IT'S not just models who apparently suffer from ageism these days: considered past it after hitting the quarter century. Giles Gordon, of the distinguished literary agency Curtis Brown, was quoted in the London Times this week as saying: "I think it is virtually impossible now for any novelist over the age of 30 to get published . . . Publishers are not interested because their editors are all aged about 12 and they only want books by girls in their 20s, particularly if they are pretty. (Peter) Ackroyd said to me recently he thought that if he started writing his novels now he would not find a publisher."
For a man whose trade is dealing with words, these seem to be flippant comments. Are things really this bad? It's interesting to note however where the emphasis is being placed on marketing books these days: if Gordon is even half right, it would appear that publishers are more interested in having an attractive author to promote than focusing on editing a book readers may enjoy, regardless of what the face on the dust-jacket looks like. It's an interesting debate and one we may hear more of.
News from Limerick of the 2001 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award. This year's winner of the £5,000 prize is Julie O'Callaghan, for her book No Can Do. The award is for a third or subsequent book by a poet who is in mid-career. Judges this year were Tony Roche of UCD, poet and academic Bernard O'Donoghue, and Hungarian poet George Szirtes. The award is jointly funded by Limerick County Council and the Arts Council, and was created after Michael Hartnett's death in his memory. O'Callaghan will receive her award on September 14th, when Eigse Michael Hartnett opens in the late poet's home town of Newcastle West. Among the visiting poets that weekend who will be participating in the festival are Jackie Kay, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, and Bernard O'Donoghue.
Sadbh was fascinated to see that the July-August edition of Poetry Nation Review contains not one, not two, but three different reviews of Seamus Heaney's latest collection, Electric Light.
Weighing in with their respective critiques are Theo Dorgan, David C. Ward, and Michael A. Kinsella. And they do weigh in at quite a considerable collective length. Why, one has to wonder, was it felt necessary for three critics to review the same book? Editors are, after all, usually pressed for space and for some authors it's a small miracle to get reviewed at all. Sadbh wonders if part of the answer lies in the opening lines of Michael A Kinsella's review: "Post Nobel Prize for Literature (1995), post The Spirit Level (1996), post Opened Ground (1998), post Beowulf (1999). Even with these accomplishments, rarely will so much be expected of a volume of poetry as Seamus Heaney's Electric Light (2001)." And, one may conclude, much will be expected of the subsequent reviews. Reviewing a Nobel Laureate has to be a fairly unusual - and onerous - critical responsibility. Perhaps P.N.Review thought it was a division-of-the-spoils approach to allocate it three ways.
Kilkenny Arts Festival will be underway by the time you read this. If you were lucky, you'll have caught the poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje last night. Still to come is another Booker winner, novelist Graham Swift, who won in 1996 with Last Orders. He reads tonight.
Later in the week, poet and journalist Blake Morrison, author of And When Did You Last See Your Father, is in town. There will be a joint reading by Irish writers Eoin McNamee and Mary Morrissy on Friday, both of whom have taken controversial, real people as characters for the basis of their latest novels. Alistair MacLeod, winner of this year's Impac Award, will read from his prize-winning novel, and afterwards will be interviewed by Eileen Battersby, literary correspondent of this newspaper.
Joy unbounded at Random House in London this week when it was announced that they had acquired UK territorial rights to Bill Clinton's memoirs for an undisclosed sum. They made the deal through their sister company, Knopf which has the world rights. UK publication will be in 2003 and Sonny Mehta of Knopf is spot on when he says that Clinton is a man with a great story to tell. The thing is , it's all in the telling. Mehta is promising that it will be " thorough " and "candid ". No doubt film rights will be next. After all it's one of those stories that has literally got everything.
Certain Reviews from these pages are available at: www.ireland.com/dublin/ entertainment/books/