourage people to engage in such relationships in real life, I heard from the director of the Dublin production of Blackbird, Michael Barker-Caven. He told me that David Harrower, the playwright, was seriously shaken up after Tubridy's vigilante-style swoop, and that he had never experienced anything like it in the round of press interviews he had done for the play's runs in other cities, and he's wary about the prospect of doing any more live radio interviews about the play in the future. Which caution is understandable, I guess, but hopefully unnecessary - Harrower would probably have to find himself in the hotseat on Vatican Radio's Concerned Mothers Against Theatre talkshow before he'd come up against a presenter as narrow-minded and blinkered as Tubridy.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22388467.post-84135128784544547832007-02-13T17:11:00.000-05:002007-02-14T10:12:30.972-05:00Yup, And The Editor In Chief Is Cathleen Ní Houlihan...He runs one of the best literary blogs out there, and he's barely one to be fooled, but Mark Sarvas over at The Elegant Variation fell <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2007/02/why_didnt_we_th.html">hook, line and sinker</a> today for Newton Emerson's satirical take on Gerry Adams, Writer Extraordinaire, which was published in the Irish Times a (full) month ago (and covered by Blogorrah <a href="http://blogorrah.com/gerry-adams-laughing-his-bollocks-off-at-the-thought-that-the-irish-times-expect-him-to-pay-for-its-online-verson.html">here</a>). <br /><br />In a post entitled "Why Didn't We Think Of That?", TEV faithfully quotes from Emerson's piece on Adams's refusal to publish the third volume of his memoirs without the guarantee of good reviews. The gag about how Adams is believed to have "serious reservations about the final chapter" is also taken as fact, as is the quote from "Ulysses Grant", Emerson's fictional Irish Times literary edtor: <br /><blockquote>Like most creative people, Gerry Adams is surprisingly sensitive...[h]e finds it difficult to finish anything unless he's absolutely sure that everyone will love it.</blockquote><br />And TEV rounds it all off with a <span style="font-style:italic;">hilarious</span> crack about a car bomb, before the commenters come in to rain on his parade.hesitant hackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210377364150123884noreply@blogger.com2