Much of what has been said and written about Seán McCann since his death last week at the age of 85 has concentrated on his writing.
First he was a journalist, with a “light and shade” approach which recognised that readers don’t like being incessantly harangued. But his greatest gift was for spotting and mentoring talent.
He also combined a strict work ethic with a keen eye for the market. When faced with a printers' strike that put newspapers off the street for 10 weeks in 1965, his native opportunism sent him to dig deep in the archives to research The Wit of Brendan Behan.
Some 27 more books would follow in the decades to come, covering, inter alia, Irish literary topics and the cultivation of roses.
As features editor of the Evening Press, then a brash challenger in the Dublin newspaper market, McCann sought new talents from outside the club of mainly male news-gatherers.
Promoting women
His page for and by women gave a platform to newcomers like women’s movement activist Nuala Fennell,
Clare Boylan
, June Considine and other women who went on to become established writers.
His Press colleague Mary Kenny placed him among four men who from the 1960s onwards made it their business to encourage women writers, the others being Irish Times news editor Donal Foley, editor Douglas Gageby and Irish Press editor Tim Pat Coogan. McCann also promoted the career of sportswriter Con Houlihan, who posted him his first pieces from his Co Kerry home, each sentence written on a separate piece of butcher's paper.
The invariably courteous McCann could be a tough taskmaster. The regime at his People’s College evening classes for aspiring writers in the 1970s favoured those who wanted to write, and held little for those who merely wished to have written.
Each week the man with a rose in his buttonhole spoke about an aspect of writing and how to market your work. Nobody was permitted to criticise another student’s work. If you brought in the weekly exercise he set, you got personal feedback; without it, you were gently ignored.
Talent-spotting
Those attending who went on to writing careers included novelist and poet
Dermot Bolger
, then just 15 years of age, novelists Kathleen Sheehan O’Connor and Margaret Dolan, and others. It was in that classroom that McCann noticed that a quiet shipping clerk had a well-tuned ear for quirky dialogue. He badgered his young protégé, whose name was
Bernard Farrell
, into writing a play.
I Do Not Like Thee Dr
Dell
was staged at the Peacock theatre in Dublin in 1979 with an unknown young actor from Ballymena, Liam Neeson, in the cast. Farrell went on to write drama full time. Neeson too went on to greater things.
McCann wasted nothing and for him the most precious gift was time. When he found a parcel of rose plants abandoned in the newspaper office on Burgh Quay, he took them home, planted them, and wrote about them. In time he would become a recognised authority on rose-growing, travelling the world promoting his books on the subject.
Typically he discovered that a newspaper feature about rose-growing published in spring in the northern hemisphere could be remarketed in Australia six months later. He named his new rose varieties for members of his family. A favourite was Sally Mac, named for his wife Sally (née McGonagle). She was his rock.
McCann’s experiences as a teenage footballer, earning two shillings and sixpence a week at Charlton Athletic, were mined for the fictional adventures of Georgie Goode, a child soccer star, for a young audience.
Not a great drinker, indeed almost teetotal by the bibulous standards of his colleagues, McCann’s typewriter earned him the extra money to indulge his liking for a glass of wine.
His background was modest, his childhood spent in a cottage in Foxrock in south Dublin. Seán and Sally McCann raised their family in a nearby suburb, Deansgrange, where he wrote in a shed at the bottom of his rose garden. In latter years he used a wheelchair to get around.
He was intensely proud of his son novelist Colum McCann, particularly of Let The Great World Spin (2009) which won international acclaim. At times Seán McCann could discourse for longer than might have been strictly necessary on his famous son, but his many friends were prepared to grant him that.
Seán McCann is survived by his widow, Sally, and their children, Siobhan, Seán, Oonagh, Colum and Ronan.