I have no idea how much Patrick McCabe was paid for the movie rights to The Butcher Boy, or John McGahern for Korea, but I'd hazard a guess that it wasn't quite what Michael Crichton is expecting Hollywood to stump up for his new, as yet unfinished, novel.
The novel, which is called Airframe and which is about an airline disaster (yes, another of those), is expected to be bought by Hollywood for a cool $20 million - in other words, roughly the sum that Tom Cruise would get if he chose to play the main role in the movie.
This is a far cry from the era when writers were treated with contempt by Tinseltown and when a joke could be told about the Polish starlet who, in a determined bid to hit the big time, had an affair with the contract writer.
What may puzzle outsiders about the deal that Crichton seems likely to get is that, Jurassic Park apart, his books haven't really done the business as movies: just think of Congo and Rising Sun, if you can remember either of them. But, of course, Hollywood has always been awed by monstrous success, and no doubt there are high hopes that Air frame will do for wing rivets what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs.
"Michael Crichton should be viewed as a bankable star because he opens movies," his agent Bob Brookman says in defence of the $20 million demand. Well, so does John Grisham, though he doesn't get half that sum - Warner Bros. paid him a miserly $8 million for the rights to his latest bestseller, The Runaway Jury.
Still, it's an indication that writers have finally gained some clout in Hollywood, and this is confirmed by some other recent deals: Universal has paid Joe Klein $1.5 million upfront for the rights to his political satire, Primary Colours, while Nicholas Evans got $3 million for his first novel. The Horse hisperer, on the basis of an outline and an unfinished manuscript.
Alas, this kind of financial recognition came much too late for the likes of Fitzgerald and Faulkner, who squandered their talents in a movie system that used, abused and poorly rewarded them.
MAKE a note in your diary about some distinguished visitors to the Irish Writers' Centre in Parnell Square over the coming weeks. On Tuesday week the Czech poet Miroslav Holub - described by Ted Hughes as "one of the half-dozen most important poets writing in our time" and by A. Alvarez as "one of the sanest voices of our time" - will be reading at 8pm. Admission is £5, and in preparation for the event, perhaps you should get a copy of Poems Before and After, which contains English translations of his work and which is published by Bloodaxe.
Just over a week later, on September 25th, Adrian Mitchell and Adrian Henri are giving a joint reading. Mitchell is seen by many as a precursor of the Liverpool poets, while Henri (along with Roger McGough and Brian Patten) became synonymous with the Mersey poetic sound. Those were the days, my friend.
And two eminent fiction writers are also arriving in Dublin. On October 10th in Trinity College's Walton Theatre, American short story writer Grace Paley will be reading from her work. And if you're wondering why she's never written a novel, she declares: "Art is too long and life is too short. There's a lot more to do in life than just writing." Tickets (£5) for her reading can be obtained from either the Irish Writers' Centre or TCD's School of English.
Meanwhile, on September 22nd, in Andrew's Lane Theatre, Ottawa born Margaret Atwood will discuss "the making of a novel". The novel in question is her latest, Alias Grace, which is set in 19th century Canada and which concerns the true life case of a 16 year old girl who was imprisoned for the murders of her employer and his housekeeper lover. Tickets for the discussion cost £4 and are available from either Andrew's Lane or Waterstone's in Dawson Street.
I mentioned recently the neglected Derry writer Kathleen Coyle, among whose admirers are academics John Cronin of Queen's and Gerald Dawe of TCD. Now Kathleen Coyle's daughter, Michelle Ripley, writes to point out that Wolfhound Press reissued A Flock of Birds - her best novel, Mrs Ripley thinks - in paperback a year ago (reviewed enthusiastically in these pages by Carey Harrison), and that the same publisher will be reissuing - The Magical Realm next year, with plans to publish others of her books in the future.
Kathleen Coyle, who was born in 1883 and died in the United States in 1952, was highly regarded in her time. Indeed, when A Flock of Birds was published, it was entered by Jonathan Cape for a literary prize, coming second to E.M. Forster's A Passage to India.
The omission of even her name from most reference books on Irish writers, Mrs Ripley says, is due to the fact that "she was a very private person and did not comply with requests for biographical details about herself. In fact, she used to throw these into the waste paper basket."
However, she does receive an entry to herself in Robert Welch's 1996 Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, John Cronin has devoted a chapter to her in his Irish Fiction 1900-1940 (Appletree Press), and theses are now being written about her in Irish universities, so perhaps her reputation is emerging from the unwarranted obscurity in which it has languished.