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Books Ireland (Dec. 2001): Review Shirley Kelly, ‘Columnist Turns Novelist’, interview with Kevin Myers, in Books Ireland (Dec. 2001), p.321-22. Notes that Myers was attacked with John Waters by Nuala O’Faolain as women-haters, and calls his novel Banks of Green Willow ‘a direct riposte’ had it not been written earlier. Written from standpoint of Gina, a nineteen year-old American visiting the Bracken family in Mayo in 1972, who falls in love with part-Bosnian Stefan and becomes pregnant; marries Warren; returns to Ireland on death of her mother in a car accident; events in Bosnia impinge on her life and Stefan’s. Myers, grad. UCD (history); worked on Newsight and then RTÉ; worked in Belfast during the 1970s; returned to Dublin and took up Irishman’s Diary; sent to Split and Sarajevo by irish Times, June 1992; m. Rachel, 1995; Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, his agent. Seamus Cashman, interview with Shirley Kelly (‘Merlin Swallows Wolfhound’), Books Ireland (Dec. 2001), p.323. Kevin Kiely, review of John Montague, Company: A Chosen Life (London: Duckworth 2001), Books Ireland (Dec. 2001), p.324: Madeleine de Brauer, inspiration of “All legendary obstacles”; upper-class Norman French; settled at 6 Herbert St., and latter at Gloucester Diamond; worked with Bórd Failte; Behan trashes Doris Lessing verbally and berates Montague for not keeping company with French ouvriers; praises Flann O’Brien’s laudatory and loving obituary for Behan in Telegraph, and casts doubt on the spirit of Cronin’s and Higgins’s memoirs of him (‘lack both generosity and compassion’); Behan’s severe beatings in Walton Gaol; Liam Miller; Timothy O’Keeffe (to whom he recommended Heaney); turned down Stuart’s Black List Section H in early version;’ Garech Browne portrayed; Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker; 11 Rue Daguerre, Paris; friendship with Beckett; Con Leventhal; Rough Field turned down by Gallimard and Edition de minuit (‘mais, c’est de la poesie! Ca vend pas’). Berkeley, California; Kenneth Rexroth, Louis Simposn, Allen Ginsberg, and Kerouac; Marianne Moore; takes Ted Roethke to meet Mrs Yeats. Joseph Campbell, As I was Among Captives: Joseph Cambell’s Prison Diary 1922-1923, ed., Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Cork UP 2001), from MSS in TCD [v. long.] Records Francis Stuart reading his poems ot him in Hut 7 (Dining Hall). Released in Dec. 1923. Robert Greacen, review of Donal Drisceoil, Peadar O’Donnell [Radical Irish Lives] (Cork UP 2001), p.326: Peadar O’Donnell imprisoned in Mountjoy in Dec. 1923 and escaped in March 1924 wearing uniform of Free State soldier; dedicated socialist republican but refused the name of communist; influenced by radically-minded mother; primary teaching and later trade-union official; aimed to convert IRA to socialism; quotes O’Donnell: ‘[I saw] the world in terms of men and women and days and deeds, barriers, enemies, friends, with a sens eof tide underlying it all’, and remarks that by ‘tide’ O’Donnell meant that Marxist doctrine looks forward to the inevitability of revolution, a belief that ‘underpinned his optimism’. Greacen writes that O’Donnell published seven novels, a paly, three autobiographical books, various pamphlets and a huge amount of miscellaneous journalism as well as founding [sic] The Bell in 1939 and editing it after O’Faolain, yet ‘he rejected the idea of himself as being primarily a creative writer [quotes]: “My pen is just a weapon and I use it now and then togather into wrods scenes that surround certain conflicts.”’ Greacen further remarks that Ó Drisceoil accordingly deals only marginally with O’Donnell’s creative work but notes as a portent the fact that Terry Eagleton has described his fiction as ‘superb’. O’Donnell opposed Irish membership of the EU; also abstained from tobacco and alcohol. Bob Quinn, Maverick: A Dissident View of Broadcasting (Dingle: Brandon Press 2001), 280pp. Aubrey Dillon-Malone quotes: ‘Even allowing for the possible geriatrification of my taste buds, I could not see how on every conceivable occasion the offer of, say, a free t-shirt made of recycled Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to everyone in the [Late Late Show] audience was contributing ore than a sick joke to the gaiety of the nation. Nor could I see how giving a free, show-long promotioin to a Toyota car so that somebody could drive it away buckshee and total it on a stone wall in Ballyjamesduff made good economic sense, even if the vehichle was endorsed by a poet.’ (Review, Books Ireland, Dec. 2001, p.328.) The allusion is to Brendan Kennelly. Writers’ Centre in Galway named Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maud. Michael Hartnett has dedicated a poem to her: ‘Listen,/if I came to you, out of the wind/with only my blown dream clothing me,/would you give me shelter? (”Short Mass”; quoted Johnston, Books Ireland, Dec. 2001, p.329.) Boland remembers Hartnett: ‘You made the noise for me./Made it again,/Until I could see the flight of it: suddenly the silvery lithe rivers of the south-west lay down in silence […]’ (Johnston, p.330.) Code consists of two sections, “Marriage”, and “Code”. Desmond Fennell, b. 1929; travelled to Sweden, 1960; disappointed; Sanas is Fennell. Pádraig de Brún (1889-1960) among those educated at Irish College, Paris. Fred Johnston, review: Mary O’Malley, Michael Hartnett and Eavan Boland (Books Ireland, Dec. 2001, pp.328-30.) Jane Hayter Hames, Arthur O’Connor: United Irishman (Cork: Collins Press 2001), High Sherriff of Cork; Irish MP; United Irishman emissary to Paris; Napoleon’s Irish General; m. dg. of Condorcet; returned to Ireland as Arthur Condorcet O’Connor to complete memoirs. Books listed
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