A Wild People is a roman a clef but I'm afraid I'm not au fait enough with the bitchy side of the Dublin artistic world to be able to pinpoint all and every reference. For example, who could the theatrical entrepreneur, Thorn Thornton, with the significant moustache and actress wife, possibly be? Or the Minister for the Arts, who "resembled an outsized leprechaun"? Or Emma Ring, the Ennistymon novelist, harried out of the Algonquin Hotel by an irate elevator-man who tells her: "Yeh think yer two-toilet Irish, but all y'are, ever were and ever will be is shitty-shanty Irish"? A delicious pun here as an under-manager warns said elevator-man: "You're gonna get canned, Maguire".
Strangely enough, in spite of Leonard's acid wit, the book - his first novel - is a rather soft satire, the cutting-edge of his aim deflected by an old-fashioned prose style that makes use of such words as "colloguing" and "folderols", homespun phrases like "black out with you", and a rash of cliches that would feel equally at home in the pages of Ireland's Own.
The novel is set some 15 years ago, yet there are many contemporary references such as placing set-pieces in Temple Bar, money laundering in the Caymans, and an eminent journalist called Fintan O'Doul - also let off rather easily by being simply described as specialising "in nearly everything". The protagonist is TJ "Thady" Quill, who lives with his wife, Greta, in a suburb of Dublin not a million miles from Dalkey.
TJ is an expert on films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and, when we join the story, he has just been asked by the widow of famous film director Sean O'Fearna to head up an Irish archive of her husband's work. This then leads to him undertaking a biography of the famous man, obviously based on John Ford, who liked to assume the O'Fearna name, and to writing a sequel to the film The Quiet Man - here called The Man from Innisfree.
Various Dublin types circle around TJ: film and theatre critics, a Kerry poet called the Oozer Kenirons, a wealthy businessman who manages a rock group, cynical barmen, chancers and go-be-the-walls. There is also Italian Josie, the duplicitous wife of a wealthy businessman, who becomes TJ's mistress and leads him a merry dance round and round the mulberry bush. I am reminded here of poor old Scobie, the anti-hero of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, who disastrously exchanged a nagging wife for an equally nagging mistress.
In spite of some minor quibbles, I have to say I enjoyed A Wild People very much. The writing exhibits a kind of autumnal, small-boy relish for turning over stones and looking at what's beneath. And the multitude of film references is a joy to anyone, who, like myself, grew up in the 1940s and 1950s. I particularly liked the one where someone says to Groucho Marx, "Hark, they're playing the Mayonnaise" and Groucho replies, "Ah, the soldiers must be dressing".
An entertaining read, then, and one that may well raise a few hackles. The movers and shakers of Dublin's social life will particularly relish spotting either themselves or the luvvies in the next booth in the pages of the narrative, while the hoi polloi will chuckle over the nonsensical ploys these people indulge in.
The film critic Richard Mallett said of Preston Sturges's film The Miracle of Morgan's Creek: "Bad taste, or no bad taste, I thoroughly enjoyed it". Same goes for me and A Wild People.
Vincent Banville is an author and critic