Irish Times writers reveiw some of the latest offerings in paperback.
Patrick Kavanagh Antoinette Quinn Gill and Macmillan, 12.99
All you ever wanted to know about Kavanagh is in this lucid, perceptive and most readable biography, with the link between the life and the poetry superbly conveyed. He was often his own worst enemy, masking his shyness by being usually the loudest person in any gathering. He was also hypersensitive, hiding this by acting tough. He had an unfortunate habit of biting the hand that fed him. His attack on Frank O'Connor's work in late 1947 "is indicative of a gratuitously vicious and ultimately self-destructive streak". He had a complicated love life but lack of secure employment and financial wellbeing brought him heartbreak more than once. He may have lived his life in loud rather than quiet desperation but his mistreatment by the Irish establishment was unforgivable and a lasting stain on the country's reputation.
- Brian Maye
Works on Paper Michael Holroyd Abacus, £9.99
The title smacks of a retrospective art exhibition but the tone is often poised on the fulcrum between the hectoring proselytizer, Elmer Gantry, and a grandstanding barrister of the Supreme Court. As with any retrospection, coherence is difficult. The book is forced into separate sections - there are bundles of essays on biographies, personal writings, and ones called 'From the Life', 'Enthusiasms and Alibis' and 'Endpiece'. Because it is his life's work the author is an advocate of the well-
written biography and also campaigned for legislation to enhance writers' royalties from lending libraries. There are several entrancing essays: 'Bloomsbury' neatly conveys the rise, the fall and rise again of that place-of-the-mindset; Osbert and Others, Anthony Powell and essays on the two Johns - Augustus and Gwen - ooze charm and wit. Holroyd gives his Irish experience a place at the high table.
- Kate Bateman
James X Gerard Mannix Flynn Lilliput Press, 11.35
Gerard Mannix Flynn is a rare bird indeed, one of the last of an endangered species of "difficult" working-class Dubliners, flapping in the face of softer sensibilities, squawking loudly and uncomfortably of dreadful things we're not sure we should hear. But hear we ought, because his play offers an insider account of abuse suffered in some of the cruellest institutions this State has produced. Few writing today better know the pathologies of poverty that put hurt children into harsh places such as Letterfrack. The writer's survival and success does him great credit and allows us to hear a valuable witness's angry, eloquent monologue against the Church, State and society that failed him and all those others who were young, vulnerable and poor. This publication coincides with the re-release of his first book, Nothing To Say, to which it is an ideal companion.
- John Moran
De Niro - A Biography John Baxter Harper Collins, £7.99
A question that keeps coming to mind reading this biography is "What has De Niro done to the author to deserve this?" This is by no means a sycophantic treatment of one of the most celebrated actors of the last 50 years, but rather a harsh and gritty account of a man who treated his characters with a similar brutal humanity and intensity. Baxter, however, goes one step further with a thinly veiled dislike of his subject. There is no doubting the author's knowledge of film and his understanding of what makes the industry tick, but this book is a glorified filmography with only an occasional focus on De Niro - a sharp, warts-and-all portrait of a self-absorbed and frustrated character; a silent, single-minded actor who became increasingly meglomaniacal; and his evolution from a man who "earned his roles" to a careerist for whom money may be now the motivator.
-Mark McGrath
Friedrich Nietzsche: A Biography Curtis Cate Pimlico, £14.99
Would the volatile 19th-century philosopher Nietzsche have approved of the blurb on the cover: "Extremely useful and inherently un-Nietzschean"? In his extensive biography, Cate asks this question frequently to demonstrate just how perverse were the uses various ruthless groups - most notably the Nazis - put Nietzsche's acute and often prophetic work to - with the post-mortem assistance of his own sister, Elisabeth. In examining Nietzsche's life in minute detail, Cate masterfully illuminates the thought, the epoch, the milieu and the man himself. He wrote it for a general readership; perhaps it was this that led to some serious flaws, such as the frequently hair-raising translations of the German, or the occasional obscuring of whether a view is Nietzsche's or Cate's. Nevertheless, the book is illuminating, readable - and amazingly addictive.
- Christine Madden
Lands of Glass Alessandro Baricco Penguin, £7.99
If you like to work at your reading, this book is for you. Fancy pages of dialogue that don't identify the speakers? Sentences that go on for pages? Large gaps of white space between sentences? This book has it all, and then some - enough, apparently, to net Italy's Baricco two literary awards. A central character is a Victorian inventor, Dann Rail, whose triumphs include a railway that goes nowhere and a new form of glass. One readable section (more declarative sentences than usual) describes the struggles of an architect who wants to use Rail's glass to build London's Crystal Palace. The book wanders in and out of the stories of umpteen other characters, not all of them fresh. Rail's wife Jun, for example, is an enigma whose beauty is enough to drive men mad with lust. Ever come across a character like that in literature? Yeah, so have I.
- Mary Feely