Forging a way to the Wild West

According to my colleague, Nuala, the other day, Ireland still has its unregenerate society, and going by her account, most of it, made up of "thick Paddies and their slatternly women", would appear to live and flourish in the West. I was particularly taken by her vignette from a "decorous lunchtime pub" in Galway, where Nuala sat beside a frail young man attending a writer's workshop at the university. She told of a huge Connemara man suddenly appearing in front of the young man: "Come outside ya little bollocks," he roared. "Come outside and fight like a man!" The frail young man declined. "Oh please," the Connemara man begged. "Please."

That was it. Not a word from Nuala about the Connemara man's politeness, or the frail young man's rather naive refusal. Apparently he was horrified, and him a trainee writer who ought to be welcoming all kinds of experience, and forging in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience, or unregenerate conscience, of his race.

I was over in Galway and Connemara the other weekend myself, way out as far as Renvyle and Letterfrack and later over to Westport by way of Leenane, and neither saw nor heard anything so exciting, bar only the evening craic in Renyvle House, where we were celebrating someone who never went near a writing workshop, namely Oliver St. John Gogarty.

No huge belligerent red-eyed Connemara men turned up, not even one. Maybe they were all in Galway for the day, being driven demented by decorous pubs and unhelpful young men.

Some of us were in a lunchtime pub too, the excellent Valden's of Letterfrack, and admittedly it is unregenerate in that it is clearly unchanged for some years, yet is all the better for that. If it ever became "decorous" it would certainly lose much of its charm, and probably its clientele. But getting back to the frail young man attending a writer's workshop: this is obvious reporter shorthand (or longhand) for a wimp. His sandwich was presumably salad, his drink a Ballygowan. Yet it was the huge Connemara man, a real man's man, fighting fit and ready to prove it, even presumably after a meat-and-two-veg dinner (no nerdy lunch), a man opposed to the decorous in every fibre of his being, who appeared to be the object of Nuala's pity and derision.

What is going on here?

And what exactly is a writer's workshop? To me a workshop is what a carpenter has, or once had. It is full of his tools of the trade. There is sawdust and an ankledeep pile of wood shavings on the floor. Two or three endearing wooden toys on a shelf hint at a wholesome family life when the day's work is done. The place has a comforting manly atmosphere of honest toil.

It speaks of a trade mastered over years, of skills that will never be made obsolete by technology, however sophisticated, of ancient knowledge passed on painstakingly over decades.

If there is an apprentice, he will be someone given the opportunity only after recommendations from reliable people, probably including the parish priest. Or he will be a family member who has shown talent.

The writer's workshop on the other hand is a contradiction in terms. What happens there? A group of strangers, afflicted to one degree or another by this terrible writing bug, is encouraged to indulge the habit by someone already in thrall to the disorder. The absence of tools, beyond notebooks and pens and perhaps a simple wordprocessing package, allows the notion to develop that anyone can do the job.

As for the atmosphere, it is usually decorous beyond belief. Nobody is ever disencouraged. The "good points" of homework are praised while glaring mistakes are glossed over.

If it happened that an apprentice carpenter made a chair which collapsed when sat upon, it is unlikely he would be complimented for having turned one good leg on it. That is the way things should be.

I am tired pointing out that we have far too many writers. What we urgently need instead of socalled workshops is a number of detoxification clinics where people can be weaned off the writing habit before it is too late. The streets have to be made safe.