I learn from the publicity department of W.W. Norton, the distinguished American publishing company, that "the John Keats versus Bob Dylan debate is like a volcano that rumbles on and on, with the occasional high profile eruptions". Passions, apparently, "run high in both camps".
I must be out of touch. I never knew there was a John Keats versus Bob Dylan debate. Well, I did, but it's so old hat that I thought it had lain down and died a couple of decades back, soon after Richard Goldstein brought out his silly anthology, The Poetry of Rock.
But no, if you're to believe Norton's publicity people, it's still raging in the United States, "where issues such as political correctness, the literary canon and identity politics have taken over the university campuses". Have they nothing better to be doing with themselves?
Seemingly not, because as a result of this "debate", the "distinguished literary scholar" Robert Alter was "provoked" into writing The Pleasures of Reading In an Ideological Age. That was in 1989, but Norton excitedly tell us that, until now, the book has never been published on this side of the Atlantic.
What have we been missing? Well, Professor Alter, you'll be glad to hear, "does not climb on a soapbox" in his defence of great literature, nor does he accuse his opponents of "cynical cultural relativism". But he does illuminate the "key element" of literature - "what distinguishes a string of words by a great writer from a string in a telephone directory".
Useful to get that learnt, as Larkin said. And personally I can't wait to see what Professor Alter has to say in his chapter concerning "multiple readings and the bog of indeterminacy" after which I expect to read Ode to a Nightingale and listen to Subterranean Homesick Blues in a whole new light.
PHIL O'KEEFE confesses herself "absolutely thrilled" to be included in a book that celebrates writers and readers which has just been published in New York.
Her memoir of a Liberties childhood, Down Cobbled Streets, was published by Brandon last month, and she tells me that the section concerning the influence of reading and of Thomas Street library on her life was selected for inclusion in Bookworms (good title), published by Carroll & Graf.
Phil, who was born in the Liberties in 1928 and has broadcast her stories of Dublin life on RTE radio for many years, is especially chuffed to find herself in such exalted literary company as Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Alan Bennett, all of whom are included in Bookworms.
A freelance journalist and co ordinator of the Dundrum Writers Workshop, Phil is currently finishing the second volume of her Liberties memoirs, which will be published by Brandon in the spring.
SOMETIMES you learn the darndest things about writers. I missed the reception to launch Ivy Bannister's book of stories, Magician, in Waterstone's, but I learn some fascinating things about Ivy from the autobiographical essay that Poolbeg encourages its writers to compose for the likes of me.
I had already known that Ivy was a native New Yorker, that she had settled in Dublin many years ago (1970, to be precise), that she had studied at Trinity, that she had married here and that she has been writing stories and plays for a number of years.
However, I never knew that when she came to Dublin first and settled in a flat in Fitzwilliam Square, the water supply was so unsatisfactory that she had to buy a yellow plastic baby bath from Woolworth's, fill it with hot water from the kettle and squeeze herself into it in front of the electric fire. Why couldn't Cronin or Knowlson have discovered anything as significant and illuminating about Beckett?
Ivy, incidentally, is currently writing "an eccentric novel" about a housewife's flirtation with Percy Bysshe Shelley, the man who took the ultimate bath. A continuing motif, perhaps?
THE renowned American poet Adrienne Rich is attending a "celebration" of her work that takes place in UCD's Industry Centre today from 11 am to 4.30pm. Among those taking part are Eavan Boland (see her review of Rich's Selected Poems, opposite), Mary Dorcey and Jean Valentine. Diehard fans of the poet will, no doubt, love this event, though the less devoted might think five and a half hours a bit Rich.