HUGH LEONARD once defined a literary movement in Ireland as two writers on speaking terms with each other. Now alas, the manifest truth of that observation seems to be under threat, with writers abandoning the mistrust and self absorption essential to their calling and embracing their rivals instead.
I'm not just talking about the old pals' act, whereby you persuade a literary editor to allow you to puff another writer's latest book in expectation that he'll do the same for you. That has always existed and simply means you know how to play the game for your own ultimate benefit. It doesn't mean that you actually like the other writer. Indeed, you probably detest him more than ever.
No, what I'm talking about is far more insidious and unnerving. In the street or in bars or restaurants I keep meeting writers who, without any prompting, bring up the names of other writers and earnestly advise me to read the works of these writers. I look hard into their faces, trying to detect the underlying malice behind their words and waiting for the inevitable put down that's to come, but there isn't any. They actually mean what they say. What's the country coming to?
It should be pointed out that most of these apostles of literary good fellowship are fiction writers (poets still cordially hate each other, thanks be to God), but as every second person in Ireland now writes fiction, the situation is worrying. It was very much in evidence at the launch in Waterstone's of David Marcus's Irish Short Stories 1996 (Phoenix). There, seated together, were five of the twenty three contributors - Vincent Banville, John MacKenna, Katy Hayes, Clare Boylan and Molly McCloskey - and they seemed quite happy to be in such proximity to each other as James Plunkett and David Marcus made introductory speeches and as they themselves stood up in turn to read. I even caught them chatting to each other afterwards and nodding approvingly at each other's remarks.
Perhaps they were merely discussing which periodicals they would favour with reviews of each other's work, but I don't think so. Rather I think that a golden age of Irish letters has ended and that we're turning into a nation of literary luvvies instead. Now where's the fun in that?
IT's time, I think, to institute the Penny Perrick Paddwhackery Award. Regular readers of this column may recall that a few weeks back I mentioned a piece Ms Perrick wrote in the Sunday Times extolling the virtues of Irish writing and expressed in the kind of blarney that would make even Bord Failte blush.
Well, writing in last week's edition of Newsweek, a chap called Malcolm Jones Jr doesn't quite attain the dizzy heights of Ms Perrick's fervour, but he's pretty impressive, nonetheless.
Under the headline The Second Coming, Mr Jones Jr begins a survey of recent Irish writing by musing: "Thinking of this century's literature without the Irish is like dreaming of the ocean without whales." This, I suppose, could simply mean that Irish writers are big and bloated and spout a lot of stuff out of the top of their heads, but Mr Jones Jr's reverential tone suggests otherwise.
For instance, he announces that "without doubt, Irish writing is the best that's currently being done by any one country's authors" - to which dear old Eric Morecambe might exclaim "There's no answer to that."
We're also assured that "no country loves its writers more than Ireland" (yes, Ireland showed how much it loved Joyce, Synge, O'Casey, Kavanagh, McGahern and Edna O'Brien). And this love isn't confined to literary types: "While I was reading The Butcher Boy on the plane to Dublin, the flight attendant leaned over my shoulder and murmured `Isn't that a grand book?'" Bejapers, grand isn't the word for it.
Seamus Heaney, we learn, writes "as though his words were marinated in a peat bog and honed on flint," but what I liked best of all was the caption to the photograph of the poet:
"Seamus Heaney may look like the man in the moon, but his poetry digs deep into the earth." Meself, I'm over the moon from readin' these insights.
AMONG the bargains currently to be found in the bookshops, I snapped up John Cronin's Irish Fiction 1900-1940 for a laughable £1. Professor Cronin's study, published by the Appletree Press in 1992 for £6.99, looks in detail at sixteen novels of the period and offers insights and judgments that are always interesting and frequently illuminating.
In particular, he makes me want to acquaint myself with the neglected Derry writer Kathleen Coyle and to re acquaint myself with Corkery's The Threshold of Quiet. And he's also sent me back to Canon Sheehan, whose books I haven't read since my youth.
Others bargains I came across included (in Duffy's of Lincoln Place) the original Lilliput Press hardback of George O'Brien's lovely Dancehall Days for £2.99, the handsome American hardback of Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy (that grand book) for £4.99, and a Syracuse Press hardback edition of Padraic Colum's Selected Poems, with a fine introduction by Sanford Sternlicht, for £3.99.