THE RECENT discovery of a large collection of letters written over many years by the writer John McGahern was described last night at the opening the third international seminar in his native Leitrim.
The John McGahern International Seminar and Summer School, which is organised by the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Leitrim County Council, continues in Carrick on Shannon, today and tomorrow.
Dr Niall Walsh, a retired pathologist from Ballinasloe, Co Galway, knew McGahern better than most of those present, having first become friendly with the young Dublin-based teacher in the 1960s.
Dr Walsh surprised himself and staff at NUIG, where the McGahern archive is based, when a week ago he found that he had more than 80 letters written by his friend over the decades.
Before formally handing them over to the university last night, Dr Walsh said that he had found 70 of the letters stuffed in an envelope at the back of a drawer and has no memory of putting them there.
“I never wrote a letter to John that I didn’t get a reply to and he never promised anything that he did not carry out,” said Dr Walsh.
McGahern dedicated The Leavetakingto Dr Walsh and he also handed over a draft of the novel and a draft of the short story The Slip-upto the college.
Summer school director Dr John Kenny said McGahern had, like his father, taken letter writing very seriously and the correspondence is expected to give a rare insight into McGahern's life and its milestones over many years. The second volume of the John McGahern Yearbookwas launched at last night's opening ceremony.
McGahern’s heroes were neither politicians nor literary giants but ordinary people who made life better for those around them, Prof Kevin Whelan, director of the Notre Dame Centre in Dublin, said.
He described McGahern as a man who valued decency, courtesy, his commuity and simple neighbourly acts such as giving another farmer a hand in the meadow.
Prof Whelan said McGahern valued the things that open up people’s lives “church at its best, reading, an engaging teacher, people who live life to the full and exude vitality”.