THE foyer of the Irish Film Centre was thronged one night last week for the launch of Kevin Rockett's massive tome, The Irish Filmography, and it was thronged on Monday night for the launch of two new books Among the distinguished gathering were poet Derek Mahon, dramatist and novelist Thomas Kilroy, film maker Louis Marcus, and academic and short story writer Angela Bourke, and they were there to celebrate the publication of Kevin Whelan's The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Identity 1760-1830, and Luke Gibbons's Transformations in Irish Culture.
These are the first two titles in a series called "Critical Conditions: Field Day Essays", which, a press release states, aims to publish essays "notable for their contribution to current debates on the writing of history, the critique of ideology, post colonial theory, political and social issues, literature and aesthetics".
Unfamiliarity with the critique of ideology and with post colonial theory has always loomed large among my problems, so when I got home I felt I should rectify my ignorance by a close reading of one of these two volumes. I chose Luke Gibbons's collection, simply because it seemed more congenial to my own interests, and I was immediately encouraged by his jargon free style.
Nonetheless, there's an element of writing for tenure and for one's colleagues about this kind of academicism, and when I finished the analysis of postcard images of Ireland in the essay subtitled "John Hinde and the New Nostalgia", all I could think of was Swift's observation about learned commentators who "view in Homer more than Homer knew". And John Hinde was no Homer.
Essentially, I suppose, I'm on the side of the plain speaking journalistic essay as practised by Shaw, Woolf, Orwell, Tynan, Vidal and Conor Cruise O'Brien, and as written for the common reader.
AT the IFC launch, I met Seamus Deane, who edited the two books and whose long awaited novel, Reading in the Dark, is finally being published this autumn. I had read an extract in Granta, and Granta were originally to publish it, but that magazine's Bill Buford moved to the New Yorker. so now Cape/Viking are now handling it.
I also met Aine O'Connor, back in Dublin after many years working as a film producer in London. She's completed a six part television series that profiles six famous Irish actors and that RTE will screen in the autumn. She's also putting the final touches to a book of the series. Her chosen actors are Gabriel Byrne (of course), Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Pierce Brosnan, Aidan Quinn ... and for the life of me, I can't remember the sixth, even though it's probably someone ridiculously famous.
JUST when you thought it was safe to go back into the bookshops, Jeffrey Archer's new novel arrives. Actually, it doesn't officially arrive until May 6th, but already more than 60,000 copies of it have been sold to British bookshops and supermarkets - setting a new record for advance hardback sales.
It's enough to make you weep, much like Archer's prose style. "It was an extremely tough novel to write," he says, though hardly as tough as it will be to read, if one is to judge from the lengthy extract in the Sunday Times last weekend.
And why the Sunday Times? Well, the book - which is entitled The Fourth Estate and which is described by Archer as "the first ever novelography" - concerns two newspaper tycoons, who are "loosely based" on Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch. There are no prizes for guessing which of them Archer treats more sympathetically.
He was hardly likely to do otherwise. given that the novel is the first fruit of a £15 million three book deal that he's signed with HarperCollins - which just happens to belong to Murdoch's News Corporation empire.
HERE are a few bargains you'll currently find in most of the big bookshops, and in some smaller ones, too:
Colm Lincoln's interesting Dublin as a Work of Art, a handsome 1992 hardback from the O'Brien Press and with excellent photographs by Alan O'Connor, is marked down from £19.95 to £8.95. Brian P. Kennedy's Irish Painting, a lavishly illustrated, well writ ten and informative guide published by Town House in 1993 at £25.95. is available at £9.95, which seems a steal to me.
A fine American Viking hardback of Garrison Keillor's The Book of Guys, originally priced 22, can be had for £2.95, while the autobiography of one of the legendary guys on Jack Charlton's Irish team is going for even less that's Ooh Aah Paul McGrath, co written by Cathal Dervan and published by Mainstream, slashed from £12.99 to £1.95.
Steve Turner's Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now, has a trite, fanzine style text and isn't very informative about the great man, but it has some splendid pictures and in its coffee table format is well worth the asking price of £7.95 - reduced from £18.99. And if Bono and the boys are your thing, B.P. Fallon's U2: So Far Away, So Close, originally published by Viking at £12.99, is now a trifling £1.99.