MOBILE phones appear to be taking over the world. Like a plague of inanimate black mice, they account for the lumps in hip pockets and the clenched fists of modern life. Galway has its share of mobile phones as well. However, this is a city where the book has retained its position. During the past week the 12th Cuirt International Festival of Literature has demonstrated the international depth and diversity of language as art. Hands held books; poetry collections and novels, new books, battered copies of books, read books - not phones. Because the city seemed full of readers anxious to share their views and opinions with like-minded people, many conversations were being conducted face to face, as opposed to phone to phone.
Among the readers, there is one exception: Cuirt programme coordinator Rose Parkinson. She has her hands full, carrying an assortment of books as well as the phone. "It's just for the week, I'm not keen on these things."
Summer weather adds to the holiday atmosphere. Australian students standing in High Street seem proud to be able to point to David Malouf as "one of our good guys," a comment which they repeat on seeing a youngish man and woman pass, both carrying hardback editions of Malouf's Remembering Babylon. A query concerning the chance of securing tickets for Linton Kwesi Johnson's Friday night reading seems to act as a cue of sorts. Just as the mention of his name fades into the limited breeze of a hot day, the Jamaican dub poet on his second visit to Cuirt appears blinking in the sunlight and announcing his interest in breakfast even if it is midday.
Viewers walk slowly around the small gallery at Dominick Street. The exhibition of new and recent paintings by the Sligo-based Sean McSweeney is attracting a lot of attention. Most of the pictures sold on the opening night Pools the painting which appears on the festival catalogue and poster was sold almost immediately. There is a waiting list of about 300 potential replacement buyers should the lucky new owner change his or her mind. The exhibition continues upstairs in the room where Anne Haverty reads from her intelligent highly original and moving debut novel, One Day As A Tiger.
A couple arrives at the information desk. The man asks if he needs a ticket for the Poet's Platform, the open forum for new writing. No. How about a ticket for Seamus Heaney's readings "Not a hope, it's been sold out for ages." It is obvious this question has already been asked many times. Would Colm Toibin sign his book? Whose book? "The one he wrote, my copy of the one he wrote.
Ice cream sales are rising. Newly arrived by train, John Banville walks purposefully down a side street with its row of colourful shops. Carrying a bag and wearing a serious expression, he emerges from the shadows into the bright sunshine. Three smartly-dressed women carrying freshly-purchased copies of One Day As A Tiger are hurrying across the street from Kenny's Book Store to An Taibhdhearc. Fintan O'Toole is delivering this year's Cuirt Lecture. The topic is "Criticism". Inside the theatre, all seats are taken. O'Toole is introduced and begins speaking about the evolution of the audience in theatre history.
NERVY, very Dublin in demeanour, often emphatic and certainly directing his lecture to theatre, O'Toole quotes Arnold Wesker's description of reviews as individual opinions whose importance is magnified out of proportion by print." Critics, O'Toole claims, are for refusing to take things on their own terms. They are for testing the claims that artists make for their work and that their press agents make on their behalf. They are, above all, for making connection - not just the obvious connection between artist and audience, but the more angular, more arguable connections between art and society." The end result is slightly frustrating. Literary and textual criticism have become increasingly supplanted by cultural commentary. Neither O'Toole nor his audience attempts to either identify or reconcile specific textual and performance criticism with the wider practice of cultural commentary. Ultimately O'Toole is arguing more for the critic as a necessary figure, than for criticism as a vital function. Reviewing a first night performance is very different from writing a wider comment or analysis. Reviewing a given work has little in common with cultural commentary written within, and directed at, socio-political contexts. This audience member was left with too many questions to ask. Is the critic an opinion maker? Or a dissenting voice? A prophet or an interpreter?
Scottish poet Robin Robertson takes the stage, black T-shirt teamed with a facial expression of some menace - after all, this is the man who discovered Irvine Welsh. A Painted Field is his first book. Robertson as a speaker is confident, laconic, very cool; his witty comments balance the bleak, lyric intensity of verse he reads with the slow declamatory style more usually favoured by Russian poets. It is a good performance. But he seems relieved to hand over to John Banville.
Reading from his new novel, The Untouchable, Banville reads quickly, instantly catching the tone of Victor Maskell, for whom public exposure as a spy has supplied the impetus for telling his story which unfolds through a maze of narrative layers. It is very funny. Even in disgrace, Victor loses not his sense of style, his comic timing, nor his awareness of the absurdity of everything, including himself. Afterwards, in the foyer, voices are in agreement, "let's get the book."
Enter Rose, phone still in hand, David Malout's reading is about to begin. His gentle voice catches the lyric, atmospheric beauty of the extracts he reads from the inaugural Remembering Babylon and his most recent book, The Conversations At Curlow Creek. More stampedes to the book store.
Anthony Cronin appears at his lunch-time session. The room is packed, readers are eager to bear him read from his Beckett: The Last Modernist. He doesn't he speaks about Joyce among other things. Cronin, dry, sharp and very fluent, is a good talker. So impressed is one woman with him, she says, as the lecture ends he should be President.
Three actors read in the Druid Theatre from Martin McDonagh's brilliant and terrifying new play The Pillowman. It is McDonagh's fourth play and his best to date. A writer is being interrogated by policemen about a series of gruesome crimes. His stories have inspired the real murderer, his retarded brother. The language is brutal and McDonagh, author of the Leenane trilogy, has mastered a blackly Pinteresque dialogue.
A puppeteer outside is putting on an impromptu show. A mad old lady puppet shouts at her husband-puppet, a figure dressed as a first World War aviator. A delayed plane causes black American poet Michael S. Harper's nonappearance. Thomas Lynch steps in and reads with Bernard O'Donoghue.
A year's planning goes into Cuirt and Rose Parkinson, who joined four year ago as press officer and has planned the past two programmes says, "I've approached it from the point of people I wanted to hear and also acted on suggestions." This year's star? "Oh Seamus Heaney really is wonderful, and of course Ben Okri, and Malouf and then there was Whatever it takes to launch a lively festival, this Cuirt programme organiser has the formula.
